Energy Future

From the time of the steam boiler and propagation of AC electricity, increasingly inexpensive energy has transformed life as we know it.  On the positive side, it has brought literally billions of people out of hunger and raised living standards for humankind.  It has brought a wave of technical innovation that has made us healthier and democratized information, making learning and human progress more available to more people than ever before.  With only a cell connection, people around the globe can access information and learn new things, translated into their language, on their own time.

The increasingly well-understood consequences of the prodigious use of energy, particularly the combustion of fossil fuels, has been air pollution and global warming.  We are now at the point where we need to adroitly change the mix of energy sources to sources that are renewable and which do not release additional CO₂ to the atmosphere.  Unless we want to return to the Middle Ages (not advised), we need to engineer our way to a greener energy mix.  That’s our clear mission for the next decade.

We are focused on two related areas that have had less development than most:

1. Green Hydrogen: This is hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water using renewable sources of electricity.  This is a form of storage of renewable electricity that can damp out the periodicity of renewables, of which at least solar and wind are subject to daily variation.  It also converts electricity into a portable, combustible form of energy that at least for the time being is still required for airplanes, rockets, and other conveyances, but which does not emit any CO₂.  A drawback of hydrogen is that it is hard to store – conventionally it is stored in highly pressurized tanks.  Its high diffusivity means that it leaks quite easily.  Several groups are working on solid-state storage of hydrogen, which is quite promising but not yet commercially-ready.
2. Green Ammonia: Most ammonia is produced by steam reforming of methane.  This process uses between 1-2$ of the world’s annual energy budget and emits a substantial amount of CO₂.  If ammonia can be produced using Green Hydrogen, we eliminate those emissions and can use the substantial infrastructure that already exists for NH₃ to transport the ammonia.  This can be used as a direct fuel, as feedstock for fertilizer, or as an indirect fuel in fuel cells or as a hydrogen carrier.

In addition, we still do substantial work in traditional combustion – devising more efficient, less polluting means of combustion as a bridge as we transition to a greener future.

Contact Steve (sgbuck “at” uw.edu) if you are interested in research collaboration.