Switching to vehicles powered by electricity from renewables could save lives - Video

Use of corn ethanol or electricity from coal worse than gasoline for public health

Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional and alternative vehicles and their air pollution-related public health impacts, published Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study also shows that switching to vehicles powered by electricity made using natural gas yields large health benefits. Conversely, vehicles running on corn ethanol or vehicles powered by coal-based or "grid average" electricity are worse for health; switching from gasoline to those fuels would increase the number of resulting deaths due to air pollution by 80 percent or more.

“These findings demonstrate the importance of clean electricity, such as from natural gas or renewables, in substantially reducing the negative health impacts of transportation,” said Chris Tessum, co-author on the study and a researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering.

The University of Minnesota team estimated how concentrations of two important pollutants—particulate matter and ground-level ozone—change as a result of using various options for powering vehicles. Air pollution is the largest environmental health hazard in the U.S., in total killing more than 100,000 people per year. Air pollution increases rates of heart attack, stroke, and respiratory disease.

The authors looked at liquid biofuels, diesel, compressed natural gas, and electricity from a range of conventional and renewable sources. Their analysis included not only the pollution from vehicles, but also emissions generated during production of the fuels or electricity that power them. With ethanol, for example, air pollution is released from tractors on farms, from soils after fertilizers are applied, and to supply the energy for fermenting and distilling corn into ethanol.

“Our work highlights the importance of looking at the full life cycle of energy production and use, not just at what comes out of tailpipes,” said Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering Assistant Professor Jason Hill, co-author of the study. “We greatly underestimate transportation’s impacts on air quality if we ignore the upstream emissions from producing fuels or electricity.”

The researchers also point out that whereas recent studies on life cycle environmental impacts of transportation have focused mainly on greenhouse gas emissions, it is also important to consider air pollution and health. Their study provides a unique look at where life cycle emissions occur, how they move in the environment, and where people breathe that pollution. Their results provide unprecedented detail on the air quality-related health impacts of transportation fuel production and use.

“Air pollution has enormous health impacts, including increasing death rates across the U.S.,” said Civil, Environmental and Geo- Engineering Associate Professor Julian Marshall, co-author on this study. “This study provides valuable new information on how some transportation options would improve or worsen those health impacts.”

The study’s authors are Marshall and Tessum (College of Science and Engineering) and Hill (College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences), at the University of Minnesota. Marshall and Hill are also Resident Fellows of the University’s Institute on the Environment. This research was supported by the University of Minnesota’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE), the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy of the U.S. Dept. of Energy (EERE/DOE), and the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA/AFRI).

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Source: University of Minnesota

Switching to vehicles powered by electricity from renewables could save lives

Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. Credit: © Dmitry Vereshchagin / Fotolia

Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional and alternative vehicles and their air pollution-related public health impacts, published Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study also shows that switching to vehicles powered by electricity made using natural gas yields large health benefits. Conversely, vehicles running on corn ethanol or vehicles powered by coal-based or "grid average" electricity are worse for health; switching from gasoline to those fuels would increase the number of resulting deaths due to air pollution by 80 percent or more.

"These findings demonstrate the importance of clean electricity, such as from natural gas or renewables, in substantially reducing the negative health impacts of transportation," said Chris Tessum, co-author on the study and a researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering.

The University of Minnesota team estimated how concentrations of two important pollutants -- particulate matter and ground-level ozone -- change as a result of using various options for powering vehicles. Air pollution is the largest environmental health hazard in the U.S., in total killing more than 100,000 people per year. Air pollution increases rates of heart attack, stroke, and respiratory disease.

The authors looked at liquid biofuels, diesel, compressed natural gas, and electricity from a range of conventional and renewable sources. Their analysis included not only the pollution from vehicles, but also emissions generated during production of the fuels or electricity that power them. With ethanol, for example, air pollution is released from tractors on farms, from soils after fertilizers are applied, and to supply the energy for fermenting and distilling corn into ethanol.

"Our work highlights the importance of looking at the full life cycle of energy production and use, not just at what comes out of tailpipes," said Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering Assistant Professor Jason Hill, co-author of the study. "We greatly underestimate transportation's impacts on air quality if we ignore the upstream emissions from producing fuels or electricity."

The researchers also point out that whereas recent studies on life cycle environmental impacts of transportation have focused mainly on greenhouse gas emissions, it is also important to consider air pollution and health. Their study provides a unique look at where life cycle emissions occur, how they move in the environment, and where people breathe that pollution. Their results provide unprecedented detail on the air quality-related health impacts of transportation fuel production and use.

"Air pollution has enormous health impacts, including increasing death rates across the U.S.," said Civil, Environmental and Geo- Engineering Associate Professor Julian Marshall, co-author on this study. "This study provides valuable new information on how some transportation options would improve or worsen those health impacts."

Source: University of Minnesota

Electric cars without drivers

Autonomous vehicle in the car-sharing operation: After the renter has called for the car, it navigates autonomously to the pick-up area. Credit: © Fraunhofer IPA

E-Mobile will park independently in the future and will also be able to find the next charging station without a driver. Researchers are working on electric cars that can travel short distances autonomously. On the basis of cost-effective sensors, they are developing a dynamic model that perceives the environmental situation.

Whoever got his driver's license twenty years ago and is back in a car for the first time is going to be rubbing his eyes in amazement. Electronic helpers warn of a possible collision when parking and keep the necessary distance to the car ahead during traffic. There are lane departure, crosswind, blind spot and high beam assistants, not to mention the anti-lock system. The car is taking over step by step in the cockpit. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA are one step ahead: They are dedicated to automated driving and are working on the vehicles of tomorrow, which can drive through traffic without human assistance. In this process, the Stuttgart engineers are particularly keeping an eye on electric cars.

The specialty of the researchers at the IPA is the development of robots. In the institute building, there is a prototype that independently finds its way on its four wheels through unknown territory. The challenges that are to be mastered are similar to those for automated driving. Here, as well, sensors need to recognize the environment so that the vehicle can navigate around obstacles and find its goal. Why not take advantage of that experience and apply it to the car, say the engineers in Stuttgart. That is why, one and a half years ago, an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, mathematicians, electrical engineers and mechatronics engineers launched the project Afkar (a German abbreviation for "autonomous driving and intelligent chassis concept for an all-electric vehicle").

In a first step, the electric car is intended to learn to find a parking space and to park without a scratch. The idea behind this is that the car should be able to recharge itself with electricity without human help. This would be particularly important for car-sharing. Imagine the following scenario: The driver easily parks the car in a properly equipped parking garage on any randomly available parking space. The car takes care of everything else itself. It communicates via a wireless interface with the charging station and the parking garage management. In this process, it provides information about its charge level and its location. If the battery is empty and a charging station is free, it maneuvers in the corresponding parking bay and is charged inductively, without a cable. Then it makes room for the next electric car and rolls to a free parking space. In this way, the few existing charging stations can be used effectively.

Necessary technology is available

"The technology needed for this scenario is already available," says Afkar project manager Benjamin Maidel. He is referring to the robots of the institute that find their way easily in a known environment, such as a factory floor. Rebuilding a similar car does not take a lot of effort. Many modern cars already have most of the sensors that are required for this. The data that these devices collect just have to be combined and interpreted accordingly so that they provide a picture of the environment. The Fraunhofer experts are currently developing the necessary technology with the help of complex simulation programs. Soon, they want to test the results in practice on a demonstration vehicle.

It becomes more difficult when a car is intended to move autonomously in traffic. This requires sensors that can look hundreds of meters ahead as well as software that can react to any unforeseen events, whether that's a building site, a thunderstorm or snow. Maidel and his team are focusing on cameras, ultrasound, radar and laser scanners that perceive the surrounding area up to a distance of 200 to 300 meters.

The Afkar group will first go with their test car to a cordoned-off test area. For public roads, a special permit is required. "Whether autonomous driving makes a breakthrough will be decided, along with the right price, by customer acceptance and the legal framework. For example, the liability for accidents has to be re-regulated. The technology will probably conquer the market step by step," says Maidel. The advantages are obvious -- particularly for car-sharing vehicles. Any customer could use his smart phone to call a car, which would then drive to the desired location. Car-sharing companies could utilize their fleets more fully than they do today.

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

'Grimsel' electric racing car breaks world record

The record journey from the car driver's perspective. Credit: AMZ Racing

The 'grimsel' electric racing car today broke the previous world record for acceleration in electric cars. The vehicle accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in 1.79 seconds in under 30 metres. The new record was set by students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, who also designed and built the vehicle.

The Formula Student team at the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) finally did it: its 'grimsel' electric racing car smashed the previous world record when it accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in just 1.785 seconds. The previous record of 2.134 seconds was held by an electric car built by Delft University of Technology. The new record was set at the military airfield in Dübendorf, where the vehicle reached a speed of 100 km per hour in less than 30 metres.

The new record-breaking vehicle is a Formula Student electric car that was developed and built in less than a year by 30 students at ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The 'grimsel' is the fifth AMZ electric car and the result of continuous development. The carbon fibre construction has a total weight of 168 kg and produces about 200 hp. A four-wheel drive is implemented with four specially designed wheel hub motors, which generate a total torque of 1630 Nm at the wheels. By means of traction control, torque distribution is controlled individually for each wheel to maximise vehicle acceleration. No other production vehicle in the world has reached a similarly strong acceleration.

AMZ's most successful car

The 'grimsel' celebrated numerous successes at the Formula Student international competition this summer. With more than 500 teams, Formula Student is the world's biggest competition for engineers and is held annually at various locations around the globe. With three overall wins and an average of 920 points out of a possible 1,000, the 'grimsel' is AMZ's most successful car. And with its victories in Austria and Spain, it achieved the two highest scores in the European history of Formula Student. These further strengthened AMZ's standing at the top of the Formula Student world rankings and demonstrated the potential in electric drive concepts.

Source: ETH Zürich

Electric eels deliver taser-like shocks

News research has discovered that the electric eel delivers Taser-like shocks. Credit: Kenneth Catania, Vanderbilt University

The electric eel -- the scaleless Amazonian fish that can deliver an electrical jolt strong enough to knock down a full-grown horse -- possesses an electroshock system uncannily similar to a Taser.

That is the conclusion of a nine-month study of the way in which the electric eel uses high-voltage electrical discharges to locate and incapacitate its prey. The research was conducted by Vanderbilt University Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences Kenneth Catania and is described in the article "The shocking predatory strike of the electric eel" published in the Dec. 5 issue of the journal Science.

People have known about electric fish for a long time. The ancient Egyptians used an electric marine ray to treat epilepsy. Michael Faraday used eels to investigate the nature of electricity and eel anatomy helped inspire Volta to create the first battery. Biologists have determined that a six-foot electric eel can generate about 600 volts of electricity -- five times that of a U.S. electrical outlet. This summer scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced that they had sequenced the complete electric eel genome.

Until now, however, no one had figured out how the eel's electroshock system actually worked. In order to do so, Catania equipped a large aquarium with a system that can detect the eel's electric signals and obtained several eels, ranging up to four feet in length.

As he began observing the eels' behavior, the biologist discovered that their movements are incredibly fast. They can strike and swallow a worm or small fish in about a tenth of a second. So Catania rigged up a high-speed video system that ran at a thousand frames per second so he could study the eel's actions in slow motion.

Catania recorded three different kinds of electrical discharges from the eels: low-voltage pulses for sensing their environment; short sequences of two or three high-voltage millisecond pulses (called doublets or triplets) given off while hunting; and volleys of high-voltage, high-frequency pulses when capturing prey or defending themselves from attack.

He found that the eel begins its attack on free-swimming prey with a high-frequency volley of high-voltage pulses about 10 to 15 milliseconds before it strikes. In the high-speed video, it became apparent that the fish were completely immobilized within three to four milliseconds after the volley hit them. The paralysis was temporary: If the eel didn't immediately capture a fish, it normally regained its mobility after a short period and swam away.

"It's amazing. The eel can totally inactivate its prey in just three milliseconds. The fish are completely paralyzed," said Catania.

These observations raised an obvious question: How do the eels do it? For that, there was no clear answer in the scientific literature.

"I have some friends in law enforcement, so I was familiar with how a Taser works," said Catania. "And I was struck by the similarity between the eel's volley and a Taser discharge. A Taser delivers 19 high-voltage pulses per second while the electric eel produces 400 pulses per second."

The Taser works by overwhelming the nerves that control the muscles in the target's body, causing the muscles to involuntarily contract. To determine if the eel's electrical discharge had the same effect, Catania walled off part of the aquarium with an electrically permeable barrier. He placed a pithed fish on other side of the barrier from the eel and then fed the eel some earthworms, which triggered its electrical volleys. The volleys that passed through the barrier and struck the fish produced strong muscle contractions.

To determine whether the discharges were acting on the prey's motor neurons -- the nerves that control the muscles -- or on the muscles themselves, he placed two pithed fish behind the barrier: one injected with saline solution and other injected with curare, a paralytic agent that targets the nervous system. The muscles of the fish with the saline continued to contract in response to the eel's electrical discharges but the muscle contractions in the fish given the curare disappeared as the drug took effect. This demonstrated that the eel's electrical discharges were acting through the motor neurons just like Taser discharges.

Next Catania turned his attention to the way in which the eel uses electrical signals for hunting. The eel is nocturnal and doesn't have very good eyesight. So it needs other ways to detect hidden prey.

The biologist determined that the closely space doublets and triplets that the eel emits correspond to the electric signal that motor neurons send to muscles to produce an extremely rapid contraction.

"Normally, you or I or any other animal can't cause all of the muscles in our body to contract at the same time. However, that is just what the eel can cause with this signal," Catania said.
Putting together the fact that the eels are extremely sensitive to water movements with the fact that the whole-body muscle contraction causes the prey's body to twitch, creating water movements that the eel can sense, Catania concluded that the eel is using these signals to locate hidden prey.

To test this hypothesis, Catania connected a pithed fish to a stimulator.. He put the fish in a clear plastic bag to protect it from the eel's emissions. He found that when he stimulated the fish to twitch right after the eel emitted one of its signals, the eel would attack. But, when the fish failed to respond to its signal, the eel did not attack. The result supports the idea that the eel uses its electroshock system to force its prey to reveal their location.

"If you take a step back and think about it, what the eel can do is extremely remarkable," said Catania. "It can use its electrical system to take remote control of its prey's body. If a fish is hiding nearby, the eel can force it to twitch, giving away its location, and if the eel is ready to capture a fish, it can paralyze it so it can't escape."

The research was funded by a Pradel Award from the National Academy of Sciences, a Guggenheim fellowship and National Science Foundation grant 0844743.

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Source: Vanderbilt University