Urban Landscapes in the 21st Century – Part 4: The Evolution of Cities

In our last blog we talked about the challenge of dealing with solid urban waste in cities in both the Developed and Developing World. With urban growth in the 21st century expected in cities of the Developing World, add managing the air to the litany of challenges to be faced and overcome.

Developed World cities have the same problems with air pollution as cities in the Developing World. The difference is in length of time in which these problems have appeared. Developed World cities grew at a slower pace than the Developing World cities of today.  So although emissions from automobiles, trucks, home heating, industrial plants, and power stations contributed to ground-level ozone, CO2, and urban-created smog, these problems became apparent over a half century or more, not over a decade or even less time than that.

Air pollution in cities spreads far and wide regardless of the location of the city in the Developed or Developing World. In addition the demands cities put on their hinterlands exacerbate the problem. Cities need energy. Coal-fired power plants produce that energy and may be hundreds of kilometers away but their emissions pollute from point of origin and downwind often contributing to greater problems for the cities they heat and light.

Beijing, China, experiences many days each year when air pollution reaches such dangerous levels (see picture below) that it is unsafe to be outdoors. Cities of the Great Lakes in Canada and the United States get the drift of air pollutants from local origin as well as the emissions from coal-fired power plants up wind. Tailpipe emissions from cars, trucks and buses create ground-level ozone making walking on local sidewalks in urban settings hazardous to the health of those who have asthma or other respiratory diseases.

Coal-fired power plants, industry, and traffic contribute to the smog experienced in Beijing for much of the year, 16 times worse than New York City. Source: tdaxp.com

Air Pollution in Urban China

Before Beijing hosted the Olympics,it began a program to greatly decrease air pollution. This involved restricting traffic, reducing the operations of coal-fired power plants, and limiting the hours that heavy industry could operate. Even with regulation the quality of the air during the 2008 Olympics was only marginally better. When measured throughout the Games Beijing air contained higher than acceptable levels of ozone, sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), reactive aromatics (toluene, xylene), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), reactive nitrogen (NOy), alkanes and benzene. For the athletes the exposure presented minimal risk but for Beijing citizens living in the city before and after the Games, air pollution is a major contributor to chronic respiratory disease.

Air pollution in China is not limited to Beijing. Shanghai, China’s largest city, experiences air pollution so thick that residents report it is often impossible to see buildings a few blocks away, or the road from as little five stories above. Beijing and Shanghai have had to close their international airports on days when the air pollution has made it impossible to safely take off and land. Space shuttle and International Space Station astronauts have reported that many of China’s cities are invisible from space because of the blanket of pollutants that shroud them from view.

For China’s it is a tradeoff between air quality and production and its urban population as its economy rapidly expands. In a 2010 study of air pollution in urban China it stated that one-third of 113 Chinese cities failed to meet air quality standards. A World Bank report indicated that 16 of the 20 worst air polluted cities were in China with 20% of the urban population exposed to heavily polluted air. The primary cause is the burning of high-sulphur coal, the principal mined fossil fuel in China. Six million tons is burned daily not just for power and industrial plants, but also as a domestic heating and cooking source. The total health cost of airborne particulate matter in a 1995 study was estimated to equal $54 billion annually or 8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Considering the expansion of the Chinese economy since 1995, that number is today much greater. Today China is adding a new source of air pollutants to the mix. The number of motor vehicles is rapidly on the increase. The result, airborne lead in major Chinese cities such as Shenyang and Shanghai is contributing to blood-lead levels 80% percent higher than those normally considered dangerous to mental development. With a rising middle class and a lot more automobiles and trucks on the road lead pollution will only get worse.

Air Pollution in Developing World Cities

The same factors that contribute to the problems in Chinese cities exist in cities throughout other parts of the Developing World. More than a billion urban dwellers in these cities experience dangerous levels of air pollution, contributing to 2 million premature and prenatal deaths annually. It is estimated that urban air pollution costs Developing World countries 5% of GDP annually compared to 2% for the Developed World. More than 90% of the pollution is attributable to transportation and domestic use, not power and industrial plants as in China. Older vehicles, poor vehicle maintenance and poor-quality highly leaded gas are major culprits. Burning kerosene and other fuels for domestic cooking contribute to the bad air in these urban environments. Local industries rely on diesel generators because of a lack of power from central utilities.

In Lagos, a city we have documented in previous blogs, traffic, flaring of waste gas from petroleum refineries, kerosene burning for cooking, and incineration of solid wastes, have contributed to air pollution that is 500% higher than safe levels established by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2007 the WHO estimated that air pollution contributed to 14,700 deaths in Nigerian cities.

Pollution in Developing World cities, such as Lagos, Nigeria, pictured here, is largely caused by inefficient use of fossil fuels, the poor quality, maintenance and age of motor vehicles, traffic gridlock, low-grade leaded gasoline, industrial generators, and domestic cooking using kerosene. Source: The Foreign Policy Group, LLC.

Solutions for Cleaner Air in Developing World Cities in the 21st Century

What can be done to clean up the air over the cities of the Developing World? What is affordable? What technologies exist today or will exist in the near future to mitigate and end this growing problem that not only contributes to premature death but also to climate change?

In China, South Asia and Africa the goal to decrease air pollution involves a cooperative effort among government, industry and citizens. Technology solutions exist at the macro and microeconomic level. What are these?

Substituting cleaner fuels for generating power, heat and electricity. In China, washing coal before burning it would greatly decrease (SO2) and acid rain. Better yet getting off coal by finding alternatives will dramatically reduce many of the other pollutants that shroud Chinese cities. Diversifying means using renewable power sources such as wind, photovoltaics and other solar technology, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, natural gas and oil.

Today, China is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines not just for export but also for domestic use. China is building variable-sized wind turbines with sizes deployable off the grid for rural power generation. Small wind turbines represent a supplementary power source for clusters of homes or single family dwellings.

One of the many challenges in cities in places like Africa is the lack of capital to invest in manufacturing at a level of sophistication and in quantity as in China. Instead, small-scale manufacturing projects involve the use of local materials. A good example is a project in Cameroon. The town of M’muock, population 7,000, is working with Green Step, a German company, to build and operate small wind turbines and other renewable energy power generators from locally sourced wood, and old car and radio parts.

Using locally available materials to create power generation is one way to begin to address the problem of substituting dirty fuels for clean solutions to combat air pollution. Source: Green Step

Refining gasoline to get the lead out. Lead as an additive in gasoline was first introduced in the 1920s despite its known toxicity and it has taken 90 years to eradicate it from the production of this fuel. The United Nations has set a goal of 2013 to end production of leaded gasoline globally. Once this is achieved new lead sources will no longer contribute to the problem. But the residual environmental threat remains.

Even though leaded gasoline was banned in 1986 in the United States, lead remains in the soil and air because it is almost indestructible. For children this represents a greater risk because they ingest lead 5 to 8 times more rapidly than adults. Children absorb up to 50% of inhaled lead. Those living near highways, playing on roads or in playgrounds near parking lots are at greatest risk as dust with lead gets ingested into lungs.

Inexpensive lead remediation programs involve combining compost with contaminated soils to inactivate the lead. Lead when exposed to phosphates forms an insoluble compound. Similarly lead is remediated when exposed to soluble iron oxides.

Replacing polluting motor vehicles with low-emission and zero-emission alternatives. Older automobiles and trucks are major contributors to air pollution in urban environments. Emissions include (NO2) nitrogen dioxide, (CO) carbon monoxide, (CO2) carbon dioxide, benzene and other partially combusted hydrocarbons. Internal combustion engines (ICE) are the principal polluters even those with catalytic converters although a converter halves the amount of NO2 that gets into the atmosphere.The combination of partially combusted hydrocarbons, NO2 and sunlight cause ground-level ozone and smog. Recycling the older vehicles that clog the roads of Developing World cities can at least begin to reduce NO2. Proper maintenance of older vehicles to improve the air-to-fuel ratio can dramatically reduce CO emissions.

Ideally the arrival of electric vehicles with infrastructure for managing both the charging of batteries and their disposal will dramatically reduce air pollution.

Implementing emission control technologies in industrial and power generating plant smokestacks. Reducing emissions whether in cars or trucks, or from industrial and domestic sources will lower air pollution levels in Developing World urban centres. Proven technologies include:

Cyclones to create cyclonic motion in the smokestack air stream to cause pollutant matter to drop out. Cyclones are inexpensive and useful for removing large airborne particles only.

Settling Chambers like cyclones alter the air stream, not by spinning the gases but by passing them through a larger space in the smokestack causing the air speed of the effluent to drop and precipitating out large particles. Settling chambers are inexpensive to implement.

Wet scrubbers filter out pollutants from the air stream by passing through water. Pollutants combine with water droplets and precipitate into settling tanks. Pollutant-laced water is discharged into settling ponds which can become quite large over time and highly toxic.

Fabric filters use porous temperature and corrosion-resistant fabrics to remove pollutants from the air stream as it passes up the smokestack. The filters need frequent replacement.

Electrostatic filters are the most effective tools for removing smokestack emissions. They can capture almost 99% of airborne pollutants. They do this by ionizing the particles in the gas and then using magnets to remove pollutants.

Catalysts create a chemical reaction that binds airborne pollutants to a catalytic medium. Catalytic converters in cars use platinum and rare earth metals. In industrial plants catalysts in their current form are very expensive to implement.But the future is promising with developments in nanotechnology catalysts because the nanoparticles expose so much more surface to the air stream capturing a much greater volume of pollutants. Nanocatalysts made from cobalt and platinum are effective in removing NO2. Gold combined with manganese oxide in a nanocatalyst can be used to breakdown volatile organic compounds at room temperature.

Nanostructured membranes are under development that separate CO2 from the air stream for carbon capture. Structures under development use crystals with nano-sized pores to trap the gas. The captured CO2 can be converted to methanol or for use in building carbon nanotubes.

Replacing kerosene and coal as domestic cooking and heating fuels with cleaner alternatives. Urban dwellings in Developing World cities may not have access to reliable utility-delivered electricity or natural gas. Being off the grid is more common than not. Using generators that run on gasoline or other highly polluting fuels just contributes to air pollution. Building homes that can generate their own electricity through wind, solar and battery storage is one way to reduce airborne pollution. Where the infrastructure can deliver reliable electricity and natural gas, reductions in pollution will result. Houses like those being built using Eco-Tec designs represent a model for construction in these urban environments.

In our next edition of urban landscapes we will address water pollution in the 21st century.

Agriculture – Part 2: Why We Are Rethinking the Farm

The rising cost of fuel and energy impacts agriculture many ways. North American farms use lots of fossil fuel resources to produce incredible yields per acre of land. The same is true of farms in many other industrialized nations. In the developing world energy access is an inhibitor to creating increased crop yields. Fossil fuels are also used in fertilizer production. Industrial farms in North America and Europe need to find ways to reduce hydrocarbon energy dependency and they are. In a recent U.S. report on energy usage by American farmers the total amount of energy directly and indirectly used amounted to 1% of all the energy consumed in the country. The breakdown of energy usage is interesting.

From Energy Use in Agriculture: Background and Issues - a Report to the U.S. Congress published in 2004

Today land use for agricultural purposes encompasses an area of the planet the size of South America. When human population reaches 9.5 billion by mid-century we will need to add an area equivalent in size to Brazil to feed the increase. If we intensify farming on existing land through better agricultural practices we can mitigate this to some degree. To achieve intensification we will deploy technology in various ways. But technology isn’t the only parameter that can impact agricultural production. Others include access to sufficient fresh water, improved fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and tied into all of this our use of fossil fuels and other energy resources such as renewables.

Today’s industrial farms rely heavily on significant amounts of freshwater. But in the agricultural heartland of the United States and Canada farm water usage increasingly competes with growing urban consumption. The fastest growing cities in the United States are in warm, dry and drying areas of the country. Canada has experienced increased urban growth in its Prairie Region creating similar competition for water. Human consumption of water for drinking, city gardens and waste management means less for the farms and ranches in these areas.

Climate change is also in play. Texas and many of its neighbouring states have experienced prolonged drought for the last year. United States weather records show that from October 2010 to September 2011 New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and parts of Louisiana experienced the driest 12 months ever recorded. The drought was further exacerbated from record summer heat. Is this a short-term anomaly or a symptom of a prolonged change that is affecting weather in this region?

Texas and its neighbouring states are not the only prime agricultural areas of the United States that are experiencing wierd weather patterns. The most recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report paints a picture of growing unpredictability in climate patterns leading to higher incidents of extreme weather. And weather can be agriculture’s best friend or worst enemy.

North America is not isolated in experiencing weird weather. Much of Australia has experienced prolonged drought. Monsoon rain patterns may change. The recent prolonged flooding in Thailand is just another example of extreme weather events that may very well be a symptom of climate change.

According to the most recent report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change there is credible evidence for extreme events including a 90 to 100% probability of prolonged heat waves throughout the 21st century, accompanied by increased wind intensity on a global scale and intensifying droughts in South and Central Europe, the Mediterranean basin, central North America, Mexico and Central America, Northeastern Brazil, and Southern Africa. The report forecasts increased frequency of heavy precipitation in many regions of the World with more intense tropical cyclones such as typhoons and hurricanes.

Agricultural production will be impacted. Some regions of the planet currently not used for agriculture  may become more suitable habitats for growing crops. But areas currently producing crops and food will have to adapt, or in extreme circumstances, be repurposed.

In any event farming will have to intensify to meet growing demand exerted by population growth. One method of intensification may lead to an entirely new definition of  farming. When I grew up in Toronto in the 1950s there were urban farms within the city limits. Not today, but the grow local movement is leading to concepts about growing food in high-rise buildings. A recent article in Scientific American described a one-square-block farm, 30 stories tall, capable of yielding as much food as 2,400 acres of land. Every floor of  the building would be used for planting beds or raising small livestock in an environmentally-controlled setting.

A conceptual design for an agricultural skyscraper

Is a vertical farm such as the one pictured above viable? A number of organizations both private and public are in the process of testing the concept.

Creative Concern is undertaking a project in Manchester in the United Kingdom to grow broccoli, tomatoes, onions, carrots, strawberries, mushrooms, chickens, bees and fish in a converted 5-storey building. The farm is expected to be in full production in time to supply food for Manchester’s International Event scheduled for 2013.

Nuvege has developed a vertical farm in Kyoto, Japan, utilizing almost 5,300 square meters (57,000 square feet) of vertical growth environment within a single building. The Nuvege system produces low-bacterial load, high-quality lettuce in a climate and lighting controlled environment that controls water and CO2 levels.

PlantLab, a Dutch company, has developed production units that scale from 100 to 10,000 square meters (1,070 – 107,600 square feet). Each unit is self contained with controlled artificial lighting that can be adjusted for colour, intensity and day length. Air, root and plant temperature are carefully controlled. Irrigation, nutrition, air velocity, air composition, humidity and CO2 levels are managed in a closed cycle environment. Units can be placed anywhere – in a high-rise building, a basement, on a ship at sea, and in any climate. The units rely on advanced automation, control and mathematical modeling systems designed to optimize plant growth. In PlantLab’s design vertical farms implies down as well as up with the company extending its newest facility several stories underground.

Other countries developing vertical farms include South Korea, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Canada and the United States.

Transportation – Part 7: AirshipTechnology, Past, Present and Future

How far we have come from the Montgolfier balloon flights of 18th century France to today. How much farther will we go in the 21st century? In Part 7 of our look at transportation we will look at the evolution of flight technologies not including space.

When we started talking about transportation we briefly introduced how humans made the initial breakthrough to conquer the air in the 20th century using heavier-than-air technology. The 21st century will feature a wide range of technologies for air passenger travel and transport. These technologies will include alternatives to the airplane to address energy conservation and the need to reduce carbon emissions. One of these technologies, the airship, is the subject of this blog.

Airships: What Are They and Where Are They Today?

In North America at every major sporting event we see  a descendant of airships hovering over the venue giving us a bird’s eye view of the playing field. These lighter-than-air blimps, as they are called, are powered balloons. They are not airships in the true sense because they contain none of the rigid framework that characterizes that technology. To understand the difference between blimps and airships, let’s look at the history.

For a period in the 20th century Germany and Great Britain turned to airships to cross the Atlantic Ocean. This was before passenger airplane technology had the capability to make a non-stop flight across several thousand kilometers of open ocean. What were these airships?

They were aluminum alloy frameworks covered by a weatherproof cloth with vertical and horizontal fins attached at the tail. Vertical fins acted as rudders. Horizontal fins allowed the airship to climb or descend. Internally airships contained impermeable bladders called gas cells. These were filled with lighter than air gases, either hydrogen or helium. Crew and passengers were accommodated either within the structure or in a suspended cabin attached to the bottom of the frame. Internal combustion engines turned rear-facing propellers that pushed airships at speeds of 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour.

The name most associated with airships, Zeppelin, appeared in 1900 with the launch of a series of airships in Germany. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin perfected the airship and during World War I manufactured a fleet of them for the German military to use in bombing raids over Great Britain. Zeppelins, as they were called, proved to be impractical weapons of war because they provided British flyers and antiaircraft batteries with enormous, slow-moving targets.

After the war the Zeppelin and other commercial manufacturers found a peaceful purpose for their airships, offering passenger service between major European and North American cities. The Graf Zeppelin, an airship built in 1928, flew around the world in 1929. In 1936, the Hindenburg, the largest airship of its time, began a regular transatlantic passenger service between Germany and New York City.

The cause of the Hindenburg disasterremains unknown but the use of hydrogen gas made fire inevitable as a consequence of whatever accident occurred at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. Germany lacked helium. The United States was the world’s largest producer at the time and restricted export to what was then Nazi Germany. The combustible nature of hydrogen gas made the airship particularly vulnerable to almost any accident that could cause a spark. Whether it was a snapped cable, or static electricity, the hydrogen gas in the Hindenburg ignited and the craft crashed to the ground killing and injuring dozens of passengers and onlookers. The Hindenburg’s demise sounded the end of passenger airships although the Graf Zeppelin continued to fly until 1940 just after the outbreak of World War II.

The Hindenburg in flight over New York City

Blimps survived the demise of airships, largely serving as flying billboards, or sky-mounted camera platforms. Unlike airships blimps lack the structured aluminium framework. Instead the engine, fins and crew cabin are attached to the blimp’s outer skin which remains rigid because of the helium gas contained within it. Goodyear is the brand most associated with blimps. But the technology that Goodyear is using today may soon be replaced by new designs that incorporate new materials and engine capability.

One of the pioneers in delivering this new type of airship is Aeros, operating out of Montebello, California. The Aeroscraft is a rigid variable buoyancy airship with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. Unlike blimps and airships of old, Aeros technology uses dynamic buoyancy management and not water ballast to keep afloat and on an even keel. More aerodynamic in shape than traditional blimps and airships, the Aeroscraft contains helium cells that hold up to 400,000 cubic meters (14 million cubic feet) of the gas, negating 65% of the aircraft’s weight. The forward and aft fins, called canards and empennages respectively, create additional lift.

Almost 2oo meters in length and as tall as a 14-storey building, Aeroscraft has a cruising range of  close to 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) and a top speed of 280 kilometers (174 miles) per hour. Aeroscraft can be used as a flying hotel, or as a payload carrier capable of delivering materials to remote areas inaccessible because of terrain or lack of roads. Aeroscraft requires no ballast and can handle payloads of up to 400 tons or 250 passengers in a hotel-like cruise ship setting.

Concept drawing of an Aeroscraft hotel dwarfs the planes in the foreground

 

Pelican is a Pentagon funded smaller airship being built by Aeros to deliver payloads of 60 tons to remote locations. Like its larger cousin, Aeroscraft, Pelican uses  a rigid-aeroshell,variable-buoyancy from pressure-stored helium, an impermeable helium cell, and a  load-bearing internal frame made of carbon-fiber. The Pentagon sees it as a quick deployment, strategic aircraft for delivering soldiers or equipment to staging areas with greater load capacity than helicopters and vertical-take-off and landing capability.

 

Future Uses of Airship Technology

Aeroscraft and its successors may find themselves being used for a variety of applications as this technology matures. Here are just a few that take us past the flying billboards of present day:

1. Telecommunications – Deployed at high altitude (up to 20 kilometers or 12 miles), airships in the stratosphere can be ideal platforms for broadcast and other communication services. At this altitude an area 400 kilometers (240 miles) in diameter could easily be served. And airships would be much cheaper to service and maintain than satellite technology.
2. Tourism – Today’s airships are capable of taking small groups on scenic tours, usually not much more than a dozen. The Aeroscraft floating hotel concept is designed to make it possible for up to 250 people to fly in style.
3. Military Surveillance and Scientific Missions – For military surveillance an airship operating in the stratosphere would be able to provide higher resolution imagery than satellites over a large area continuously. Unlike drone or manned aircraft the airship could remain stationary. Similarly this surveillance capability would be highly useful for scientific observation as well as upper atmosphere experiments and studies.

Transportation – Part 5: Trains in the 21st Century

Until about six months ago I had a model train set in my basement. We were renovating and I finally parted with my world of miniature locomotives and boxcars. They found a good home when we had a garage sale.

Trains have always fascinated me because they are such an expression of our technical society. Trains as a technical invention owe a debt to coal mining, and the steam engine.

Tramways made of wooden rails were used to transport tubs of ore from mines to refineries in 16th century Europe. Funicular rail systems moved goods and people up and down hill and mountainsides. These early “railways” used human or animal power. But it was the transportation of coal as the primary fuel of the early Industrial Revolution in Europe that led to modern train transport.

The 19th century was the age of steam-driven railway technology. Nations built empires by laying track. North America saw trans-continental railway systems built both n the United States and Canada. Great Britain tied its global empire together by ship and rail building railway networks in Asia and Africa to support colonial and commercial ambitions.

The 20th used a variety of sources of energy to drive rail transport from diesel to electric to the first MagLev trains. Rail design matured as steel rails replace iron. Concrete rail beds replaced aggregate material and wooden cross ties making the “clackety-clack” sound of trains in transit disappear. At the end of the 20th century high-speed passenger trains appeared in France, Germany, Japan and China.

Freight Trains in the 21st Century

In North America the latter part of the 20th century saw a general decline in the use of trains as trucks became the major transporter of goods and automobiles and highway infrastructure reduced passenger traffic.  Yet in North America trains continue to represent the most sound economic and environmental method of moving bulk and manufactured goods across he continent.

Of all the transport industries discussed in these blogs, railways have traditionally been the greenest in terms of emissions and fossil fuel use. The first decade of the 21st century has seen new low emission diesel and hybrid locomotives introduced into freight railway transport networks further reducing the carbon footprint of the industry. The Evolution, a product of General Electric, is one of many new locomotives that have come to market since 2005. It features an air-to-air cooling system to burn fuel more cleanly and  consumes far less fuel than locomotives with similar horsepower. General Electric is also introducing hybrid locomotive systems that capture energy from braking in a similar way to hybrid automobiles. The recovered energy is captured by an array of batteries and used to supplement power requirements. The amount of energy captured equals about 1500 kilowatt-hours or enough to light up 50 homes for a day.

Freight trains today are the land equivalent of super container ships traveling on land. They play a critical role in moving goods arriving from overseas to destinations inland or even to coastal locations on the other side of a continent. Container freight has replaced grain, coal, refined fossil fuel products and other bulk transported materials as the principal cargo of railways today. The technology used to track containers is technology that railways can deploy to track individual cars and their contents. Combined with GPS, railroad information systems can know at any time exactly where a container of goods that arrived in Long Beach, California, from China, is while on route to Kansas City, Missouri.

What other technologies are being deployed for freight railway systems?

1. Automatic Equipment Identification and Position Tracking – Moving goods faster and in greater quantity are two of the goals of freight railway operators. This means enhancing the existing sensor network that has become standard to railway systems in North America and Europe. Since 1995 Automatic Equipment Identification (AEI) tags accompany every railway car. Track scanners check for mechanical defects as cars goes by. New train control systems are taking advantage of GPS technology to monitor train cars on remote tracks such as those in northern parts of Canada and Alaska where trackside sensors are impractical because of weather. Lat-Lon, a Colorado company, has developed solar-powered GPS technology that monitors a wide range of real-time data on the status of a rail car and its contents and sends alarms to a central dispatcher.
2. Collision Avoidance Systems – Newly developed braking systems technology reduces the amount of time and distance required to stop freight trains. EP-60 is a product of New York Air Brake Corporation. The technology employs a central computer controller linked to individual, wire-based controls in each railway car. The system applies braking simultaneously across all cars in the train when an object is spotted on the track dramatically reducing the stopping distance required to avoid collisions. This allows operators to increase speed without compromising safety.
3. Autonomous Train Intelligence – Ultimately freight operators are looking at finding ways to automate railway transport to operate autonomously as much as possible. Automated train operations or ATO is in operation today on subway systems in some U.S. cities and in many more locations in Europe and Asia. Singapore was the first country to deploy ATI and ATO in 2003. What characterizes successful ATO implementations is the limited number of stops and automatic train protection (ATP) technology that is built into urban transit to ensure safety. ATO  refers to the automatic operation involved in driving the train. When combined with an Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) system, a network of trains can operate autonomously across a closed track system. Driverless Train Operation (DTO) requires advanced security and platform controls for managing passenger flow. To apply ATO to freight operations will need autonomous intelligence combined with onboard detection technology and a sophisticated infrastructure of trackside sensors plus regional operational centres tied to a common computer-controlled central network. That level of sophistication presently does not exist but it is on the development horizon and should be realized by mid-century.

Passenger Trains in the 21st Century

Train travel has been popular since the early 20th century and high-speed trains first appeared as early as 1933 in both Europe and the United States.  These early trains reached peak speeds of 130 kilometres (80 miles) per hour. Just before World War II Italy introduced train travel between Milan and Florence with peak speeds of 203 kilometres (126 miles) per hour. In 1957 Japan introduced its first high-speed “Bullet” trains and by the mid-1960s provided rail service between Tokyo and Osaka operating at speeds of 217 kilometres (135 miles) per hour.

Conventional high-speed trains provide high-capacity transportation and minimal new investment in infrastructure making them very attractive. High-speed trains represent a better energy option than air, automobile and bus transit. What always made trains attractive to passengers, the ability to operate them with a very small footprint, and create connections from downtown to downtown, gives new impetus to developing high-speed train infrastructure.

High Speed Trains of the Future

The issues of speed, intelligence and safety characterize the passenger train industry as well. Let’s look at the technologies that 21st century passenger trains are incorporating and what is potentially doable before the end of the century.

1. Conventional High-Speed – In the last 50 years 26 countries have invested in the building of high-speed rail lines. I remember as a teenager in the 1960s taking the Rapido, a high-speed train from Toronto to Montreal, a 550 kilometer (330 miles) trip in just under 5 hours. Twenty years later I travelled that same route on the Turbo at even higher speeds, making the trip in a little over 3 hours. At no time was I ever aware of the difference in speed. And the Turbo was a much more comfortable ride than the Rapido, its predecessor.Today’s high speed trains make my experiences seem like slow crawls. In December 2010, a Shanghai-to-Beijing passenger train reached a speed of 486 kilometers (302 miles) per hour travelling on an unmodified rail bed. Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan are upgrading their rail networks to increase conventional high-speed passenger traffic . In Europe high-speed rail networks currently operate in 11 countries with Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and France the most significant players. In North America there are few places today where high-speed trains operate. Plans to build high-speed rail corridors in California, the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, the Pacific Northwest, the Mid-West joining Kansas City to St. Louis and Chicago, and in the corridor linking Windsor to Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City remain largely on the drawing board.
2. Autonomous Train Operations – ATO provides many benefits to passenger as well as freight trains. These include lower operational costs, maximized performance, better customer service and the removal of human error from the safety equation. But to-date ATO implementations are limited to urban transit applications. To move to inter-city and trans-continental application rail systems need to add new signaling technology to provide an acceptable margin of safety. Hitachi of Japan is one of a number of companies developing digital train control systems that offer seamless interconnection between trackside monitoring technology and on-board train systems. Digital ATO features databases that keep information on the status of all components within a single train, store route data and train performance, receive information from trackside on the position of all other traffic ahead, and accordingly make decisions on speed and braking to ensure a wide margin of safety.
3. MagLev – Magnetic Levitation Technology is deployed in very few countries today. Why hasn’t it been adopted more? Because MagLev trains need a dedicated right of way and cannot operate on existing rail infrastructure. MagLev trains contain onboard super-cooled magnets that are repelled by the application of an electric current built into the dedicated pathway. The trains float above the pathway and with only air friction to impede them can operate at very high speeds when compared to conventional high-speed trains. Currently MagLev technology is limited today to short distance routes implemented between Shanghai’s city centre and its airport at Pudong, a distance of  30 kilometers (19 miles).
4. Vactrains – This technology is also known as Evacuated Tube Transport or ETT. Vactrains combine MagLev with sealed rights of way in which the air has been removed. With no air resistance the trains can achieve unheard of speeds. Theoretically it would be possible for Vactrain to achieve speeds of up to 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) per hour. At these speeds a train trip from New York City to Los Angeles would take no more than 45 minutes. Vactrains require technology to maintain a vacuum in addition to the super-cooled magnets used by the trains. But the energy used to move these trains would be minimal compared to operating  jet aircraft trying to achieve similar speeds.

Transportation – Part 3: Energy Conservation and Alternative Fuels

According to Ward’s Auto there are more than 1 billion automobiles and light trucks on the road today with forecasts reaching 2.5 billion by mid-century. At current levels of consumption per vehicle 2.5 billion automobiles will translate to 150 million barrels of oil per day, compared to today’s 90 million barrels. The automobile and oil consumption are on an unsustainable course and that is leading to new energy conservation technology that may indeed prove a planet saver. Today the electric car is an oddity, but by 2050 alternative fuel and electric cars will be in the majority. This transformation is just one of many that will change transportation in the 21st century.

In Energy in the 21st Century – Part 7: From Biomass to Biofuels we talk about alternative energy sources that includes fuels such as ethanol, bio-diesel, natural gas, propane and hydrogen. The problem with ethanol and bio-diesel is two-fold:

1. These fuels are largely obtained in North America from a food crop, corn. In South America, sugar cane is the primary source. With sugar cane there are environmental issues that contribute to rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere as well as issues related to soil degradation and destruction of rain forest habitat.
2. These fuels require a significant amount of energy to create output and that includes the use of fossil fuels to make the end products.

Natural gas and propane are fossil fuels. Using these fuels doesn’t solve the problem of fossil fuel dependence.

A Hydrogen Transportation Alternative

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and on the planet but for us to make it we have to separate it from water or fossil fuels. Hydrogen is seen by environmentalists as the miracle solution to revolutionize transportation. But building capacity to produce it and an infrastructure to fuel automobiles and trucks means an enormous investment on the part of national governments and private enterprise. Today the energy required to deliver gasoline and diesel represents about 10% of the energy derived for automobile and truck usage.  There is no political will at present in North America or Europe to create a system with similar or better efficiency to deliver hydrogen. Besides the challenge of infrastructure hydrogen has some other challenges:

1. Hydrogen when not combined with other elements is highly inflammable. In water, H2O it is stable. By itself….not so much. Remember the Hindenburg?
2. Hydrogen generates less energy output than fuels like gasoline or diesel. A  kilogram (approximately 2.2 pounds) of hydrogen generates about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline or 9/10s of a gallon of diesel.
3. Because it delivers less energy punch than these other fuels by volume to maximize its efficiency it needs to be compressed  or liquified. This means extra energy and production costs as well as the need to manufacture pressurized storage or cryogenic containers. Neither gasoline or diesel require compression and both are in a liquid state. Both can be stored in conventional fuel tanks.
4. Hydrogen when derived from fossil fuels produces less energy than the energy needed to create it. This means conventional coal or natural gas power plants are economically unsuitable for generating hydrogen in volume.
5. The economics of generating hydrogen using cleaner energy sources currently does not make sense because it is considerably more expensive to produce it by electrolysis than from fossil fuels. A 1997 study calculated the cost around $20.10 U.S. per Gigajoule (GJ, about 240,000 kilocalories equivalent) from electrolysis versus $5.60 per GJ from natural gas  and $10.30 per GJ from coal.
6. Storing and distribution of hydrogen requires a very different infrastructure than the current one constructed for gasoline and diesel. There are two ways hydrogen can be stored. One involves combining it with another material where it can bond and then be extracted later, or storing it as a compressed gas in its pure state. The former would make the hydrogen safer while the latter would entail reinforced containment. Distribution by trucking hydrogen to filling stations would require the building of containment vessels to withstand the compressed gas or maintain it at cold enough temperatures to keep it in a liquified state. Distribution through pipelines would require a higher frequency of pumps to move the gas along because of hydrogen’s very low density compared to natural gas.
7. Hydrogen can be generated right at a filling station, a very different model than current gasoline and diesel infrastructure. Generating the gas this way would be energy intensive using current technologies, would require a rethinking of the power grid, and would present safety concerns for neighbouring communities.
8. Hydrogen fuel cells have been around since the American space program first implemented them in the 1960s to power spacecraft and generate oxygen for the crew to breathe as a byproduct. But fuel cell technology has never scaled to a point where it was affordable for use in standard automobiles and trucks.

Hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels, therefore, has considerable challenges to overcome before it can displace our current dependence on gasoline and diesel as the fuels of choice for automobiles and trucks. Conservation gains are more than offset by the massive investment needed to develop the technology and infrastructure to make it practical.

Electric Vehicles

The Toyota Prius was the first commercial, mass-produced hybrid vehicle, combining an electric motor with an internal combustion engine. The Prius was not designed to operate purely using its electric motor. The Chevrolet Volt, however, combined an electric motor with a supplementary internal combustion engine making it possible to operate the automobile on electricity alone for short distances. In 2006, Tesla Motors launched the Roadster, an all-electric vehicle capable of driving close to 400 kilometers (245 miles) before its batteries needed recharging. The Roadster uses lithium-ion battery technology and is rechargeable through a conventional 110 volt or 220 volt circuit. Tesla has launched a second vehicle, a more conventional sedan using the same technology. Of the major automobile manufacturers Nissan is first to market with the Leaf, an all-electric vehicle.

Electric vehicles or EVs truly represent a significant technology paradigm shift. They offer lots of advantages including:

1. Energy efficiency and performance benefits when compared to internal combustion engines. An EV converts 75% of the energy stored in batteries to power the vehicle. EVs are quiet, low maintenance, and high performance. Compare that to 20% using internal combustion engines with the noise that these engines create and the number of moving parts that can break.
2. Better for the environment with no tailpipe emissions. The batteries have pollutants and need to be recycled appropriately at end of life. When charging an EV may take its power from any electrical source. If the source is coal-fired then the pro-environment argument is weakened.
3. Reduced energy dependence because batteries are charged through the domestic power grid.

This advantages are largely related to the state of current portable storage technology and include:

1. Batteries that take considerable amount of time to recharge. For example the Tesla Roadster takes a minimum of 4 hours to fully recharge using a 220 volt connector, or 6 hours using more conventional 110 volt connections. On a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit plugged into a conventional outlet it can take up to 30 hours to fully recharge the vehicle.
2. Batteries that are expensive and need replacement as they lose their efficiency.
3. Batteries are heavy and limit the carrying capacity and interior vehicle volume.
4. Limited driving range before recharging. Currently the Leaf has a range of between 100 and 160 kilometres between charges. The Tesla Roadster has a range of up to 400 kilometers. Variability is determined by passenger load, weather and temperature, driving style and speed.
   

With all these limitations, EVs are still proving an attractive alternative to hydrogen and other fuel technologies with more and more automobile and truck manufacturers in the planning or delivery stage of bringing them to the market. By 2020 EVs will represent about 3% of the total market. But as the cost of fossil fuel technologies increases EVs should rapidly build market share and predominate by mid-century.

Some EVs will use hydrogen fuel cells. Most will be plug-in battery driven and hybrids will be only a small percentage of the automobile market but will play a more significant role in heavy truck market where the technology will deliver conservation along with long distance performance.

Transportation – Part 1: Where We Will Go and on What in the 21st Century

The 20th century was the age of the internal combustion engine just as the 19th was the age of steam. Humanity went from horse and buggy, sail and balloons to the development of railway networks, automobiles, engine-driven ships, airplanes and rockets.

The world became a lot smaller place as transportation technology evolved faster ways to get from one place to another. Human settlement patterns altered from being predominantly rural in the 19th century to urban in the 20th. By the mid-20th century cities spread out spawning underground and above-ground railway networks and road infrastructure that created the urban daily commute from home to work and back.

The automobile became a personal freedom machine for those who could afford it. And increasingly in North America and Europe, automobiles were economically feasible for much of the population. This expansion was supported by a network of energy suppliers providing a fuel infrastructure for gasoline and diesel.

By the end of the 20th century in North America the era of relatively cheap gasoline and diesel was coming to an end. In Europe gasoline and diesel was already prohibitively expensive in the last 20 years of the century but that didn’t stop Europeans from buying and driving cars.

In the last decade of the century developing world automobiles and the infrastructure to support them started to take off with China and India representing the fastest growing car markets. This increased demand for gasoline and diesel to fuel these new automobile consumers.

Western governments, in trying to reduce fossil fuel consumption, began legislating fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. In 1997 Toyota, Japan’s largest automobile producer launched the first hybrid vehicle using a combination of electric-battery-driven motors along with a gasoline internal combustion engine. Honda soon followed in 1999 with its own hybrid, the Insight. This combination of electric motor and gasoline internal combustion engine provided manufacturers with a way to improve fuel efficiency. For a short period, one manufacturer, General Motors, designed and delivered to a limited market an all-electric car. But this experiment was soon squashed.

But automobiles represented only one type of transport.  At the beginning of the 20th century land transportation for industry relied on rail and marine shipping to acquire raw materials and deliver finished products to market. But by the end of the century rail played a smaller part for these same industries as trucks became predominant. Ships went through dramatic redesign as well growing ever larger, whether moving bulk raw materials or container systems largely spawned by the rise of the trucking industry.

Even more significant was the development of heavier-than-air flight capability. The airplane and the infrastructure to support it became one of the great achievements of the 20th century. Air travel contributed to a rising global view of the planet, reducing the amount of time required for travel dramatically.

For a short time in the 20th century balloons vied with airplanes but became novelties by the end while jet-engines became predominant with propeller-driven aircraft relegated to specialized markets from the mid-century to its end. As airframes increased in size, global distribution of goods through the air grew rapidly in volume supplanting rail and marine shipping. Air passenger transportation briefly went supersonic with the launch of the Concorde and TU-144. By 1978 the latter was no longer in service and the Concorde’s last flight occurred in the first decade of the 21st century.

In the 20th century humans travelled in to Earth orbit and to the moon using rocket technology first pioneered in the United States, perfected as a weapon of war in Germany, and then enhanced further after World War II as the Americans and Soviet Union developed the technology further for military and scientific pursuits. Rocketry  remained the purview of national governments with the cost of the technology far exceeding the ability of most private enterprise.

What will make the 21st century different? The planet has grown very small in the 20th century and will be even smaller still in the 21st. Our concepts of transportation will take on three perspectives. At the urban level we will need to enhance and invent new means of mass transit. At the planet-wide level, globalization will drive innovation on land, sea and air. And in space, extra-planetary transportation will alter our frame of reference as a species and representative of all the life on Earth.

In subsequent blogs on transportation we will explore the following:

1.  Urbanization and Population Growth and its Impact

Urban concentration of human population will change our transportation models. Toronto, Canada, where I live, provides a great example. Between 2001 and 2006, growing traffic congestion increased the average commute time by 16%. While Toronto increased road lanes by 56%  between 1986 and 2006, public transit grew by only 18%.  Almost one-third of Toronto workers commuted more than 15 kilometers each way to do their jobs in 2006. In the Greater Toronto area and suburbs average daily commutes were longer. Toronto is one of the worst examples of unplanned urban transportation impacting on quality of life. But Toronto is not unique as a North American city. So we will look at this subject in greater depth.

2. Energy Conservation as a Transportation Challenge

In other sections of this blog we have talked about energy and the significant challenge that energy consumption has for our technical society. Governments are legislating industry to innovate to reduce the amount of energy needed for transporting people and goods. Reliance on fossil fuels is increasingly impacting health and the environment. Reconciling our need for energy and modes of transportation is something that 21st century technology needs to address.

3. Environmental Pollution, Climate Change and Transportation

Humanity by necessity is being forced to reduce its carbon footprint. We have talked about geo-engineering the planet in another section of this blog. But in this coverage we will specifically look at the technologies we currently use to move materials, goods and people and their impact on the environment and climate. How will we continue to do business globally using transportation technology to move raw materials,  agricultural produce, and manufactured goods half way across the planet while dealing with CO2 and other pollutants?

4. Employment Patterns

We are changing the way we work today. The Internet, software-as-a-service (what techies call the cloud), virtual business presence, the disassembling of our bricks and mortar ideas about what is a business, have undergone dramatic change in the first decade of the 21st century. How will that accelerate through the rest of the century. What will the impact of the electronic commute be on the automobile industry and other forms of personal transportation? What will it mean for logistics and supply management when companies go virtual?

5. Alternative Fuels

Electric cars, biofuels, hydrogen, solar power, ion propulsion, micro-nuclear, what will be the fuels that drive our transportation technology in the 21st century? Will we wean ourselves completely from fossil fuels?

6. Technical Innovation

Electronic roadways, chained automobiles, smart vehicle technology, robotics, high-speed maglev and pneumatic rail systems, radical new ship designs, hypersonic aircraft, ion propulsion, solar sails, space elevators….these are concepts on the drawing boards and in the labs and R&D centres of innovators and entrepreneurs today. What is promising and realizable in the 21st century? What will remain a dream?

Enjoy the journey with me and please remember to ask questions and comment. I always respond.