national labs, corporate labs & hydrogen-powered cars feb. 23 2006
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National Labs, Corporate Labs & Hydrogen-Powered Cars
Feb. 23 2006
700 Federally Operated Laboratories100,000 Scientists$24 billion (ca. 2000)
NIST (1905)USDA (1914)Los Alamos (1942)Lawrence Livermore (1951)
Traditional Rationalization: Projects Too Large or
Too Applied for Universities.
Stevenson-Wydler Innovation Act (1980)Created Offices of Research and Technology Applications
Early 1980s: Informal collaboration, technical assistance & licensing. Championing technologies.
National Cooperative Research Act (1984)Antitrust Exemption for Research ConsortiaTrade Secrets
Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986CRADAs:
Late 1980s: Resource Sharing + Exclusive Licenses +Close Relations With Individual Partners
American Technology Preeminence Act (1991)Support for “Precompetitive Technologies”SBIR and State Money
National Technology Transfer Act (1995)CRADA Partners get Exclusive LicensesInventors: 15% royalty capped at $150K
1990s: CRADAs Crowd Out Licenses.Startups “Entrepreneurial” Leaves of Absence.ARCH (University of Chicago)
and Technology Ventures (Sandia)
More Patents, More Licensing RoyaltiesMore Spin-Offs and Start-UpsMore Industry-Initiated ProjectsMore Prototypes & SamplesFewer Company and Product FailuresShorter Time to MarketUsers Targeted More NarrowlyMore Small Firm Involvement
Sally Rood, Government Laboratory Technology Transfer (2000)
More Late Stage InnovationDo CRADAs Crowd Out Basic Research?More Cooperation With Industry vs. UniversitiesLess Publishing
Sally Rood, Government Laboratory Technology Transfer (2000)
LBNL: $1m in royalties vs. $1bn annual budget.A Big Incentive for Individual Researchers.
Activities: $181 bn.
71% Development
20% Applied Research
9% Basic Research
(But 32% of Total!)
1860s – 1910s: Hoechst & Bayer; Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
1870s – 1920: Edison’s Idea Factories
1900s: AT&T and DuPontChemicals & Electricity
1908-1916: Long Distance
1920: $30m
1930: $100m
1940: $200m
Beginnings
1920s: ~ A dozen engineers
1940s: V-2 Program90,000 parts1,960 scientists, engineers,
and technicians3,852 support staff
1950s: IBM1960s: Apollo 1970s: Semiconductors1980s: Operating Systems
Complex R&D
Attracting the Best Talent
When is Knowledge is “Basic?”The TransistorDisk Drive TechnologyCarothers & Nylon
Campus-Like R&D
1920s: Bell Labs Studies Quantum Mechanics& Information Theory
1930s: Keeping the Pipeline FullCarothers & Nylon
1940: $200mBell Labs Discovers The Transistor
1950s: IBM Develops the Modern Computer.
1960s: Bell Labs Discovers The Big Bang
1970s: Xerox Parc
1980s: Biotech
Campus-Like R&D
Private Federal Pharmaceuticals 19% --Semiconductors 15% --Motor vehicles 14% --Software 8% --Basic science 6% 13%Aerospace 4% 40%Computers 3% 27%
Who Pays?
“Since 2001, We have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable energy sources – and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.”
“So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative – a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research – at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthorughs in two vital areas … We must … change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen”
The Problem With Batteries
William Nicholson & Anthony Carlisle (1800)Decomposition of Water
William Robert Grove (1838)“Gas Battery”Oxygen + Hydrogen +Platinum Electrodes +Sulfuric AcidCorrosion + Cost
ExtensionsPhosphoric Acid & New Electrode Materials (1960s)Runs on AirAllis Chalmers & US Army (1960s)Pratt & Whitney & American Gas Association (1960s-1983)LLNL (1970s)Cogeneration - 200 KW stationery power (1997)100KW bus (1998) Extended Warm-Up Period + Carbonates Problem
Friedrich Ostwald (1893)Theory of Fuel Cells
Francis Thomas Bacon (late 1930s)Alkali Fuel Cells (Potasium hydroxide electrolytes)Allis-Chalmers & US Army (1950s)Apollo (1960s) & Space Shuttle (1980s)The Carbonates Problem
Emil Baur and H. Preis (1930s)Molten Carbonate Fuel CellsUS Army (1960s)Stationary Plants (1990s)
General Electric (1960s)Proton Exchange Membrane Technology Gemini (1960s)Royal Navy, Los Alamos (1980s)Buses (1995) and Helios Aircraft Proposal (2000)Platinum – Still ~ 100x more expensive per KWH generated.
Sperling & Ogden Reading:
“Hydrogen … has no natural political or economic enemies, and has a strong industrial proponent in the automotive industry…In the end, though, the hydrogen situation is perilous… The key is enhanced science and techology in vestments, both public and private, and a policy environment that favors those investments.”
Sperling & Ogden Reading:
Automakers Like ItCurrently investing ~ $150m/automaker/year10x Improvement NeededAre They Willing to Invest in Tooling &
Products?Without Automakers, It Won’t Happen
Romm Reading:
“Hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles should be viewed as post-2030 technologies. In September 2003, a DOE panel on Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy concluded that gaps between current hydrogen technologies and what is required by the marketplace ‘cannot be bridged by incremental advances of the present state of the art’ but instead require ‘revolutionary conceptual breakthroughs.’”
Romm Reading:
“DOE should focus its hydrogen R&D budget on exploratory breakthrough research.”
Addison White, Three Degrees Above Zero:
“The project had been steadily expanding but in an orderly way, about as rapidly as was humanly possible as problems became defined and new ideas evolved. Incidentally, as a comparison, I think that our country has been conducting its affairs in an absurd way on cancer research, much of which is being done without a guiding idea. We are trying to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the problem without enough ideas, which is nonsense. It would have been the same sort of thing if we had tried to move more rapidly in the case of the transistor.”
Should Government Do It?
If so, How Should Government Do It?
Do We Need to Make Energy Companies Happy?
Would Energy Companies Block a Battery-Based Solution?
[Sperling & Ogden]
Addison White, Three Degrees Above Zero:
“White also has a distinct, if less happy, memory of an article, written at that time by a university physics professor and published by a national magazine, claiming that the Bell System was monopolizing the transistor, ‘sitting on it, so to speak so as to protect our investment in plant already in place. Meanwhile a hundred men here were busting a gut trying to make the thing work.'”
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