feature mse
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his all the College is launching a new
master’s program in Energy Science,
Technology and Policy. This is an
independent, college-wide program that was
initiated by Materials Science and Engineering.
From designing and building devices
or power plants to developing and securing
the smart grid to swaying public policy,
literally every CIT department with perhaps
the exception o BME is involved in energy
research. Considering the expansive energy
work underway in the College, the question
arises: Why did the new program start in MSE?
“There’s a perception that there is no
connection between materials and energy, and
I say the situation is just the opposite. Materials
and energy are closely coupled,” states Gregory
Rohrer, the head o MSE. “Virtually everything
we do in materials has something to do with
energy. Materials are intrinsically connected
to the production, distribution and utilizationo energy and this aects our environment.”
Making his point, Rohrer raises the
example o coal-red power plants. On
average, they are about 30 to 35 percent
ecient, yet plants have been designed that
have 46 percent eciency and 50 percent
is believed achievable. “The increase in
eciency comes rom operating the plants
with higher temperature steam and the key
to this is materials — alloys or the turbines
that remain stable at higher temperatures or
longer times and ceramic coatings that protect
the materials in the turbine,” says Rohrer.
Increased eciency results in lower costs,
better use o ossil uels and greenhouse gas
emissions are reduced by about a third.
Renewable energy eorts grab media
attention, but Rohrer states, “these things are
sometimes oversold. Wind-generated energy
is extremely useul or certain situations, but it
can not replace our current electric generation
capacity. The most reliable estimates indicate
that you can cover the country with windmills;
yet, it will not produce the amount o
electricity that people will need i they want
to run their air conditioners and computers.”
While large-scale deployment o reliable,
sustainable energy systems that don’t harm
the planet may not materialize in our lietimes,
there are actions we can take now to improve
energy production and mitigate environmentaldamage. MSE is developing materials or
use in highly ecient solid state lighting
systems, industrial batteries, uel cells and the
conversion o solar energy to chemical energy.
“We are poised to transorm the way energy is
produced, stored and used,” says Rohrer.
e f f i c i n c y M a k s a D i f f r n c “What people don’t easily see when
they look at MSE’s research is that many o
Materials Science and
Engineering:
It’s All About Energy
T
these novel devices, which will o course lead
to more interdisciplinary research.
“BME covers many areas, but equally
important, we are one team and we support one
another. As a small department with a giant
ootprint, we see ourselves as a manager or
promoting collaborative research campuswide,
whereas BME departments elsewhere may
hold a more sel-sucient point o view.Conceptually, this is a nonconventional way o
looking at a department, but we’re a department
with a unique character,” concludes Wang.
Yu-Li Wang, head of
Biomedical Engineering
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8
e n g i n e e r i n g
n e
w
s
DOE’s Smart Grids Demo Program and has
resulted in a Pittsburgh-based spino company,
Aquion Energy. (See page 10 or “How to
Catch the Wind.”)
Fuel cells represent another major research
area or CIT and Western Pennsylvania. With
support rom the DOE’s Solid State EnergyConversion Alliance (SECA), work is underway
throughout Carnegie Mellon to advance solid
oxide uel cell (SOFC) technology. One goal
is to develop large uel cells that use gasied
coal to produce electricity at power stations
or $400 or less per kilowatt. (Presently,
uel cell-generated electricity costs roughly
$4,500 per kilowatt.) These new systems
would have near zero emissions because they
would capture 90 percent or more o the CO2
produced. In addition, they would be at least 50
percent or more ecient in converting coal to
energy.Bringing innovative technologies to
market is exciting, but it doesn’t happen
quickly in materials science. On one hand,
CIT’s materials department has a long list o
patents and strong partnerships with industry.
(The Center or Iron and Steel Making is nearly
100 percent industry unded.) But as Rohrer
explains, “a vast majority o our research
is devoted to scientic understanding, and
that won’t lead to a new product next year.”
Case in point is the work being led by MSE
the projects are directly related to energy
eciency,” says Rohrer. For instance, “Robert
Davis is working on light emitting diode
systems (LED) that probably have ve to ten
times the eciency o normal light bulbs.”
The impact o this work, with regards
to uel costs and environmental implicationscould be ar-reaching, considering that
“worldwide, grid-based electric lighting
consumes 19 percent o total global electricity
production,” states Davis, the John and Claire
Bertucci Distinguished Proessor o Materials
Science and Engineering. Incandescent lighting
and uel-based lamps (which are widely
used around the world or lighting) convert 5
percent or less o the energy they consume into
light. Solid-state lighting (SSL), which uses
semiconductor materials to make the LEDs
that convert electricity directly into light, is
ar more ecient. SSL is being positionedto meet our uture lighting needs — the U.S.
Department o Energy’s (DOE) goal is that
SSL will be 30 to 50 percent ecient by 2015.
This is certainly an improvement over the
present state, but there are signicant scientic
and design hurdles to overcome beore we’ll
see widespread use o this technology in our
daily lives.
Metal production is another area where
energy eciency is o great importance. “The
processing o materials, especially metals,
takes up a signicant raction o world-wide
energy use and these costs are refected in a
product’s price,” states Rohrer. “When you
buy a can o soda, you’re paying, in part,
or the cost o aluminum production. These
costs are signicant because aluminum is an
energy-intensive material. Three percent o the total global electricity supply is used to
make aluminum,” says Rohrer. “However, over
the last ew decades, advances in materials
processing have decreased the amount o
energy used to make aluminum by about a
third.” Recycling aluminum is worthwhile
because it takes roughly 90 to 95 percent less
energy to recycle aluminum than to make
aluminum rom ore.
I n c r m n a l tr a n s f o r m a i o n sEnergy eciency plays a dominant role
in MSE’s research activities; however, energystorage is o great importance as we pursue
renewable energy sources. A particularly
exciting body o research coming out o MSE
is in large-scale storage batteries.
A thorny problem with wind and solar
arms is that there is no economical way to
store surplus energy to eed into the power
grid or later use. CIT researchers, led by Jay
Whitacre, a proessor in MSE, have created
a sodium ion battery. This promising storage
technology garnered a $5 million grant rom
Gregory Rohrer, head of Materials Science
and Engineering
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Proessor Paul Salvador and Rohrer to convert
solar energy directly to chemical energy by
making photocatalysts rom erroelectric nano-
materials. (Photocatalysts are light-absorbing
materials that change the rate o chemical
reactions.)
Salvador explains that the broad view
o photocatalysis is that water represents
oxidized uel. “I you take water and split it
with sunlight (via a photocatalyst), it generates
hydrogen and oxygen. You burn or react
the hydrogen and oxygen to produce heat or
electricity. You collect the spent uel, which
is water and you start all over again,” says
Salvador. This “closed-loop” process takes
a lot o energy and sunlight is abundant. “I you could cheaply synthesize hydrogen rom
sunlight that would change the way the whole
planet works,” says Rohrer.
Building o this example, imagine a
closed-loop process with carbon and oxygen.
“I you burn carbon with oxygen, you get CO2.
I you could develop a photocatalyst that splits
carbon dioxide back to carbon monoxide and
oxygen, you would have a way o reversing
the carbon cycle. Instead o sequestering CO2,
you would break it down to use as uel. You
would take it out o the air, crack it, burn it,
collect the emissions and you come ull cycle”says Salvador, who has no illusions as to how
dicult it would be to realize this eat. It will
be years beore the science results in tangibles,
but the scenario is ripe with possibilities as
are many o the undamental research projects
underway in MSE. There is abundant, well-
ounded conjecture as to what will be the next
big thing in energy generation, but there’s no
question that materials science and engineering
will play an integral role in the creation and use
o uture energy systems.
“virtually eerythingwe do in materials hassomething to dowith energy. Materialsare intrinsically
connected to theproduction, distributionand utilization ofenergy and this affectsour enironment.”
This new program is intended or students who seek a
distinctive masters program that is based in engineering
and inormed by a broader perspective in economics
and public policy.
Students enroll in the program independent o a
department, but select a disciplinary concentration
within one o six dierent departments (MSE, ECE, CEE,
ChemE, EPP and MechE) in the College o Engineering.
The curriculum consists o 96 units and is designed to
be completed in one academic year.
The program is interdisciplinary and draws instructors
rom all the departments in CIT. It covers a wide range
o issues rom the harvesting and conversion o energy
to its distribution, demand and usage. The subjects will
be covered rom dierent aspects including:
• Thefundamentalunderlyingscienticprinciples
governing and limiting energy conversion and
transport
• Thetechnological,regulatoryandotherbarriers
that exist today — and engineering challenges or
enabling uture power systems and inrastructure
• Sustainabilityandenvironmentalissues
• Thenationalandglobalsocioeconomicalquestions
that govern energy policy and legislature.
Students graduating rom this program will have a
uniqueeducationthatwillbefocusedonenergyand
incorporates the dierent strengths that the various CIT
departments oer. Most graduates will be interested
in careers in utility companies, power plant design and
manuacture, primary metals and other energy-intensive
industries,consultingrmsandgovernmentlabs,as
well as academic institutions.
for more inormation about the Master’s in Energy
Science, Technology and Policy, on the Web, visit
http://neon.materials.cmu.edu/energy
th Ma s r ’ s i n e n r g y S c i n c ,tchno logy and Po l i c y ( eStP)