Breakthroughs in Materials Science Critical to Quest for Renewables
On the things I find so fascinating about the migration to renewables is that it represents the confluence of so many different scientific and technological disciplines – especially in the quest to drive down costs. To take an obvious example, wind turbines are rooted in straightforward fluid dynamics as well as electricity/magnetism. But some real cleverness is required to get wind (and the others) to a point at which, as a source of renewable energy, it is cost-competitiveness with fossil fuels. As we’ve noted here numerous times, there’s plenty of renewable energy out there if you’re willing to pay enough for it. The problem is that we’re on a tight budget here, and that’s where this becomes interesting.
Enter materials science as a potential solution. The way we fabricate things out of steel has created a practical limit to the size of a wind turbine; really big units have been fantastically difficult (and thus expensive) to build. But a material called HT Ferro may represent an abrupt change to that.
Ferrocement, meaning the variety of composite materials in which steel (wire, mesh, rebar) and concrete are used, are widely used in building, due to its great strength and economy. HT Ferro, a wild new variation on this theme, is a patented technology owned by associates of 2GreenEnergy based in New Zealand. According to what I’ve been able to learn, it is vastly superior to steel on many important ways, along the following important dimensions:
a) It was developed for marine application, thus wind turbine components made from it are virtually maintenance free — even in the rugged ocean environment.
b) These components will be far less expensive than steel.
c) Most importantly, a unique manufacturing process enables components to be fabricated in enormous sizes.
It appears that this makes possible very large units that will generate 10+ MW apiece.
