Global Warming Issues

An appeals board could have the final say in the outcome of the Desert Rock Power Plant. A coalition of Navajo and conservation groups has filed an appeal of a recently released Environmental Protection Agency permit, which granted approval to the contentious power plant.

The EPA announced its approval of the 1,500 megawatt power plant, which is proposed for Navajo land southwest of Farmington, on July 31. In the decision, the agency praised the proposed plant’s emission standards as among the most stringent in the country, even though it would add 10 million tons of carbon dioxide a year to local skies and increase Four Corners pollution by more than 30 percent.

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“Electrical energy storage is very important for all electrical and electronic systems,” says Qing Wang, associate professor of materials science and engineering. “Even renewable energy systems like solar cells need somewhere to store excess energy to be used at night.”

Wang and his research team reported Aug. 20 at the 236th national American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia in two papers, on the development of power density tunable polymers and polymer ceramic nanocomposites as electric storage materials for capacitors. Currently, power conditioning is carried out by capacitors, but Wang believes that eventually properly tuned polymer capacitors could replace batteries.

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A new catalyst makes hydrogen from ethanol with 90 percent yield, at a workable temperature, and using inexpensive ingredients.

Umit Ozkan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University, said that the new catalyst is much less expensive than others being developed around the world, because it does not contain precious metals, such as platinum or rhodium.

“Rhodium is used most often for this kind of catalyst, and it costs around $9,000 an ounce,” Ozkan said. “Our catalyst costs around $9 a kilogram.”

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