Did you know that in microgravity
we are preparing one of the most promising fuels for the future?
Are we witnessing the rise of a new iron age?
Could we use metal powders instead of petrol to fuel our cars?
Such questions have been considered for a few years now,
and microgravity is helping to find answers and models
to refine the processes needed to efficiently burn solid fuel like iron dust.
Solid fuel is not new
and we are all familiar with one or another form of it:
burning a match,
lighting a sparkler on New Year's Eve,
or the fuel inside the boosters of an Ariane and other rockets.
We're used to burning fossil fuels and engines
but the combustion of these fuels leads to emissions of carbon dioxide that drive climate change.
Our research team is investigating the use of metals such as iron
as viable and cleaner alternative fuels.
We're developing a novel concept for power generation
in which metal powders are burned with air in a combustion chamber
to deliver clean, high grade heat.
This heat could be used directly for industrial applications or residential heating
and can also power heat engines to produce electricity in compact and efficient power systems.
Metal fuels can be recycled using clean energy
such as from solar cells or wind turbines
in this way clean electricity is stored as chemical energy in the metal fuel
at energy densities that are competitive with fossil fuels.
Metal fuels can become clean energy commodities
that can be traded across the globe,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally.
One key barrier to implementing metal fuel technologies
is the development of combustion systems that can efficiently burn metal fuels
which requires a solid understanding of their combustion physics.
To understand the physics of metal fuel combustion,
we need to freeze a cluster of iron powder for about 30 seconds.
The time needed to observe and to study how a flame heat and reaction wave propagates,
actually percolates through a cloud of evenly dispersed metal particles
which individually ignite and burn at their own surface.
Therefore we use the sandy rockets and parabolic flight
to run these experiments in weightlessness
and to validate existing models.
The year 2019 yielded some promising results
that woke up the scientific and industrial community,
skeptical till that point.
The idea were not new,
but the space-born experiments,
now induce a new way to quantify the results,
which can be directly retrofitted in the design
of more performant
and more efficient metal fuel burners.
The density of iron particle and the composition of gases in the combustion chamber,
are essential parameters
exactly like in a petrol car engine.
Microgravity allows us to study the laws of flame propagation
to optimize the source parameter in industrial burner design
and in turn
to further reduce any impact to the environment
this space experiment will also help us understanding similar phenomena
such as the spreading of contagious microbes and forest fires,
a priceless spin-off nowadays.
We are very interested to give our contribution to the carbon dioxide reduction
by a world premiere that's the insulation you see here behind,
an iron fuel installation
where we are doing it as a first company,
in cooperation with the consortium,
the metal power consortium,
and the university in Eindhoven
We've worked on it for many years,
we are using at the moment solar power,
we are using biogas but also normal gas
and in the end we want to make all the energy sources sustainable
and iron power can make a big impact on that.
We are very interested also for the longer term
to change and transfer
the gas consumption we as a company have into iron power
and we believe that this will be the future as well.
Here in Eindhoven we've worked with iron powder for about four years
and iron powder is very interesting fuel because
it's cheap first of all,
but then you can store it in an easy way
and you can recycle it and use it again
so that makes it very interesting as a future recyclable fuel
together with our very enthusiastic student team: Team Solid,
we are now developing a new system called metal power
standing behind me,
and this is a 100 kilowatt system where we burn metal
so the iron powder
and we produce steam,
and we catch the rust powders or the produced oxides.
We can reuse these oxides again to make iron powder from, so recyclable fuel.
And...
together with the Brewery Sprinkles,
we want to demonstrate this to make CO2-free beer.
We recently started two new big projects,
one project which is a factor of 10 bigger in power,
so it's a 1 Mwh even 10x bigger than this one,
and we should again burn metal powders or iron powder
to produce steam.
And in the second project which is 5 Mwh even,
so a factor of 50 bigger than this one,
together with a big company in Rotterdam,
to produce heat for Rotterdam.
Altogether we raised up to 10 million euros of funding
from the governments and from industry
to support these projects.
And for the future we have even bigger plans
because we are now thinking of in five years time
to help the heat intensive industry
with systems of typically 10 Mwh so a fact of 100 bigger than this one,
and in 10 years time we want to rebuild our first coal-fired power plant
to iron powder.
More and more entities are investing in metal fuels.
One example is the hybrid initiative in Sweden,
aiming to create large amounts of energy by 2035.
Sweden has already invested huge sums to make it possible
many industrial sectors
can actually benefit from deeper knowledge of the ignition and combustion behaviours of metal fuels
The automotive and energy sectors are just a few examples.
the combustion and oxidisers
and the ratio,
is key to enhancing combustion properties on Earth.
Now that you know that space can help further study metal fuels,
take advantage of the opportunities and capabilities
that are available for your research and development
to further grow and extend your achievements.
Take the next step,
the step to space,
we already have.