LNG Propulsion - A Cool Idea?

What technologies could be available for an airliner entering service in 2045 that would not be ready in time for aircraft fielded in 2030? That's what NASA asked when it awarded Boeing a year-long extension to its concept studies for "N+3"-generation airliners flying around 2030-35.

What would another 15 years of technology development make possible? One answer: liquified natural gas (LNG) propulsion - in a hyper-efficient airliner already stacked with fuel-saving, emissions-minimizing advances.


Graphics: Boeing 

In NASA's generational terms, N+3 is three generations on from today's 737 and 777. Boeing's "N+4" study, the final results of which were submitted at the end of February, looked another generation further into the future, targeting the 2040-50 timeframe.

When Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman submitted their N+3 reports in 2010, NASA noticed they left a lot of interesting technologies on the shelf because they would not be mature enough for use in aircraft entering service around 2030-35.

So the N+4 study was intended to help NASA identify which of those immature ideas it should start looking at now, as it takes 20 years or more to get a technology ready for the big time in this industry. 

The starting point was Boeing's 154-seat SUGAR* High N+3 concept (above, top), with its high aspect-ratio, low induced-drag, truss-braced wing. This was updated with 2045 engine technology, both ducted turbofan and open-rotor unducted fan, then Boeing added LNG fuel to produce the SUGAR Freeze.

The fuselage had to be stretched (above, bottom) to accommodate the fore and aft cyrogenic LNG tanks (Boeing Research & Technology principal investigator Marty Bradley admits the forward tank location is a "problem area" and needs more work).

NASA's goal for N+3 is to reduce fuel burn by 60% from today's CFM56-powered 737-800. Adding N+4 airframe and engine technology to the SUGAR High gets it to around -54%, moving to LNG fuel gets it to -57%, and switching to unducted fans takes it to -62%.

While LNG might not seem an obvious choice for a future aviation fuel, it offers lower fuel burn and emissions as well as potential cost and availability benefits, the study concludes. The US Energy Information Administration's latest annual outlook projects increasing natural gas production and continued low prices through to 2035.

Cryogenic LNG also would be an enabler for fuel-cell hybrid electric propulsion and a step towards clean liquid-hydrogen fuel, Bradley says. But there are environmental concerns with methane emissions from LNG production, as well safety and infrastructure issues to be overcome, and Boeing's study recommends further study.

Boeing also looked at the potential of adding solid-oxide fuel cells to power an aft thruster (above) that ingests the fuselage boundary layer and re-energizes the wake, reducing drag. Fed with hot engine-core air, the fuel cell would power a 3,000shp superconducting motor driving a 60in fan housed within a slender composite nacelle.

In the most technology-laden version of the SUGAR Freeze, the aft boundary-layer ingestion (BLI) device is coupled with unducted-fan (UDF) hybrid engines that are powered by LNG fuel and a 2,200shp electric motor driven from the solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC). 

Add all those acronyms together and you get: LNG + UDF + SOFC + BLI = a SUGAR Freeze with a 64% fuel-burn reduction relative to a 737-800, beating NASA's goal. You also get a bucketload of risk, which is why NASA would need to start working on these technologies sooner rather than later if this concept is ever to become a reality.



While the N+4 study is complete and the technology roadmaps delivered to NASA, Boeing is continuing work under an N+3 Phase 2 contract. This is focusing on further modeling and wind-tunnel investigation of the truss-braced wing and hybrid-electric propulsion of the SUGAR Volt N+3 concept - pictured above in its latest iteration with the batteries mounted in pods under the wing.

* SUGAR = Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research

NOTE - this post was updated on 3/22 with a new, and better, SUGAR Freeze artist's impression from Boeing.

Do you learn from making mistakes ?

Mistakes Matter Too: Why We Should Share Our Failures, Not Just Our Successes

Let's judge people not just by their successes but by their best screwups too. Or at least that's what I proposed a few years back to Google HR -- that Googlers add "My Biggest Mistake" to their Google Resume (the Google Resume being an internal accomplishments CV that employees maintained primarily for purposes of promotion reviews. It has since largely been replaced by other evaluation templates).  Larry Page believes audacious goals are the only ones worth going after because even if you fail, you've likely made more of a difference than completing easier tasks. So why not call out those failures and their associated lessons? Here was my rationale:

Learning organizations embrace failure in addition to success. Negative examples are cited often in the culture of military and health care, where admitting mistakes kills a career and even opens you up to liability. While reading about this toxicity I became concerned that Google was suffering a bit from the "we're all A Students" problem. Google Resumes were lovingly manicured and groomed to impress reviewers - everyone was so successful! Sure the occasional post-mortem was conducted if something really went wrong, but these were isolated to the team + their management, and rarely attached to an individual (other than those who in the cover of darkness received low performance reviews and were encourage to find another project). Yes, maybe some of the learnings were folded back into our company-wide processes and thus everyone benefits, but there was no way to browse this valuable information, or to ID the battle-scarred individuals for deeper introspection through 1:1 chat.

On top of this halcyon view of ourselves, we were actually filled with folks who had just crazy amazing backgrounds. Like, "See that dude, he invented Python." Holy shit, that can be kind of intimidating when you start to think everyone around is a perfect supergenius. I find that even when you respect someone it's humanizing to know that, yes, they screw up too sometimes. That's why events such as FailCon have gotten a momentum in the tech community.

Also, Google was in a general hypergrowth period from a headcount perspective which means norms & defaults are very important as signals of what matters in a culture. Without those, you lose the fabric. Culture frays. So I did something strange: I added "Biggest Mistakes & Lessons Learned" section to my resume and outlined three times I f'ed up.

Then it started spreading - pinged a few folks I knew and asked them to add it. And they asked a few more. I suggested it on the company wide Ideas@ list. It wasn't like it "went viral," but if I recall correctly a few dozen folks made the addition to their Google Resume, which was cool. With this minor success in hand I began a campaign to make it an official part of the Google Resume template. You see, defaults matter. Think about the forms you fill out - those boxes make a difference. They signal to you what's important. What's expected of you. Norms > rules.

Unfortunately I kind of got the brush off and it was suggested that I just continue the grassroots effort. Now, this isn't a knock on our HR team - we have one of the most progressive - and aggressive - people operations groups out there. I have been impressed with their analytic thinking and ability to get stuff done. I just think they were wrong on this one :)

Although Google has maintained a strong culture, I still believe there's opportunity to help share our mistakes internally - and externally - in order to accelerate the cycles of innovation. Let's not make the same error twice is a powerful goal. But actually now I'm thinking even larger than Google's internal resumes. Hey LinkedIn, how about making "Mistakes" a default field on your Profiles? 

Source - http://www.hunterwalk.com/2012/04/mistakes-matter-too-why-we-should-share.html

Knives

Where to buy? - http://www.amazon.com/Deglon-Meeting-Knife-Stainless-Knives/dp/B002JTWRDS

Father's Day idea

Traffic Signal

Ready for a race ?

Investing In Green Infrastructure

(By Donald Marron) Twenty years ago, world leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro to grapple with climate change, biological diversity, and other environmental challenges. Today they are back again, but with much less fanfare. If my Twitter feed is any indication, Rio+20 is getting much less attention that the original Earth Summit.

One item that deserves attention is greater emphasis on getting business involved in protecting the environment. For example, two dozen leading businesses–from Alcoa to Xerox–teamed up with The Nature Conservancy on a vision for The New Business Imperative: Valuing Natural Capital (interactive, pdf).

The report lays out the business case that natural resources have real economic value, even if they aren't traded in markets, and that protecting them can sometimes reduce costs, maintain supplies, soften the blow of future regulation, and build goodwill with customers, communities, and workers. All kind of obvious, at one level, but nonetheless useful to see in print with examples and commitments.

One item that caught my eye is the potential for "green" infrastructure to replace "gray":

Strong, reliable manmade ("gray") infrastructure undergirds a healthy marketplace, and most companies depend heavily on it to operate effectively and efficiently. Yet increasingly, companies are seeing the enormous potential for "natural infrastructure" in the form of wetlands and forests, watersheds and coastal habitats to perform many of the same tasks as gray infrastructure — sometimes better and more cheaply.

For instance, investing in protection of coral reefs and mangroves can provide a stronger barrier to protect coastal operations against flooding and storm surge during extreme weather, while inland flooding can be reduced by strategic investments in catchment forests, vegetation and marshes. Forests are also crucial for maintaining usable freshwater sources, as well as for naturally regulating water flow.

Putting funds into maintaining a wetland near a processing or manufacturing plant can be a more cost- effective way of meeting regulatory requirements than building a wastewater treatment facility, as evidenced by the Dow Chemical Seadrift, Texas facility, where a 110-acre constructed wetland provides tertiary wastewater treatment of five million gallons a day. While the cost of a traditional "gray"treatment installation averages >$40 million, Dow's up-front costs were just $1.4 million.

For companies reliant on agricultural systems, improved land management of forests and ecosystems along field edges and streams, along with the introduction of more diversified and resilient sustainable agriculture systems, can minimize dependency on external inputs like artificial fertilizers, pesticides and blue irrigation water.

To encourage such investments, where they make sense, lawmakers and regulators need to focus on performance–is the wastewater getting clean?–rather than the use of specific technologies or construction. 

Source - http://www.istockanalyst.com/finance/story/5911535/one-idea-from-rio-20-investing-in-green-infrastructure

Speed control

India is ahead of many countries when it comes to speed control