To all Jihadis

Allah, mother nature, the Great Architect of the Universe, Y-H, however you name Him/Her, has seen fit to end the Arab world's monopoly on energy supplies within about 40 or so years. Peak Oil is already upon us, as Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over" has already demonstrated (see museletter.com website). Natural gas reserves also expire in about the same time range. If we Westerners were smart we would have disengaged from "your" part of the world long ago. Don't worry, though, jihad is no longer necessary to get the West away from you-- in fact, we want to get as far away from the Middle East as we can !

Fortunately an energy source that is plentiful enough to equate the current world vehicle fleet of 775 million vehicles is 'at hand'. The sooner we move toward this source of energy, Zinc Air Fuel Cells, the better off we will be...and you can leave us alone and vice versa.

World zinc reserves are plentiful enough and, not being in the Middle East, outside of areas of the world prone to violence. The Pacific Rim nations of the US/Canada/Mexico/Australia/China/Peru have the majority of the world's zinc reserves. ZAFCs are recyclable and clean: see the EVWorld and Arotech sites

http://www.electric-fuel.com/ev/index.shtml

http://evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=121

So, my dear jihadis, there is no need for more violence. In about 40 more years, with the world out of oil and the bad "infidels" having moved on to a better source of energy, Allah's will will be completed. Where that leaves you in the not too distant future is up to you. Will you submit to that ? That is after all what Islam means isn't it ?

BTW, please read the date of the MOU mentioned below...9-11-97. Coincidence ?


From:
http://www.llnl.gov/PAO/Newsstand/articles...-26-97zinc.html (THIS LINK HAS NOW BEEN DELETED FROM THE WEB BY LLNL--IT WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO THE OLD JOHNKERRYFORUM SITE AND WAS VIEWABLE AS OF APRIL 15, 2004)


""LLNL Internal Communications Newsline Article
September 26, 1997

By Craig Savoye
Public Affairs Office

Zinc-air technology moves closer to commercialization
Z inc-air fuel cell technology, long a promising, clean energy and storage alternative, has made a move toward commercialization recently with the signing of a memorandum of agreement between the Lab and Power Air Tech, USA, a consortium of Australian companies. Discussions are under way to bring other U.S. companies into the consortium.
The agreement, signed Sept. 11, could lead to the signing of a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) totaling over $100 million of industry funding, with $30 million directed at further research and development on a zinc-air fuel cell (ZAFC) and its zinc recovery unit (ZRU) at LLNL over the next four to five years. An estimated $70 million would be required for commercialization and manufacturing applications of the refuelable zinc-air technology and ZRU.

"This agreement may prove to be a watershed in the nation's development of alternative energies," said Tony Chargin, deputy associate director of the Lab's Energy, Manufacturing, and Transportation Technologies Program. "We've known of the environmental and economic benefits of zinc-air for years, but the lack of high-risk capital has kept the technology bottled up in the Lab. Sept. 11 is zinc-air's coming out, and we're convinced it will have an impact."

The Laboratory's "refuelable" ZAFC technology was invented by John F. Cooper (principal investigator) of the Chemistry and Materials Science Department.

The ZAFC produces electricity by reacting zinc pellets with oxygen from the air. The reaction takes place in an electrochemical cell filled with an electrolyte. Under discharge, a reaction product (zinc oxide) gradually accumulates in the solution, while the oxygen reacts at a porous membrane forming one wall of the cell. The pellets are held in a hopper above the cell, and fall into the cell to be consumed on demand. This fuel cell is "refueled" by simply adding fresh zinc pellets to the hopper, and removing the zinc oxide as a slurry. The zinc oxide is then recycled to produce new zinc fuel pellets in an external zinc recovery unit, developed by Jim Evans at the Department of Metallurgy, UC Berkeley.

LLNL's key invention is the self-feeding cell - the arrangement of a hopper and a very narrow, wedge-shaped cell into which pellets fall but cannot pack into a dense mass. The result is that 100 percent of the zinc is consumed to make useful electricity.

Cooper and his team recently completed the construction of a "demonstration zinc air unit."

"This was a team effort with senior scientific associate Roger Krueger coordinating development and conducting the tests, Bob Manahan designing, Ray Smith consulting on engineering, Dorothy DaRonco doing precision cell assemblies, and Garth Pratt developing the electronic controls," Cooper said. "Critical cell parts came from our Manufacturing and Materials Engineering Division."

Charles Thornburg, managing director of Power Air Tech, USA, says, "The Laboratory did an outstanding job as it transformed cells into an engineered, full-scale prototype demonstration in the matter of a few months. We'll be using zinc as a fully recyclable electrochemical fuel in a wide range of applications - from emergency power supplies to electric buses to utility load-leveling systems."

The CRADA would initially focus on four commercial ZAFC applications:

Large units for utilities - Utilities must carry the capacity to meet peak power demand -- a spike of heavy usage usually occurring in mid-to late afternoon on business days. But the rest of the time the excess capacity is unused. Scores of environmentally benign zinc-air fuel cells could conceivably provide supplemental power, thus preventing the need for expensive new plants to meet peak demand. Moreover, recycling of the zinc could take place at night, using existing capacity when electrical demand is slack. A two megawatt size pilot power plant may be built at the Lab to demonstrate load-leveling.

Small units for generation and uninterruptable power supply - ZAFC/ZRU devices will be developed as a viable alternative to small gasoline and diesel generators. When combined with small, high-output/short-term energy storage devices such as advanced batteries or ultra-capacitors, these devices will be an alternative to traditional lead acid/diesel generator sets. They will produce a "transparent changeover" from normal to standby power supply. They can offer reductions in greenhouse gases, lower maintenance/higher reliability and noiseless operations.

Heavy/lightweight vehicles - Zinc-air fuel cells are a promising power source for heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks. Not only is zinc-air efficiency roughly comparable to other advanced batteries when weight reduction and electrical generating efficiency are taken into account, but they are refillable. A city bus running on lead-acid batteries would have to be recharged for 8-10 hours after only a few hours of operation. A zinc-air powered bus is expected to operate 24 hours a day with only brief refueling stops. The application of zinc-air technology to lightweight vehicles, ranging from golf carts to automobiles, will also be studied.

4. Uninterrupted power supply - Many corporate and institutional operations like hospitals and airline reservation systems cannot afford loss of power for even a second, yet many supplemental power systems take seconds to minutes to attain full power following an outage. Zinc-air fuel cells, combined with advanced battery technologies, are capable of producing electricity within less than a second after a power failure.

A further need exists for R&D fuel cell testing under actual rather than laboratory conditions. "We are more than confident we can meet these challenges," said Thornburg.

Frank Tokarz, LLNL program manager, and Thornburg expect to complete the CRADA over the next several months. "Our goal is to begin work in November," Thornburg said. "We hope to display this technology in Sydney, Australia, at the 2000 Olympic Games.""

The OIL interests managed to squash this promising technology ! Please bookmark Zinc Air Fuel Cells since in around 33 years we will need to return to this technology.....