This Week in Engineering

5G is the enabling technology for a new generation of smart phones and IoT connected devices, promising low latency, high-bandwidth communications. The commercial potential for the technology is massive, and as it rolls out in the US, an unexpected consequence of 5G has emerged: interference with aircraft radar altimeters. Radar altimeters are safety critical, basic flight instruments for commercial airliners, and the use reflected beams of radiofrequency radiation there similar to the signals emitted by wireless service providers. 5G towers operating the vicinity of airports could jam radar altimeters signals during final approach to a runway, which in low visibility conditions could be safety critical. The FAA is scrambling to certify which radar altimeter models and aircraft are safe for use in 5G environments, but not all airplanes have yet been approved, and regional jets are still under study.

Small modular reactors represent the new wave of nuclear fission technology which promises to deliver clean, carbon free power at low cost. Compared to traditional light and heavy water reactor designs, SMRs are designed to operate without large containment structures or the complex and layered safety systems necessary for traditional reactors. Hyundai Engineering has taken a $30 million equity stake in Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, were building a test reactor to demonstrate the company’s novel single pass uranium fuel cycle. Using encapsulated TRISO fuel, the design will deliver 5 MW-e in HR transportable form factor that can be deployed almost anywhere. The reactors pre-fuels at the factory and is simply replaced after 20 years of operation. The high-temperature gas cooled design requires minimal human monitoring and shows interesting possibilities for process and space heating applications as well as thermal power generation. The test unit is scheduled to go online in 2026 at Chalk River in Ontario, Canada.

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Pneumatic tires have been a fundamental technology in Western civilization for well over a century. They are essential for modern transportation, and their manufacturing has a significant CO 2 footprint. In 2020, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. launched a project to develop an entirely carbon neutral tire, a very difficult task. The company has unveiled a test tire demonstrating progress to date, and it has achieved a 70% reduction in net carbon emissions. To achieve this, the Goodyear team substituted biological materials such as rice husk derived silica and soybean oil as synthetic compund substitutes, and significantly, has developed alternate methods for producing the most critical tire additive, carbon black. Several different methods of low-impact carbon black production have been explored, including combustion of biological materials and synthesis directly from carbon dioxide itself.

The global steel industry is dominated by Asian producers, particularly China. But steel can be cost-effectively made in America through mini mills which use scrap as the primary input to produce higher value products such as high strength sheet and strip for the automotive and consumer goods industries. U.S. Steel, following up on the company’s recently acquisition of Big River steel in Arkansas, is investing $3 billion on an advanced mini mill with two electric arc furnaces capable of producing 3 million tons per year.

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Sony Corporation became famous for innovation in the consumer electronics space, developing the first truly popular transistor pocket radio and of course the Walkman series of portable cassette and CD players. The company has expanded considerably from that consumer sector to include technologies such as electronic materials and smart phones, but much of the company’s recent strategy is centred on entertainment, specifically feature films and gaming through the PlayStation platform. The company has revealed their second electric vehicle prototype, following a year of road testing in Europe and appears to be ready for series production. EV sector is crowded with multiple startups, but Sony appears to be using a slightly different strategy from other startup automakers: they plan to use self driving electric vehicles as delivery systems for an immersive user experience that includes Sony’s entertainment products. If successful, the project may change the fundamental economics of the auto industry from that of selling transportation, to delivering data.

Self driving cars and trucks are reality today with companies such as Cruise, Waymo, Argo AI and TuSimple fielding autonomous vehicles on public roads today. Autonomously guided vehicles are also common sight in factories and warehouses around the world, but what about agriculture? What prototypes have been built and tested, at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, John Deere unveiled a production ready optionally driven tractor based on the companies 8R design. The tractor uses a hybrid approach to autonomy, using multiple sensors for obstacle detection and geo-mapping for location to within 1 inch. Operators drive the tractor to the field, then move on to other tasks. In a tight labor market in the agriculture sector, autonomy be essential for sustained productivity and cost control.

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Decarbonization of the economy is a primary goal of nations worldwide to reduce the effects of global warming. Efforts so far have focused on reducing the burning of fossil fuels through alternates like hydrogen, solar, wind and nuclear energy. But demand for oil and gas are still increasing, and will do so for some years before new technologies render them obsolete. And oil and gas production themselves are large carbon emitters. Paris-based Technip Energies, an oil industry process engineering firm has partnered with Vancouver-based Svante, a CO2 remediation technology company, to develop carbon sequestration systems for the oil industry in turnkey packages. The Svante technology uses a proprietary adsorbent with mechanical CO2 extraction and recycling system to pull CO2 out of flue gas to be compressed and stored or reused. A candidate project is a new, very large gas field near Abu Dhabi.

Toyota has been notably quiet during one of the most revolutionary periods in the automotive industry: the switch to electrification. Many analysts attribute this to Toyota’s very public experiments with hydrogen fuel cells, notably the Mirai series of small sedans, but in fact the company has funded significant research into battery technology, notably solid-state batteries with Panasonic. But a new announcement this week suggests that Toyota may be moving in a new direction. The company will create a $1.3 billion lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility near Greensboro North Carolina, with an initial production capacity sufficient to support 200,000 vehicles, rising to 1.2 million vehicles per year when fully completed. The operation is in close proximity to Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky assembly complex, and the company has not ruled out selling batteries as a Tier 1 supplier to other companies. Does this mean that Toyota is shifting away from fuel cell technology? The company has not announced any slowdown in hydrogen technology development and may now pursue both carbon free technologies simultaneously.

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NASA has launched the DART mission to intercept an asteroid and deflect its path. The purpose is to demonstrate how satellites can be used as kinetic energy impactors to alter the course of asteroids and comets that may be on a collision path with Earth. The European Space Agency is collaborating, and the Italian national space agency has supplied a ride along cubesat to photograph the impact. The mission also contains an important development, a test version of an Aerojet Rocketdyne built xenon ion thruster that may form the basis for a new class of deep space satellite propulsion for missions with durations of a decade or more.

Fuel cell technology has been around for decades but has been overshadowed by battery storage and electric motors for transportation purposes. But the field is far from obsolete, and a new way to power them they remove many of the obstacles created using pure hydrogen. New York-based Plug Power has opened a Rochester giga factory to produce hydrogen from electrolysis of water in support of fuel-cell technology and is supplying systems to multinational fertilizer consortium Fertiglobe for an Egyptian plant that will pioneer large-scale green ammonia production. Ammonia is a promising carrier for hydrogen and can itself be a green fuel for combustion engines and in fuel cells.

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Aviation industry stalwart Rolls-Royce has announced that a joint program of the UK Aerospace Technology Institute, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and Innovate UK called ACCEL, has set new records for speed and time to climb for electric powered aircraft. The single seat aircraft called ”Spirit of Innovation” travelled a 345 mph for 3 km, achieving a peak speed of 387 mph. The records were set with a bespoke 6000 cell triple battery pack built by electric aviation specialist Electroflight and a 500 hp axial flux motor developed by automotive EV supplier YASA.

Electrification of cars and trucks is ongoing, but electric watercraft are only now developing. This may accelerate as General Motors has announced a 25% stake in Seattle-based Pure Watercraft, a maker of electric outboard motor systems. Pure watercraft’s current technology uses a 50 hp equivalent power unit mounted on a conventional transom, powered by one or more modular batteries that can be fitted anywhere in the hull of most recreational watercraft. GM expects to help Pure Watercraft scale production with the automaker’s assembly line expertise and supply chain management knowledge.

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Moore's Law famously predicted the rapid rate of increase in integrated circuit gate density. As gate sizes are falling into the low single digit nanometre range however, physical constraints on future development are likely. Quantum computing promises to deliver orders of magnitude better performance than conventional binary devices, and IBM has launched a new quantum processor called Eagle, which promises to approach quantum advantage, the point at which quantum computers clearly outperform their conventional counterparts.

Nuclear energy startup TerraPower and GE Hitachi Energy Systems have chosen the site for the first demonstration reactor of Natrium liquid sodium fission technology. The pilot plant will be built in western Wyoming on the site of a coal plant nearing decommissioning. The Natrium concept uses a simplified reactor design that uses substantially less material and low enrichment uranium fuel to produce power more cost-effectively than current pressurized water designs. A prominent investor is Bill Gates, and the pilot plant should be ready in seven years.

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Mining is both an essential human activity, and a surprising contributor to global CO2 emissions, at 4 to 7 percent of global production. Caterpillar is working with Canadian mining firm Nouveau Monde Graphite to create a fully carbon neutral mine using electric vehicle technology. Access to zero carbon hydroelectric power at the miner’s Québec site is a major enabler, and other firms are working to help the industry transition from diesel technology.

Iconic engineering firm General Electric has announced that the 129-year-old company will split itself into three separate corporations, one each serving the healthcare, energy and aviation industries. This move follows years of divestment from GE’s formerly very wide portfolio of divisions, including the entertainment industry, nuclear weapons technology, finance, computing, automation and plastics. The three remaining industries are all in profitable sectors and are all engineering related.

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Swedish technology company Einride has inked a deal with Haier owned GE Appliances to grid a network of SAE level for self-driving electric cargo carriers for intracompany use. The units include a box truck and a flatbed capable of carrying standard 20-foot shipping containers. Einride expects to hire 2000 as the firm expands from its New York-based to include technology centres in California and Texas and in the Southeast.

Two Taiwan based major manufacturers have teamed up to launch a new line of electric vehicles. Hon Hai Technology Group and Yulon Motor Group have launched three new EV's under the Foxtron brand. The lineup includes a crossover SUV, a luxury sedan and an urban route bus. Technology was designed entirely in-house, and the Foxtron joint venture is itself teaming with Japanese electric motor maker Nidec to create a line of electric vehicle powertrain components as a Tier 1 supplier to the industry. Hon Hai is no stranger to mass production. In the West, it is better known as Foxconn, the maker of Apple iPhones.

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The U.S. Air Force has announced that Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska will be the site of the services’ first micro-nuclear reactor. The vendor has not yet been announced, but the selection represents the first firm commitment for production type transportable nuclear power systems for base use. The Pentagon is operating a joint force development program for micro-reactors called Project Pele in parallel, with an eye toward a mass producible reactor design by 2022. If successful, the programs may create a new generation of shipping containers sized, truck and air transportable intrinsically safe power systems in the single digit megawatt output range.

The road to self driving has proven much more difficult than many developers in the computer industry originally thought. Tesla is using a unique approach, with cameras only and the lack of radar or lidar images requires systems that must understand video images at a very high level of reliability. To achieve this, Tesla has developed an in-house artificial intelligence system called Dojo. The company has just released a white paper describing a new framework for coding in dojo that replaces an older IEEE standard that was notoriously heavy on processor and memory capacity. Google Brain, Google’s similar in-house AI unit, has their own standard. This could be a VHS versus Beta moment.

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