This Week in Engineering

Electrostatics have long been a high-efficiency technology for removing pollutants from the air, from residential air cleaners to the electrostatic precipitators in coal-fired power plants. A new use for this technology has been developed by an MIT spinoff that promises to capture water vapour emitted by industrial and commercial cooling towers. Captured water is pure enough to be practical for human consumption or as boiler feed water for generating plants.

Battery storage of electrical power is an essential part of intermittent clean energy systems like photovoltaics and wind turbines. But batteries can have a secondary and equally important purpose: grid forming. Frequency control of large AC grids can be difficult with multiple generating sources and varying loads across a system. With advanced computer control of inverters, battery storage systems can act as a frequency regulator in large grid systems, forming an electrical equivalent of the large rotating inertial mass of a mechanical generator. Technology makes battery storage for grid purposes both more useful and cost-effective.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

Thorium is long been considered a safer, better alternative than uranium for fission based nuclear power projects. Molten salt designs promise all the nonproliferation benefits of thorium, plus simpler, more cost-effective reactor designs combined with intrinsic safety. But the Chinese and the US have started work on molten salt reactor projects the promise to take this promising technology out of the lab and onto the grid.

The autonomous driving space is fluid and dynamic, but a few major players are surfacing as leaders in the race to Level 5. Cruz, Waymo and Tesla are the most quoted, but a new partnership between Ford, Lyft and Argo AI to deploy self driving cabs in American cities promises to shake up the race. The combination promises synergies similar to the Tesla approach: Ford supplies the vehicles and service support, Argo AI the court technology, and Lyft provides scheduling, billing and cloud connected data infrastructure. The result may be more than just self driving, but a new way for automakers to monetize Level 4/5 systems.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

In the billionaires’ space race, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos have been vying to be the first to fly into space. Branson has won the impromptu contest, flying into suborbital space aboard the VSS Unity, as part of a test crew to validate Virgin Galactic’s commercial flight service before public operations. Bezos is scheduled to fly on a Blue Origin rocket on July 20, and although SpaceX has been flying astronauts to the International Space Station since 2020, Elon Musk will not make his first trip to space aboard a Falcon 9, but will be one of the first paying customers for Branson’s new service.

In a landmark ruling, the European commission has levied a substantial fine, over $1 billion, to three major German automakers over a scheme to collude in engineering development of selective catalytic reduction emissions systems for diesel engines. Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen were involved, although Daimler’s fine was waived because the firm came forward in the case. There are potentially serious legal implications for automotive and engineering design in general if the ruling becomes a precedent.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

Nuclear fusion has been the Holy Grail of power generation for over half a century. The promise is considerable: clean, essentially limitless energy. Multiple approaches to sustained nuclear fusion have been tried and are currently in research, from giant multibillion-dollar tokomaks to mechanically induced shockwave driven liquid metal devices. Colorado-based Electric Fusion Systems claims that a new proprietary fuel combined with a relatively simple electric discharge device can create very low-cost electricity directly from fusion reactions, without nuclear waste.

Hearing loss is a serious global problem, one that is growing as Western populations age. Conventional hearing aid technology is limited by the fundamental part of his system: the transducer. Speaker technology based on coils has distinct limitations, but a Mannheim, Germany based startup, Vibrosonic, has developed a piezoelectric speaker element the firm calls a “hearing contact lens” which rests directly on the user’s eardrum. Direct stimulation combined with a very wide frequency response means enhanced understanding of speech for wearers of the new device.

Mobile robots are now commonplace in large industrial and warehousing operations but are still largely limited to the jobs formally performed by forklift trucks. A major problem in widespread adoption is finding a way to get robotics from different vendors to communicate with each other, allowing different robots doing different functions to operate seamlessly in a complex factory environment. Industry incubator MassRobotics has released a preliminary set of industry standards that will form a basis for future open-source communications protocols to enable effective use of mobile robotics across multiple industries. The development team included engineers from major robot manufacturers as well as influential end-users such as Procter & Gamble and DHL.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

General Electric has announced an Australian project to supply a turnkey powerplant with unique multifuel capability. The gas turbine plant will be capable of operating on natural gas and hydrogen blends, with hydrogen enrichment ranging from 5% to 100%. The novel powerplant will be supported by state and federal programs and the power utility has committed to purchasing green hydrogen gas with the goal of full decarbonization by 2050.

First Solar is a grid scale photovoltaic manufacturer that specializes in cadmium telluride thin-film technology. The company has announced a huge 1.2 million square-foot factory to be built in Ohio to manufacture the modules using advanced automation, machine to machine communication and the Industrial Internet of Things to ultimately make modules a rate of one every three seconds. The investment comes at a time when continued importation of Chinese made crystalline silicon modules is uncertain.

Mazda has traditionally done things differently in the automotive industry, and the firm’s new implementation of the company’s long-range plan, Sustainable Zoom- Zoom 2030, uses a daring approach: a common platform for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and EV’s.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

The General Electric/Safran partnership CFM International has been renewed to 2050, and the company has announced a game changing engine program that promises to deliver 20% lower CO2 emissions compared to current state-of-the-art turbofans. The engine will use advanced materials and notably, an open rotor design. High bypass turbofans may yet give way to propellers.

BYD has made the first move in the long-awaited entry of Chinese electric vehicle makers into Western markets. 100 Tang SUVs have been shipped to Norway, which is emerging as the European testing ground for new vehicles on the continent. If BYD succeeds, they may open the floodgates for multiple Chinese brands in an already crowded market.

General Motors and railway equipment heavyweight Wabtec have joined forces to build a hydrogen fuel cell powered locomotive. The green initiative will use GM Ultium batteries currently under development with LG and slated for production at a joint-venture factory in Tennessee. Fuel-cell modules be produced by a GM Honda JV. If it works, the new powerplant might change the paradigm in electric railway and urban transit design.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

Volkswagen has taken the unusual step of going after the firm’s former board members involved in the diesel emissions scandal. Several key figures, led by former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, will pay millions of euros to Volkswagen to settle claims around their involvement in the emissions cheating scheme. Volkswagen’s insurer will take the biggest hit, over €270 million.

In an aviation first, a Boeing MQ – 25 Stingray drone has operated in an air-to-air refuelling role, offloading fuel to a manned F/A-18 Hornet. The buddy tanking procedure used standard Navy equipment and the transfer was made at what Boeing calls “operationally relevant altitudes and speeds”.

The on-again, off-again Keystone XL pipeline project, intended to carry Canadian oil sands derived crude to American refineries, has been officially cancelled by the Canadian firm spearheading the project. The formal cancellation comes after the January revocation of Pres. Biden’s presidential permit, reversing Pres. Trump’s prior reversal of Pres. Obama’s 2016 cancellation. Is Keystone dead? It would appear so, but the project has been through this before.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

In another cyber-attack on critical American industry, meat processing major JBS suffered an attack which shut down several meat processing plants in the US, Canada and Australia. At its worst, the attack stopped 20% of US beef production. Russian hackers are suspected.

Italian tire maker Pirelli has introduced a low rolling resistance tire for hybrid SUVs that uses latex harvested with sustainable forestry practices, signaling a new definition of “green” in the tire industry.

And as the semiconductor shortage becomes a full-blown crisis in the auto industry, the major auto manufacturers association has teamed with a major semiconductor industry association to call on the Biden Administration the speed passage of the Chips for America Act. In the meantime, the industry will likely be affected until the third quarter at least.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

The UK-based University of Manchester and Nationwide Engineering have test poured a commercial concrete slab using a mix reinforced with graphene instead of the usual rebar, and the results show 30% better strength per unit volume, and an unexpected benefit: lower CO2 emissions.

Automotive Tier 1 heavyweight Denso Corporation has formed an alliance with aerospace systems supplier Honeywell to develop electric propulsion systems for a new generation of urban air mobility vehicles. The partnership is expected to combine Denso’s high-volume automotive mass production expertise with Honeywell’s extensive experience in aircraft power systems to produce certified hardware at unit costs low enough to make autonomous air vehicles a practical proposition.

Exercise equipment maker Peloton has announced that the firm will open its own US manufacturing facility in Troy, Ohio. Built on a 200-acre campus, combined facilities will cover over 1,000,000 ft.² and will give the company supply certainty at an unusual time for the company: unprecedented demand, combined with disrupted supply from the firm’s traditional Asian manufacturing base. The new plant will join two other smaller factories acquired by Peloton in December of 2020.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

The Biden Administration has quietly dropped a key sanction that both Democrats and Republicans have been using to block the completion of the Russia to Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. While the administration has announced that their opposition to the line continues, it’s scheduled to be completed by mid-summer.

Automotive Tier One major Mahle has developed a new type of electric traction motor for EV use, one that promises low cost, very high efficiency and critically, no expensive permanent magnets. The technology does away with slip rings or brushes using an AC inductive pickup to pass power to rotor mounted electromagnets.

Boeing has demonstrated the superiority of model-based engineering with a lightning fast 30-minute splice between fuselage sections on the new T–7A Red Hawk jet trainer. Dramatic improvements in build quality and assembly time suggest that match drilling and splicing may become as obsolete as dope and fabric.

Access all episodes of This Week in Engineering on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.