Green Energy News | October 28, 1996

October 28, 1996 – Vol.1 No.31

ENERGIES... week of October 28, 1996

TAPPING THE DESERT SUN. Amoco/Enron Solar, better known by its Solarex business unit, will be building a 10 megawatt solar farm in the Nevada desert. Under contract from the Corporation for Solar Technology and Renewable Resources (CSTRR) the project will be the largest grid-connected photovoltaic array in the United States. CSTTR, working with the U.S. Department of Energy, facilitates commercial solar energy projects.

Amoco/Enron Solar will also be building a 50 MW farm in the State of Rajasthan in India and is negotiating with Hawaiian Electric to build a 4 MW farm on the island of Hawaii.

Amoco/Enron Solar, headquartered in Frederick, MD, is the largest producer of photovoltaic panels in the United States and the second largest in the world. Construction of the Nevada site should begin in 1998.

FLYING ON HYDROGEN. Daimler-Benz Aerospace, working with Russian aircraft builder Tupolev, will convert a Dornier 328 turboprop transport to run on liquid hydrogen. Initially, in the test project, one of the two Pratt &Whitney engines will operate on hydrogen, as will the aircraft’s AlliedSignal auxiliary power unit (APU). The fuel requires four times the volume of jet fuel (a kerosene derivative) and will be stored in underwing tanks.

The project is to test the feasibility of using hydrogen in commercial jet transports built by the Airbus consortium. Emissions from hydrogen are only water vapor and small amounts of nitrogen oxides. Jet engines converted to hydrogen fuel should produce only 5% of NOX emissions of those running on conventional jet fuel.

Hydrogen can be produced by running an electrical current through acidified water in a process called electrolysis which breaks down water into its basic elements. Water is certainly an abundant resource on the planet. Some alternative energy buffs dream of the day when photovoltaic arrays will produce enough electricity to extract hydrogen from seawater to make an abundant clean burning fuel.

The Space Shuttle utilizes hydrogen as fuel, but then again the Hindenburg was also filled with the lighter-than-air gas. However, as reported in ENERGIES 7/1/96, if hydrogen can be produced from enzymes reacting with glucose sugar (making it extraordinarily cheap) only safety concerns would have to be addressed.