Last week we hosted the 2009 International Workshop on Environment and Alternative Energy at GE Global Research Europe. This workshop is a yearly event organized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Center for Pollution Prevention (C3P). The workshop program included presentations and breakout sessions on alternative energy topics and technological solutions (from R&D to commercial) with a focus on collaborations. It was the first time that this workshop was held in Munich and was a great success with more than 90 participants from multiple industries, research centers, and both U.S. and German universities.

The workshop started with opening remarks from General P.C. Branco the General Director of C3P, and Olga Dominguez, the assistant Administrator for the Office of Infrastructure at NASA. In their speeches they emphasized that addressing environmental issues requires a global collaboration and that Europe and the U.S. are important players. They gave examples of successful joint activities started by NASA and C3P in 2003, to identify and validate environmental technologies that enhance mission readiness and reduce risk while minimizing duplication and associated costs.

The opening day also included presentations by Conrad Tribble, Consulate General of the United States in Munich, Carlos Haertel, Director of GE Global Research Europe, and Nuno Lacasta, Executive Director of the Portuguese Climate Change Commission. Tribble’s speech focused on the importance of public private partnerships. Carlos illustrated this with an overview of GE Global Research Europe and gave examples of successful collaborations with the Technical University of Munich and other universities and partners in Europe. Lacasta gave a European perspective to Global Climate Policy in his speech and concluded that a more global effort and better collaboration will be needed to achieve the environmental goals that have been jointly established

The technical session on Renewable and Alternative Energy Systems began on day two and was opened by Oliver Mayer, a principal scientist at GE Global Research Europe. He introduced Michael Idelchik, the GE Global Research Vice President of Advanced Technologies, who gave a presentation on the “Energy Portfolio Evolution … from Generation to Distribution at GE”. It was an impressive overview on environmental and alternative energy technologies and their economic impact for GE. This presentation was followed by several external and GE presentations focusing on specific technologies such as wind, solar, geo-thermal and wave energy, hydrogen and fuel cells, climate change, green sustainable development and technologies, green buildings, materials management and substitution, electronics manufacturing, repair and e-waste recovery. The technical sessions of the event shared a wealth of information and ideas relevant to European and U.S. engineers and scientists interested in solving their environment and energy problems.

Other highlights of the workshop were special sessions with university presentations and a student poster session, to raise awareness with students on the latest technologies, especially towards environmental and alternative energy strategies. They included presentations from the University California San Diego, Technical University Munich, Munich University of Applied Sciences, Beuth Institute Berlin, Institute ESTM Portugal and Forschungsstelle für Energiewirtschaft e.V. The photo shows Holger Fischer and James Leatherwood of NASA with a group of students during the student poster session initiation.

After three days of presentations and discussions at our research center, the workshop closed on Friday, Nov. 13, with a technical tour to the GE Energy – Jenbacher headquarters and gas engine plant in Jenbach, Austria.

The differentiator of this conference was the great variety of the topics shown and discussed. It was not about the well-known technologies of PV, wind, biomass, etc. but on the side aspects with their impacts on the overall technology and environment. The session and coffee break discussions with university and industry participants offered great opportunities to exchange ideas and different points of view. Besides giving insights into current research activities and technology developments, this event was a great forum for getting connected with university and industry participants working on environmental and alternative energy topics.

Some video statements from the event are below.

Michael Idelchik, Vice President of Advanced Technology, GE Global Research

Carlos Haertel, Director of GE Global Research Europe:

Olga Dominguez, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Infrastructure at NASA:

Hello Earth!

When we received a notification from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) about the award for our proposal “Wearable Organic Electronic Film RFID Sensors for Monitoring of Airborne Toxicants”, our team was excited as never before – for the recognition of our idea by NIEHS, for the job well done during the proposal writing, and for this new two-year program that we wanted to launch ASAP.

Stepping back a couple of years before this proposal submission, at technical conversations with colleagues and business leaders, at scientific conferences, during visits of national labs and universities, and at many other occasions, I have been asked numerous times “What’s so special about your sensors that you are working on?”

To answer this key question, it is critical to recognize that there are numerous excellent sensors already available for measurements of physical, chemical, and biological parameters on interest. For example, there are available physical sensors for measurements of air pressure in automotive tires, body temperature of patients, and sudden fall motion of portable electronic devices. Numerous chemical sensors are also readily available, for example, humidity sensors in microwave ovens, carbon monoxide sensors in underground garages, nitrogen oxides sensors in exhausts of automobiles, and sensors for pH and other ions in industrial water. Lastly, more and more biological sensors are becoming available as well, for example a pregnancy test strip based on the color change produced by biofunctionalized gold nanoparticles upon their aggregation. Thus, available sensors provide information important to the end-user with high accuracy and without false readings.

However, there are numerous other practical situations, where existing sensors fall short in meeting the demanding measurement needs. Our research team focuses of the development of such new sensors for chemical and biological detection in complex environments where existing sensors will have too many false positive responses while our new sensors will provide desired accurate readings. Examples of such complex environments can be ambient air at a workplace, in an urban environment, and in a battlefield, samples of exhaled air from medical patients, and air in packaged food containers. For these and many other demanding applications, existing sensors suffer from responses to not only chemicals of interest in the air but also to numerous interferences that are present at much higher concentrations that the chemical of interest.

The two-year program that is funded by NIEHS capitalizes on recent achievements of our team and will provide innovations in three key areas:

1. A new battery-free radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based transducer platform will be leveraged from recent work by our team and will employ low cost passive RFID sensors for chemical monitoring of diverse populations. By measuring simultaneously several parameters of the complex impedance from such an RFID sensor coated with a sensing film and applying multivariate statistical analysis methods, the team will identify and quantify the non-polar and polar toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with a single RFID sensor in presence of variable ambient humidity and other interferences.

2. New sensing materials will be developed that will be able to detect vapors with improved selectivity toward uncontrolled fluctuations in ambient relative humidity. The evaluation process of new sensing materials candidates will be performed using previously developed high-throughput screening infrastructure dramatically reducing the required characterization time, simplifying data manipulation, and allowing for efficient data mining for the rational downselection of materials and their further improved design. Thus, the detailed analysis of interactions of vapors with sensing materials will provide the foundation for a better understanding of the materials parameters that affect sensor selectivity and long-term stability and for the development of more quantitative and practical sensor models.

3. A prototype of wearable wireless sensor system will be developed and demonstrated that will contain replaceable passive RFID sensors. Developed sensors will be interrogated by a small-sized, wearable sensor reader that will relate the findings to a local base station.

This program promises to provide a significant impact to the modern sensing technology.

Stay tuned for more news from GE Research!

I’m a chemist in the Chemical Technologies and Materials Characterization organization at GE Global Research. I work in the area of reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions and on capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) to mitigate global warning. Recently, I was involved with the planning of an Emissions Aftertreatment Symposium, which took place here at Global Research in September 2009. We hosted external speakers that are experts in the field of emissions regulations and technology and had a full day of presentations exploring some of these topics.

For those who could not attend the Symposium, I wanted to use the blog to recap some of my personal highlights of the event and some of the things that I learned. It was an exciting event that proposed new perspectives on the future of emissions aftertreatment and the policy surrounding it. All of the speakers did a wonderful job and led thought-provoking and informative sessions.

Byron Bunker from the Environmental Protection Agency gave a cool talk on the emissions regulation trends. He explained that the EPA was in the process of determining if and how CO2 might be regulated as a pollutant for cars and small trucks. If regulations are put in place, off-road vehicles would likely also be regulated.

Tim Johnson from Corning gave an overview of NOx emissions control. His talk was particularly interesting for me since I work on hydrocarbon selective catalytic reduction (HC SCR). He spoke about something called “black carbon”. This is fairly new to the emissions discussion but is now considered to be as important as CO2 and many of the EATS speakers referenced it is something that is critical to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. The follow-on of the Kyoto accords is the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, and it is forecasted that they may list black carbon as a greenhouse gas, which would bring much attention to the issue.

Marty Lassen at Johnson Matthey discussed a brief history of emissions regulations-which date all the way back to the Magna Carta! Did you know that the king of England banned the use of sea coal because its high sulfur content causes it to smell bad? Or that in the 1950s there were thousands of deaths from “black fog,” which caused Richard Nixon to pass the U.S. Clean Air act and bring us the EPA? Very interesting!

Another topic I found very interesting was William Partridge’s description of an awesome analytical method where very small capillaries allow one to sample gases right out of the catalyst and into a mass spectrometer. This allows us to know exactly what is forming as a function of time.

Every speaker at the Symposium added great value and provided new and interesting information. It was an exciting day to see many months of planning come together and learn so much new information from industry experts. Thanks to everybody who participated!

Hey Everyone. I just wanted to mention that Justin Brumberg, one of our Pulse Detonation researchers, is featured on GE Reports as he describes his experiences during his deployment in Iraq. Staff Sergeant Brumberg served with the 458th Engineering Battalion in Camp Liberty, Baghdad, Iraq as the Maintenance Shop Supervisor for the Charlie Company motorpool.

I still remember when Justin first returned from his deployment. I didn’t really know him at the time, but the lab threw him a welcome home party – and I remember being somewhat formal and shaking this young man’s hand (I doubt he remembers). I’ve since gotten to know him better as we’ve worked closely over the past few years, pushing back the frontiers of PDE technology together. In addition to being a very capable researcher, he’s one of the most helpful guys around – always willing to lend a hand to a fellow colleague. He really understands the meaning of “team”, and he is also an exceptional leader. Above all, he’s a good friend. We’re very proud of Justin for all he has accomplished – and truly honoured that he is part of the PDE team.

Every mother wants to be healthy for her baby, but in many rural areas childbirth is a dangerous business. In the US about five hundred mothers die every year during childbirth. In Africa it’s around 280,000. That’s tragic, because it so preventable. Ultrasound imaging can help identify the mothers at risk, those where the placenta extends over the birth canal, the baby is in a breech presentation or there are multiple babies, thereby alerting healthcare providers to seek the right care. We can help make that happen.

I’m Scott Smith, a physicist in Imaging Technologies Lab, and the principal investigator on a recent Grand Opportunity grant from the National Institutes of Health on Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Improved Maternal Health. Ultrasound has become the most commonly used medical imaging exam worldwide, because it combines real-time images, non-ionizing radiation, and relatively low cost. In fact, after riding Moore’s Law for several decades, we can now make imaging consoles the size of writing tablets or something that you can fit in your pocket (see the recently announced Venue and Vscan) instead of washing machines. Costs have come down too, by more than ten times. No matter how big the console is, all the diagnostic information is coming from the transducer in the probe – a thin sandwich of piezoelectric material that converts electric signals into ultrasound waves and vice versa, along with polycrystalline and polymer materials painstakingly assembled by hand and then carefully cut into segments only slightly wider than a human hair. These probes have not changed nearly as much as the consoles, and they haven’t gotten cheap. I’ve spent a lot of time squinting through a microscope working on these devices, and wanted to find a better way.

Over in the Material Systems Lab, Prabhjot Singh and his colleagues had been developing Digital Micro Printing, an adaptive additive rapid prototyping system for ceramics and polymers. Together we teamed up with ceramicists from the Ceramics and Metallurgy Lab and worked out the rudiments of Digital Micro Printing for a high sensitivity piezoelectric, the heart of ultrasound probes. Using this technology we can eliminate the delicate cutting step during transducer fabrication.. That’s what caught the attention of the NIH. Projecting out a long way, we can even envision printing the transducer on a roll to roll system, like the OLED team has done. This could really help reduce the cost of ultrasound probes. We still have a lot of details to work out, but I’ve learned not to underestimate people with imagination, knowledge, and commitment to change the world. Because they are the only ones that ever have.

Coupling cheaper probes with miniature consoles, could help lead to ultrasound equipment being more available not only for maternal health, but also in rural clinics, emergency vehicles, and individual doctor’s offices. It’s a great example of leveraging advanced manufacturing to lower cost leading to more access and better quality healthcare worldwide, not just imagination but healthymagination at work.

Hello all.  I haven’t blogged in quite a while, I’ve gotten really busy over the past few years working on some exciting projects around novel nanoparticles for medical imaging applications.   However, something that I’ve worked on in the past, our ferrofluid demonstration, has been getting some attention recently.   Our Global Research headquarters in Niskayuna plastered this image on the wall of our main gallery and also, my colleague, Brian Bales, shared this demonstration with a film crew who used some of the shots in the recent GE commercials.

We’ve been getting some questions about what this material actually is so I wanted to direct your attention to an entry and video that I posted in April 2006 explaining this.

Hi everyone. I was just interviewed by the Business News Network in Canada to talk about the Smart Grid. I was asked to explain what the Smart Grid is and and what benefits can come from making our grid more intelligent. -Click here- to check out the interview.

If you follow the world of pathology, you might have read recently about Omnyx’s new autofocusing patent.  In a nutshell, it is the essential piece of IP needed to digitize a world that for more than 125 years has relied on a microscope and glass slides.

To read more about Omnyx and GE Healthcare’sjoint venture with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to digitize the world of anatomical pathology, read Mike Montalto’s blog.  As he mentions, we developed a prototype scanner in the lab that can digitize glass pathology slides and resulted in the formation of Omnyx to further develop this technology and take it to market. Check out the sample digital  image and picture of our  prototype scanner that I have posted with this entry.

You might be wondering why these slides weren’t digitized sooner. How hard could it be? Well, it’s actually a pretty difficult thing to do. What I thought I would do here is talk with you more about how we did it and what obstacles and milestones occurred along the way. 

The biggest challenge for digital imaging of pathology slides is ultimately autofocusing – i.e. ensuring that the camera is taking the picture in clear focus at the level needed for diagnosis.  When we first considered the issue of ‘high speed’ scanning, the problem seemed pretty straightforward. We thought, let’s just design a system that captures data at the fastest data rates available.  However, we recognized pretty quickly that the tissue topology could vary a lot relative to the glass slide. The only way to focus well was to track the tissue itself and the glass cover slip or glass carrier.  So now we were doing image-based focusing.  Great… how do we do that quickly? 

Image-based focusing is not new. You can find many examples out there. The basic idea is to move the objective lens up and down (which is hopefully in and out of focus) and collect a series of images at different positions.  There are several different calculations that you can make on the pixels of an image to tell you how “sharp” or “in-focus” things are. So what you can do is calculate how “sharp” each image is in the collection. Then you can look at how the sharpness changes for each image and use that information to predict where to move the lens to get “the sharpest” image.   But still, how do you go faster than the typical?

Developing a good autofocusing system for the digital pathology scanner brought lots of little eureka-moments.  One of the earliest: Rationalizing that the camera that took the main pictures did not have to match the camera that did the autofocusing.  Statistically speaking, one doesn’t need all the pixels in an image to figure out which image in a z-stack has the best overall sharpness. A subsampling works quite reliably.  Therefore, one can leverage the usual rate tradeoff, i.e., one camera can collect a big frame at a slow rate, and another camera can collect a small frame at a high rate.  So what we designed is a system with one camera optimized for autofocusing, and second camera optimized for collect ‘real’ fields of view.   The autofocusing camera runs four to eight times faster than the main camera.  This turns out to be a pretty novel and powerful approach.  The fast frame rate of the autofocus camera allows the scanner to maintain continuous motion while capturing stacks of images.  The relatively small shift in the x-y plane of motion seen across the z-stack can be ignored, or at least compensated for easily.

The final key step is to extract information from the acquired z-stack, process it quickly and feed it forward in order to predict the height at which the main camera should fire.   The focusing algorithm does not have a lot of time to make a good prediction, and it took a great deal of effort to come up with an optimized approach.  The approach needs to be simple as possible, yet still accurate enough to work with the high-resolution objective lenses we use.    I think we’re the only group making accurate focus predictions with only three images in a stack.  All together it’s essential for achieving speed and quality in digitizing glass slides.  And honestly, there is always room to do even better—we haven’t stopped working on it.

Hi! I’m Job Rijssenbeek, I am a chemist at GE Global Research and I work on the chemistry behind our sodium metal halide battery. This battery technology was previously highlighted by my colleague, Glen Merfeld, on this blog and is the basis for this summer’s announcement of a GE battery manufacturing plant in Schenectady, NY. I have the privilege of leading the team tasked with testing battery life for different applications, measuring its response to various stresses and determining degradation mechanisms.

As part of this work, we routinely study the microscopic structures of the battery components using a scanning electron microscope. This powerful type of microscope lets us see the shape and size of the individual chemicals in the battery. Although such information is very important in helping us understand what happens inside the battery, I also think that the resulting pictures are very cool. I wanted to share some of them with you here.

In this image, taken from a partially charged cell, you can see all the major chemical components of the battery. The large octahedral crystals (lower left) are sodium chloride, simply table salt. However, note that these crystals are not cubic like the table salt in your kitchen – this is because they are precipitated out of electrolyte instead of water. The little rough balls (center) are metal particles. The hexagonal crystal just below the center of the image is metal chloride, which is formed by the reaction of the sodium chloride with the metal during charge. The cracked matrix encompassing these crystals is the electrolyte, sodium tetrachloroaluminate, which is molten at the battery’s temperature of operation (300°C; 572 F). As you can see from the scale bar on the pictures, even the largest salt crystals are no bigger than the average human hair, which is about 80 mm across. During discharge, the hexagonal platelets are transformed back into the octahedra and the little balls.

Learning about the sizes, shapes and locations of the components is useful because much of the performance is related to the distribution and surface area of the constituents. I find it truly amazing that these crystals can be consumed and grown over and over again during charge/discharge cycling. Making sure that this happens consistently over time and over thousands of cycles is an important part of the improvements that we have made to this battery technology.

Some day you may drive a car powered by the conversion of these tiny hexagonal platelets into octahedra and little balls, and, to me, that’s cool!

A few months ago I wrote in the GE blog about the Maui Smart Grid demonstration project. Last week, Mark Niesse of the Associated Press highlighted the project in an article. The NY Times version of article can be found at the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/11/us/AP-US-Smart-Grid-Hawaii.html

GE is working with the Department of Energy (DOE), Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI), the Maui Electric Company (MECO), and Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) to develop, test, and deploy the equipment, controls, and communications that will help Maui Electric address some of the challenges associated with managing circuit loads and integrating substantial amounts of wind and solar power into their power system.

Since my last blog entry, our project team at HNEI, HECO, MECO and GE has developed a systems architecture that will allow us to demonstrate this capability in the south Maui region. Being able to control the energy consumption on demand will help MECO manage the demand for electricity when the wind and solar power is dropping or when the peak load is excessively high. As the content of island’s wind and solar power increases this could be another resource that MECO could rely upon instead of firing up generation or ramping up generation that is already on-line.

The resources being considered for the project include a Distribution Management System (DMS), equipped with the capabilities to monitor and control distributed resources, such as residential Home Energy Management Systems, commercial loads, distributed solar power, and other devices in the distribution system, including capacitor banks and voltage regulators.

Over the next few months our team will complete the system design and begin the development activities with our GE Transmission & Distribution business. Successful interoperability testing of the equipment with MECO’s operations system will result in deployment in late 2011 with performance being monitored over the following year.