I visited Mexico from December 23 to January 2 with my whole family on vacation. I first drove to the State of Sonora, with its capital Hermosillo, to see if the Monarch SEV could be built there. We stayed an hour away from Hermosillo, on Kino Bay (Bahia De Kino) off the Sea of Cortez.

After Christmas, we flew to Mexico City and did a number of fun things, such as visiting the Monarch butterfly sanctuary (subject of the next blog), roaming the Mexico City center, climbed the Teotihuacan Pyramids, drove up the Popocatépetl volcano, and ended up partying through the New Year Eve.

I came back from China very impressed with what Suda JiaoTung Transport Group (www.sdjtjt.com) achieved in building a small fleet of electric vehicles, currently serving daily as a taxi fleet. President Li also mentioned that he is interested to build a van, which I think my Monarch EV could serve that market. Upon coming back, I had a major redesign and re-positioning of our solar electric vehicle to be the Monarch SEV (Solar Electric Van).

The Suda Electric Vehicle

In this blog, I shall compare the technical and market positions of Professor Cao’s EV, the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan Leaf, and our Monarch EV.

The Tesla, for both the limited edition Tesla Roadster and the soon mass produced Model S, is positioned for a longer than 200 miles range fully electric driving. As such, the battery is large (> 50KWh of energy stored) and heavy (1000 pounds), raising the curb weight to 2700 pounds. The resulting Roadster is expensive at a base price of more than $120,000. Power output is more than 215KW. Fuel efficiency is about 136 mpge, consuming about 250Wh per mile traveled.

The Nissan Leaf on the other hand has only 24KWh with a rather limited range of about 90 miles fully electric driving. Peak power output is about 85KW. Fuel efficient is posted at 99 mpge, consuming about 340Wh per mile traveled. The smaller battery capacity and heavier but cheaper material used makes the Leaf weighs the same 2700 pounds as the Tesla. The Leaf is sold at a base price of $35,000 before incentives.

The SMX electric car of SDJTG has taken a rather interesting market position. The car has the same curb weight as the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Roadster with a battery size of 26KWh similar to that of the Leaf. However, the peak power output is at a lower 15KW. To achieve better acceleration and a top speed exceeding 100 Km/h, the 5-shift gear of Suzuki is adopted. Shifting is infrequent though, but you have to shift gear to achieve the top speed.

The result is a fabulous range of about 260 Km using the 26KWh stored in the batteries, therefore achieving a remarkably low 100 Wh per Km traveled, or roughly 150 Wh per mile traveled, less than half that of the Nissan Leaf.

Fuel efficiency depends strongly on weight of the car as well as speed driven. Regarding acceleration, the time t taken to accelerate the EV of mass m to a speed of v using a power P is determined by energy conservation with Pt = 1/2 mv^2. For example, a 1000 Kg vehicle driven by a 100KW motor to 100 Kmph would take in theory (assuming no resistive forces acting on the car) a time of 1/2 x 1000Kg x (100x1000m/3600s)^2/100x1000W = 3.86 seconds.

For the Tesla Roadster, the time taken to reach 60 mph (~92 km/h , approximated as 100 km/h) would be approximately 2.5 seconds, within 2/3 of the 3.7 seconds actually required. The Nissan Leaf would require in theory 2.5 seconds times 215/85 = 7.2 seconds. Multiply that for the 1.5  times required in practice, you obtain a time of around 10 seconds.

My experience with driving both the Tesla and the Leaf is that initial acceleration is much more brisk than gasoline engines with the same 0-60 mph time needed,  because torque produced at low speed by an AC motor is much better than that of a gasoline engine even without the use of low gear ratio.  Acceleration of the Nissan Leaf is more brisk than my Toyota Prius, even though both cars have approximately the same horse power rating (~110 hp) and weight.

With the smaller 15KW power, it would in theory take at least 2.5 seconds times 215/15 = 36 seconds to reach the  100 km/h speed. As mentioned initial acceleration is pretty decent for 0-45km/h. To reach the top speed, gear ratio has to be changed. My guess is that for the motor be driven at a top speed of 120 km/h, gear ratio has to be  lower than 4:1, much lower than the 10:1 gear ratio of Tesla. From my experience riding the EV, acceleration is reasonable albeit you would not expect the EV to pull ahead of other cars when the traffic light turns green.

I believe acceleration as a utility is overrated, even though I paid four times the price of a Leaf for a Tesla. Also top speed is a huge impediment to energy efficiency, as air resistance increases as the square of velocity. My Prius, while achieving 50 mpg in city driving, makes an unimpressive 35 mpg when driving at 85 mph on the long stretch of Interstate 10. Much of the fuel efficiency of the Prius is due to its low aerodynamic coefficient of around 2.5, its measly 80hp gasoline engine assisted by an electric motor, and to a lesser degree regenerative braking.

Another concern is the speed at which EV power may allow the EV to climb a slope. By conservation of electric energy, we have Pt = mgh, the gravitational energy required to raise a car by a vertical distance of h. At a velocity of v up an incline of angle a, P=mgv x sin(a). For P=15KW, m=1400Kg, g=10m/s^2, the maximum angle that the car can climb is given by sin(a)=P/mgv ~ 1/v . For a speed of 10km/h or slightly less than 3 meters per second, sin(a) = 1/3.6 or a= 21 degrees.  At 50km/h, sin(a)=1/18 or a=3 degrees.

A speed of 40mph may be acceptable for driving up hilly city with a moderate slope of 1/20. However, driving at 65 mph speed on highways up mountains can be challenging. That is also my experience with my Prius, as climbing up long incline rapidly depletes its battery. When the battery is depleted, the Prius becomes way underpowered with its 80hp (~60KW) gasoline engine would instantly reduces car speed to less than 50mph.

For faster acceleration or the fast climbing up slope, we have to reduce the weight of the car. At less than half the weight of the three EV described, time to achieve a velocity from standstill is reduced by more than half and the top speed up an incline can be doubled. My experience with the SMX EV convinces me that our Monarch EV can be made highway worthy. Two improvements are needed. First, we need an overdrive of a gear ratio of 4:1 besides the current fixed gear ratio of 8:1. Second, a stronger upper chassis is needed, besides the very strong bottom frame with chromoly tubing.

One idea I came back from visiting SDJTJT is to position our Monarch EV as a mini-RV. The Monarch EV is fairly long and voluminous, comfortably seating four plus a good size flat bed. The two rows of back to back seats can also be used as two beds. Given its ability to generate and store PV electricity and solar heated water, most amenities of a house is contained in the Monarch EV once a microwave oven and a refrigerator is added.

We aim at the following market position for the Monarch EV: A mini RV with low curb weight of 1000 pounds and a top speed of 100 km/h.  The Monarch EV can generate 2KW of PV electricity, stored in 7.5KWh or 15KWh of lithium iron phosphate batteries. Performance is set for 0-60 km/h  in 10 seconds, a range of  100 Km, and a fuel efficiency of better than 100Wh per Km.

Another advantage of a smaller battery is that charging at 120V and 15A for a power of 1.8KW can be achieved in 5 hours, much less than the 16 hours required for the Nissan Leaf. A smaller battery pack has many benefits: reduced weight, reduced cost, and reduced time for charging.

The base price of the Monarch EV could be around $19,999, without the solar power capability. A solar umbrella could be added, or 20% efficient PV cells added to generate 2KW of power.

Overall, I am delighted by the results I have achieved by the visit to Hong Kong and SMX. My goal is to solicit a number of beta users of both the solar umbrella and Monarch EV. This is start of a low volume production that we have planned. I am pleased to announce that the Monarch EV is on target both technically and commercially for success in the market place.

One reason for visiting Tibet is to understand its people, its culture, and its religion. Here are a few observations in my brief 2 days in Tibet.

Lhasa, being at the confluence of two rivers, is in a fairly large basin where wheat is grown as the major staple. Much of Lhasa’s power is provided by two hydroelectric dams. Lhasa is surrounded by mountains, being at a lower altitude of 3600 meters, is well protected from wind is considerably warmer that the highlands.

City of Tibet, seen from back side of Potala Palace

The brand new Qingzang line and the sparkling modern Lhasa train terminal are transforming Lhasa and Tibet through modernization and the huge economic benefit of people and goods transportation. Lhasa is becoming a modern city teeming with tourists, foreign and Chinese who flock to Lhasa, many as modern day hippies trying to find their meaning of life in the esoteric form of Tibetan Buddhism.

While on the train to Lhasa, I befriended a 20 year old Tibetan in the same carriage room. He was returning home after 1.5 years of medical study at a Xian University. He is really friendly, innocent, and generous, apparently from a well to do family who picked him up in a family car. Thoroughly modern and speaks perfect Chinese, he enjoys Cantonese pop, Chinese rap, even Tibetan folk song sung in Chinese, and has a Cantonese girl friend studying in his university. Here is a video of him and a young Tibetan boy I met on the train.

This young man represents a generation of Tibetans who are not too religious and try to blend into the Han culture. He spoke a mix of Chinese and Tibetan while talking to friends and family. Frankly speaking, he represents what the Chinese government wants: modernized Tibetans who view themselves as Chinese, enjoying the generous economic policies that have benefited Tibetans, at least those in Lhasa. This is similar to assimilating Native Americans into mainstream US culture, providing generous welfare benefits.

I also befriended a Tibetan family who came from rural Qinghai Province, who I think is on a pilgrimage journey to Lhasa. The 38 year old burly Tibetan guy has a beautiful and shy wife who speaks no Chinese, two really cute children, and his mother together for this religious visit to Lhasa. One of their children studying in kindergarten is shown in the above video.  Both women were dressed in nice traditional garments. Tibetan spends good money on clothes and household decorations to show off their wealth. I do not think they are rich though. I gave the kids plenty of sweets and cakes, and the husband offered me yak tongue in return, which I declined.

The next day I went to Jokhang Temple, the most revered Tibetan Buddhist temple that Tibetan pilgrims congregate.

Jokhang Temple

Here is a frantic scene of Tibetans prostrating themselves in the plaza in front of the temple.

I was awe struck by the religiosity of the Tibetans. The prostration was frenetic, if not fanatic. Buddhism, for all its pacifism and reputed stoicism, can be fanatic with extreme manifestations of worshiping their religious leaders and holy objects. I honestly want to find out what drives their religious zeal.

Jokhang Temple area is a few city blocks in size similar to the Vatican City. Jokhang Temple is a large building housing the temple and quarters surrounded by the Eight Corner Street. The street and the plaza are the scene of two disparate activities. First, pilgrims walk chanting Buddhist mantras, circling the huge temple complex in a clockwise direction (same direction the prayer wheels should be turned). Tibetan folks believe that if they encircle the temple thrice, much of their bad karma would be atoned for. I did just once for the sake of feeling their zeal. Second, merchants were hawking goods, holy or not, all around the temple amidst the throngs of chanting pilgrims.

China celebrated this year the 60th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet. Here is the huge monument on a huge plaza vastly overshadowed by the Potala Palace. I took the following pictures of the monument and the Palace from the same vantage point close to the monument.

Monument commemorating liberation of Tibet

Potala Palace

A visit to the Potala Palace, the residence of the fifth Dalai Lamas and his successors, was the high point of my visit to Lhasa.

I visited the Palace ground, which completely surrounds the hill on which the Palace tops off. The Palace ground is about the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing. A few buildings surround the central palace that is built on both sides of the hill, soaring 170 meter above the ground.

One building I visited is called the Treasure Museum that housed many treasures, with particular emphasis on the royal gifts and blessings from the Manchu central government bestowed on the 5th  Dalai Lamas and his successors. Here there are certain truth about the close relationship historically between Tibet and China, with Tibet being a vassal  and China being the suzerain, if not the sovereign. Such artifacts are presented by the current Chinese government in advocating its sovereignty.

Here are a few pictures of the Potala Palace.

Two monks climbing up the long stairs to the Palace

Me in PLA coat on way up to Potala Palace

Unfortunately, I cannot take any picture of the Potala Palace once I got inside the building. It is magnificent both in architecture and in the historic artifacts, including most of the burial chambers of all Dalai Lamas since the fifth, their residences, and their chapels. The resources in gold and jewels adorned on their burial towers bear witness of the devotion and awe they are held in regards by the people.

Overall, Tibetan people are gentle, pious, and friendly. They are in rapid progress in terms of material advances, but the younger generation, once involved in modern Chinese lifestyle, could lose interest in their own culture and religion, the way native Americans did. The land is beautiful, albeit many may find it forbidding in winter and the thin air daunting. I wish the land and its people a prosperous future.

After visiting San Men Xia and Xian, I took a train to Lhasa on the Qingzang line. The purpose of the visit is for understanding the cultural and environmental concerns of Tibet, and how solar energy could be of use for making the sparsely population plateau more habitable.

The Qingzang line was opened in 2006, extending from Golmud in Qinghai Province to Lhasa the capital of the province of Tibet. The Qingzang line is the highest in the world, reaching a height of 5076 meters at a mountain pass between the Qinghai and Tibet provinces. Much of the line is more than 4000 meters above the sea level. The line provides much needed rail access for people and goods at lower cost than road and air transportation.

The landscape looks eerily like the painted desert of Arizona at places. At a higher altitude, the ground is in permafrost. In other places there is thin ground vegetation cover. Standing ground water is frozen this time of the year, but I was told that in spring most of the land can be green.

Moon set on mountain and desert

I  saw sheep, yak, and in a glimpse the endangered Tibetan antelope. The land is poor in resources. Ground vegetation cover is ever in danger of being destroyed because of drought, overgrazing, and exploitation for fungi and medicinal herbs.

Tall mountain, glacier, and yak herd

The tall peaks rising above 6000 meters are covered in snow, with little glacial remains due perhaps to global warming. The Tanggula Peak close to the Tanggula Pass is the source of the Lhasa River. The Qingzang Railroad, once entering the Province of Tibet, follows the valley of the Lhasa River until it reaches Lhasa, where it empties into the much larger Bramaputra River that flows into India.

Here is a video as the train passed Tanggula Pass where you can see the melting glacier from the Tanggula Peak

There are lakes along the river. Tibetan lakes are as pretty as Swiss lakes, part frozen in winter. Some lakes have a deep green color as if it is grassland. Much of Tibet is bone dry, due to the high altitude and the Himalayas blocking most of the moisture from the Indian Ocean.

Deep green lake along the railway

The main conclusion I obtained from this trip: the sun drenched South West China, including the Qinghai, Tibet, and Yunnan provinces, provides inexhaustible solar resources for powering China. The other two northern provinces of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are equally endowed with solar energy. Thus China should place the highest priority to lower cost of solar energy and grid transmission. This together with abundant hydroelectric power in the South West, could supply the industrialized East China, if a grid is put in place for the transport of electricity.

China is facing huge problem with soot and fine particles that can cause serious health problems if inhaled. Recently, there is a huge uproar of private finding in Beijing that DM2.5 size particulates concentration is 10 times above acceptable limits. Removing gasoline and diesel automobiles as well as not burning coal for power generation are crucial to stemming a lung cancer epidemic in China besides discouraging smoking. I was constantly bordered by people smoking on the train, and find the air outside, while cold and thin, as literally a breath of fresh air.

While solar water heating is used in East China, solar electricity generation is unlikely due to cloud cover, pollution, and a high population density. Xian, as the gateway for millennia to the West and North, is strategically placed for the solar industry. San Men Xia in the Henan province slightly to the East of Xian has even lower land and labor cost. I would like to place production of Monarch Power products at San Men Xia for individual exploitation of the abundant solar energy in NW and SW China.

China announced this fall a generous purchase of solar generated electricity at 1.2 yuan per KWh. Large solar generation facilities are rapidly emerging, particularly in the province of Qinghai. There, the altitude is still more than 3000 meter.  Qinghai is famous for the Qinghai Lake, literally the Green Sea Lake, a very large salt water lake. Qinghai has also emerged as a major mining source for lithium.

Hot water generation is very important is SW China. Due to the lower atmospheric pressure, you can see steam venting from the solar water heater, which can heat water up to a temperature of 80 degrees.

At 5000 meter above the sea level, air is only 50% as dense as the sea level. The train, made in Europe, provides oxygen enriched air as shown in the following display in the train compartment built specially for the train.

Oxygen enriching equiment display

The display indicates that we were at 4986 meter elevation on the way down from the highest elevation at the Tanggula pass. Air pressure is indicated also, with oxygen content inside the cabin slightly higher at 21.5%. Oxygen is enriched by heating air to 45.8 degrees Celsius as indicated, before being forced through a membrane at a high pressure of 8.8 bars. The oxygen level afterwards is almost doubled to 39.0%. Note that the amount of oxygen gasp for gasp remains the same, if you breath directly the enriched air, compared with breathing normally at sea level. The enriched air did not help much, unless you breath through a mask.

At 0.5 bar atmospheric pressure, water boils at 80 degree Celsius. I have some interesting experience due to low pressure in Tibet. When I had breakfast on board the train, the rice porridge is kind of lukewarm. The egg could not be hard boiled so even the egg white is runny. Both are not pleasant to eat. You can imagine how difficult it is to make tea or coffee at 80 degree Celsius.

When I ordered dishes for dinner, I was upset that the dishes were cold. I had the waiter take them back to heat them up by microwave. It came back kind of hot, but within 2 minutes got cold again.

Now the train was fairly well heated and dry. The problem with my dish of scrambled egg with tomato was that it readily boils off its moisture in that low pressure and low humidity. The loss of heat of evaporation turns the dish cold very quickly.

To cook food well, you can use a hot oven such as baking Tandoori chicken I had the next day for lunch, or use a pressure cooker for cooking the yak stew in radish I had for dinner. I had so much yak stew that my heart raced throughout the evening. Yak butter and meat is the main stay for Tibetans to ward off the cold.

After we reached the Tanggula pass, I started to have a mild headache and slight nausea. The brain and stomach were suffering from oxygen deprivation. In high altitude, the body reacts by making more red blood cell in a matter of days and then you feel normal again. As I return to lower altitude, I overdose on oxygen at this moment when I am writing at the Chengdu airport.

I was told by Secretary Zhang not to take a bath in Tibet. I thought of that as myth for Tibetans, who were fabled to take bath three times only in life: once born, once married, and once dead. I think there is some merit in Secretary Zhang’s advice, as you may get a cold when your wet body literally boils off your body heat. You can feel that damp cold feeling even when you are dry, as if you just went skiing.

Anyway, I think the best experience you can have in Lhasa is a hot sauna, soaking yourself in almost scalding water in an oak barrel, and then slipping into blankets to bake yourself dry with that body heat. Let the blankets take up your moisture. Your heart throbs hard to push the heated blood to the skin with dilated vessels. That took my headache away. You see, you have to understand the Physics to handle the stress.

I shall explain in the remaining the unique climatic challenges in Tibet with a little Physics.

We have all experienced two things about going to places at high altitude. First, the temperature drops making you feel lethargic. Second, air pressure drops, making you gasping for air.

Einstein derived the Avogadro number (the number of molecules in a liter of air) in his PhD thesis by looking at how air pressure drops with altitude, based on the conservation of energy. Air molecules, whether the 20% oxygen or 80% nitrogen, have the same average energy. Each molecule has three kinds of energy, first its kinetic energy which is measured by temperature, second its gravitational potential energy determined by its altitude, and third its barometric energy determined by air pressure.

The sum of these three energy components is a constant at different altitude.  The conservation of energy, together with equilibrium conditions, give the following equation concerning pressure and temperature as a function of altitude.

Parameter (Description) Value:

p0 (sea level standard atmospheric pressure) 101325 Pa
L (temperature lapse rate) 0.0065 K/m
T0 (sea level standard temperature) 288.15 K
g (Earth-surface gravitational acceleration) 9.80665 m/s2
M (molar mass of dry air) 0.0289644 kg/mol
R (universal gas constant) 8.31447 J/(mol•K)

Assuming a certain density and temperature of air at sea level, pressure as a function of altitude decays exponentially. From this curve, air pressure at 5000 meter above sea level is half that at sea level. This is indicated in the following readings on board the train. Water boils at 80 degree Celsius at 0.5 bar atmospheric pressure. At Lhasa with a 3600 meter altitude, air pressure is 2/3 that at sea level.

I had a few Tiramisu  wrapped airtight in a foil, only to find them bloated like balloons at high elevation. Air pressure at sea level is fairly high, equivalent to the additional pressure when you dive to a depth of 10 meters.  If you ascend rapidly from that depth, your lung can rupture because air volume would double with half the pressure.

Tin foiled Tiramisu inflated like a balloon

Now roughly speaking, air is about a thousand times less dense than water. A column of uniformly dense air of 5000 meters at the elevation of the Tanggula pass would be equal to 5 meters of water. This back of the envelope calculation is remarkably close to the 50% lowered air density given by the formula shown earlier. As such, I have to gasp for air.

Breathing oxygen enriched air

This low temperature low pressure Tibetan environment actually taught me a lot. Distilling water for the purpose of water purification is far more effective at the Tibetan elevation. What  caused my food to taste disgustingly cold from losing latent heat of evaporation actually has two advantages. First, heat is easily transferred from high temperature liquid to the evaporated steam. Second, the steam is readily condensed by means of compression.

I believe therefore that water purification by my solar umbrella in Tibet, and particularly water desalination in Qinghai Province, really is hot water made in high places. Good for drinking, making a hot yak milk tea, or for taking a hot sauna bath. Bon Solaire du Tibet!

After spending a week in Hong Kong, I flew to Xian on Sunday. From there I took the high speed train from Xian to San Men Xia (SMX)

I have taken the same train from SMX to Xian around the same time last year. This time, they have moved the Xian stop from the city center to the north suburb, a good distance of more than 20 Km. The new Xian North Station is as large as an airport.

Waiting hall of new Xian high speed rail station

The train station service was nice and fast, with the terminal quite comfortable and easy for boarding, much better than the old Xian terminal or other major terminals in Beijing or Shanghai.

Here is is a picture of the high speed train parked at the station prior to departure from Xian. The top speed of the train is about 300 km/hour. It took about an hour for the train to travel to SMX, a distance of about 150 miles, with only one stop in between. This train service has the look and feel of air service, complete with snack and drink served.

Train Harmony

SMX is on the west side of Henan, with 2 million people in metropolitan SMX. SMX is the location of the first major dam built by the Soviets in the late 1950′s, which became an environmental problem as the dammed Yellow River quickly silted up the lake formed. SMX started as a mining and smelting town, given its hydropower and many  coal, bauxite, and gold mines.  Therefore the city is keen to transform itself as a center for green production.

Henan, the most populous province of China with more than 100 million people. It produces the most grain in China. The train travels beyond SMX for another hour to arrive at the end station  Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan with a population more than 6 million. The labor pool is cheap and big. Lately, Foxconn has shifted much of its manufacturing of Apple products to Henan.

I stayed two days in SMX for presentation and business, returning by the same high speed train. Here is a video of the train arriving at SMX from Zhengzhou.

This trip to SMX is a follow up on a trip there about a year ago, when I gave a talk on my solar electric car at Xian JiaoTung University. Professor Cao of XJTU has built about 20 electric cars based on the Suzuki sedan. He is heading an institute for EV research located inside SuDa Communications Group (SDJTG), a company with many successful products, the most important one for increasing fuel efficiency and reducing emission by enriching oxygen in air intake of gasoline engines.

President Li of Suda Group

The city of SMX has a new development area for high tech development. SMX allocated President Li of SDJTG 3000 acres, out of which he has purchased already 900 acres. Mr Li plans to spend 3 billion yuan (1 USD ~ 6.3 yuan) to build a car manufacturing plant staffed by four thousand, with an annual production target of 200,000 electric cars.

In China, enterprise development needs the active support of the local governments. Such support includes land, tax, license, and most important, market advantages. My friend Mr Li, a very devout Christian and businessman of great integrity, has the full support of the city and the party.

Last year I test drove their EV to validate the car before the entire city council. This time around, they have successfully tested these cars on a daily basis as a taxi fleet. I rode in the taxi around town, which is quiet, comfortable, and smooth.

I would like to launch a successful commercialization of the Monarch EV in China. I met, with much official welcome last year and this year the Party Secretary Mr. Zhang, who is interested in my Monarch EV and my solar umbrella. I met the Mayor Ms Zhao later for a brief 15 minutes to explain to her my ideas. 

San Men Xia Mayor Ms Zhao exchanges on electric vehicle technologies

I gave each an iPAD, whereas Secretary Zhang gave me a beautiful gold leafed Taoist scripture The Way (Dao De Jing).

Secretary Zhang and me in official meeting

On learning that I am going to Tibet, which is quite cold now, Secretary Zhang gave me a new army coat which is heavy and warm. It was useful the morning I went to the Potala Palace until it got balmy in the afternoon.

Me in my PLA coat, in front of the Potala Palace

I also got a title as Associate Dean of Mr. Li’s Institute for Electric Vehicle, with Professor Cao being the Dean or head. With that I can apply for a grant for the further development of my PV products in China.

I invited the city officials for an official visit to Arizona and the city of Scottsdale. I touted Arizona as the solar capital of the world. They were delighted for the invitation. They also promised support of my solar products, most likely as a joint venture with SDJTG for which my contribution is intellectual property injection.

I believe they will be commercially successful for their EV, based on the nine advantages described by Professor Cao. In the nascent EV business, it is of paramount importance that a market position be defined. Their key advantage is low cost and a range of almost 300 Km on one charge.

I was invited for a two day visit to Science Park of Hong Kong, a small city by itself for industrial research and development. In particular, I gave two talks for the government sponsored Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) on the Solar Umbrella and the Monarch EV.

I am planning technology transfer and further development of my technologies in Hong Kong and China. I spoke not only to researchers and project leaders, but also to government funding agency as well as marketing personnel at ASTRI.

ASTRI research is focused on 4 major domains, with energy research being a cross domain effort. While I am interested in switching and wireless research, my visit in Hong Kong is focused on solar energy and electric vehicle, and other applications such as water desalination.

While Hong Kong has substantial funding for research and development and planning to double R&D in the near future, Hong Kong as a commercial and financial center has a spotty record in high tech R&D and production.

Being a trading center established by Britain, Hong Kong was a major toy and garment manufacturer during the sixties and seventies. Later, much of manufacturing is moved to Shenzhen in the eighties. With the return of Hong Kong to China in the nineties, Hong Kong played a large role as a financial and trading center, and to a lesser and diminishing role as providing the capital and expertise for industrialization. The 2000′s saw a rapid rise of industrial production of China, making it the manufacturing workshop of the world dominating almost every area of labor intensive manufacturing.

The decade of 2010 shall witness China dominating also in technology intensive industries, such as automobiles, trains, communications, as well as in energy production and consumption. China has surpassed the US in areas of car production, energy consumption, and very soon in renewable energy generation (hydro, solar, and wind).

What role could Hong Kong play in technology R&D for China? Whereas the British concept of free trade fostered the development of strategically located entrepôts such as Hong Kong and Singapore, current globalization has diminished the advantages of such former trading powers. New trading centers such as Shanghai and Shenzhen have risen to over shadow Hong Kong.

Besides the production and exchange of goods, the exchange of currency and financial transaction remains the forte of Hong Kong, as China maintains an non-exchangeable currency the yuan. As such, Hong Kong still retains its role for capitalizing industries through the Hong Kong stock exchange.

With the prolific saving of the Chinese citizens, capitalizing yuan denominated industries through yuan deposit has become an important source of capital for industrial development of China. Chinese citizens deposit their hard earned yuan in largely government owned banks, earning an interest that does not sufficiently compensated inflation, while banks lend quite freely at a substantial margin to largely state owned enterprises for capitalization. In that regard, initial public offering of stocks in China has also overtaken Hong Kong.

It is not anticipated that the yuan shall be freely exchanged in the near future. Much trade friction between China and the US is a result of a tightly controlled exchange rate between the US dollar and the Chinese yuan. It is arguable if the yuan is really undervalued.

Given the few Chinese investment vehicles are safe and not bubble prone, there are few choices for Chinese to invest in other than deposit in banks and purchasing properties. Not allowing the Chinese citizen to freely exchange their yuan prevents capital flight from China.

Coming back to the subject of the Science Park, I believe that the major commodity Hong Kong can trade is ideas, in the form of intellectual properties (IP). Good ideas and designs are the capital of the modern economy. Here IP includes not just patented invention but also know how and trade secret, brands and trademarks, as well as software and protocols. IP can include intangibles such as culture, respect of law and contract, as well as goodwill and connections.

Respect of property rights is ingrained in western and Judaeo-Christian-Islamic values, while respect of commercial contract is the foundation of British common law. The respect of intellectual property rights is a natural extension of physical and commercial property protection. However the argument concerning legal protection of IPR is less tangible. Can software and genetic information be patented? Should software be open source or proprietary? How can we protect IPR while not impeding open exchange and adoption of ideas?

It is not the purpose here to answer these questions. The question I would like to explore is what advantages Hong Kong may have in the creation, exchange, and protection of IPR, in the larger context of China and the world? Here I refer to the context of rampant disregard of IPR in China. Is copying others design beneficial to China? Does the lack of IPR protection and freedom of speech an impediment to China becoming a world class economy?

Advantage or not, the tradition of the British common law distinguishes Hong Kong, particularly in the area of protecting personal and intellectual properties. Freedom of speech, in essence the freedom to express our innate free thoughts, encourages exchange of ideas as well forming of associations. The ability to think freely, to speak without fear, and to act without social and political respite remain the foundation of American creativity.

China, despite its size and tradition, may be stifling for creating and exchanging ideas, which are the driving force behind the American economy. China can copy Google as Baidu, YouTube as Tudou, Facebook as Renren, Tweeter as Weibo, and every gadget that Steve Jobs created. China is a good follower of technology use, but still lags the US in innovation and creating new markets.

Innovation and creativity need to be nurture by the educational system. Chinese students are forced fed regimented knowledge without learning how to ask question and choose what they may learn. They must follow societal norms and paths or else they may be locked out of educational and job opportunities.

The educational system, besides the function to raise the intellectual and vocational ability of students, performs the essential function to eliminate the incapable and to distinguish the elite, in an effort to re-establish a Confucian society with rigidly stratified classes of people.

Hong Kong, while I grew up, had an elitist educational system for training civil servants, very much in line with the Confucian ideal that an excellent scholar is entitled to become government officials. This is outmoded and now replaced with a less competitive examination system  steered closer to the American system.

The first advantage Hong Kong can offer with its improving educational system, promoting freedom that foster creativity and risk taking.

Second, Hong Kong, with respect of property rights and contractual obligations, can create a platform for the fair and protected exchange of intellectual properties. Unfortunately, Hong Kong does not have full fledged patenting system, as patent protection is exercised by individual countries for the production and use of commercialized inventions. Nevertheless, Hong Kong can distinguish itself if prosecution of contractual obligations and patent violations is rigorously and fairly exercised.

In the following, I shall describe an example of ASTRI R&D in the area of concentrated solar PV (CSPV) power generation, which is close to what I am doing.

For about a year, an ASTRI project has designed and built an innovative CSPV system based on using high efficiency triple junction PV cells. Here is a panel of 8 parabolic reflective mirrors that weighs more than 20 pounds as I lifted one. System efficiency is around 25%, down from the almost 40% of Spectrolab cells when reflective and collective inefficiency are accounted for.

Solar panel of cell for each mirror

Several panels are mounted on a sun tracking platform, generating about 1 Kilowatt of power. The panel casing is made out of aluminum, while the supporting column for tracking is purchased and made out of steel.

Each parabolic mirror is about 1 square foot in sunlight receiving surface, reflecting light onto a light-wave guide made out of plastic. Light guidance is by total internal reflection, turning light focused at the focal point of the parabolic mirror by 90 degrees to illumine the PV cell mounted on the side of the aluminum case as shown in the following figure.

The prototype is impressive in the excellence of design and efficiency (25%). The design is somewhat similar to that of Solfocus that has major operation in Arizona. Both avoid the issue of active cooling such as that of Rehnu and our solar umbrella. In the process, heat generated is not captured for use such as for heating water or for water purification also.

While the R&D is well executed, the question of user scenario and which market to commercialize remains unclear.

This is, I believe, the most important question confronting ASTRI. The market, not technology, must be the primary focus of R&D. We cannot invent before we understand user demand, current or anticipated. ASTRI research can be initiated by industry and therefore putting the horse (the market) rightfully in front of the the carriage (technology). Nevertheless, the researcher must be engaged in defining or creating a market. It is too early to tell if ASTRI R&D can help bridge the gap between invention and commercialization. I am open to offering my renewable energy products to help bridge this gap.

We want water turned potable by distillation under the sun.

Clean water is essential to living. We take often for granted the plentiful, easy, and cheap supply of potable water in the US. However in many parts of the world, trying to find enough potable water can be a daily struggle. Drinking contaminated and often salty water is a leading world health problem.

I have been planting quite a few fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and milkweed plants as described in my last blog. I found it is very important in hot and arid Arizona to have a drip system to supply water daily directly to the root system in order for the plants to flourish. I believe that desalination of water, dripped supply for growing plants can be an effective way for food production in places close to the sea with little fresh water supply.

In the US, purified water is sold at around 25 cents a gallon, often in vending machine that purify tap water through reverse osmosis. There is therefore a high premium paid, even in the US, to rid public water supply of naturally hard water, such as in my area where water comes from the Colorado River or the Salt River.

We have produced 1 meter diameter parabolic mirrors that can capture about 700W of sun power. We hope to obtain 200W of electricity at around 15 volts, and another 300W of thermal energy for heating water perhaps to about 60 degree Celsius. We can also heat water up to about 80 degrees if we sacrifice some of the photovoltaic electricity production, as a higher temperature may reduce efficiency of our triple junction PV cells.

Over the past month, I have been working on a cost effective solar desalination method. This work was triggered by my recent appointment as Adjunct Professor for the King Abdul Azziz University in Saudi Arabia. Though my appointment is for research in Cloud Computing, I thought solar desalination using my solar umbrella could be very useful for China, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent.

It is too early to disclose the method here prior to filing a full patent on my invention, but preliminary calculation is very promising for low cost production of distilled water. The key is allowing small scale and personal generation of potable water that can produce hot water and solar energy at the same time. In essence the solar umbrella project can be touted as essential for a modern habitat without the need for large infrastructures such as power, water, and fuel. You can take a solar umbrella to an island in the South Pacific and can live off the land and the sun. The facility can be very useful for disaster relief.

I have been dreaming up the 7 P’s for the solar umbrella: Price, Power, Personal, Portable, Potable, Pretty, and Protective, i.e. low price, high power, personal in usage, portable by being foldable and light weight, potable for water purification, pretty as architecture, and protecting us from sun and wind exposure.

The rest of this blog piece focuses on the science and technologies of water desalination.

On a small scale, reverse osmosis is the preferred method for water purification. I use a small RO machine at home which produces about 5 gallons of water per day, enough for drinking, cooking, and topping my salt water aquarium. When I need more RO water, such as last week when I changed about 20 gallons of water in my 150 gallon tank, I would take four 5-gallon drinking bottles to the nearby Walgreen water machine for RO water, costing me $5.

RO works by pressing impure water through a porous membrane that allows water to pass through but not impurities such as dissolved salt (NaCl) and lime (CaCO3). Osmotic pressure, used by plants to help push water up their trunks against gravity, results when purer water is more likely to move across the porous membrane than impure water, as the impurity is blocked by the membrane.

To desalinate sea water, a thermodynamic calculation gives a pressure of 22 bar (1 bar = 1 atmospheric pressure) required to push water across a porous membrane. The work required to move a volume V of fresh water across the membrane is PV, where P is the excess pressure on one side of the membrane. A theoretical minimum energy required to desalinate 1 liter of water is therefore 0.66 kilo-calories (in dietary term 0.66 calories) or 2.8 KJ. Therefore, it takes in theory about 3W to produce 1 cc or gram of water per second, which is not much power for that much water.

In practice, it would take more than 10W to produce 1 cc of water per second. Most membranes are not as porous as it should be. Also, osmotic pressure required to push water through the membrane increases as salt concentrates.

Even at 10W per cc per second, a 1KW system could produce 100 cc per second, or 6 liters (more than 1 gallon) per minute. Therefore 1KWh of electricity could produce 60 gallons of water per hour. Current methods can exceed 70 gallons per KWh per hour. Energy cost per gallon depends on electricity price. For 20 cents per KWh, you are talking about a fraction of a penny of electricity cost per gallon of water produced, about $3 or $4 per 1000 gallon.

This price, while much lower than the quarter per gallon I pay at Walgreen, remains several times higher than city supplied water. Nevertheless, a personal mode of pure distilled water in remote places could be quite economical.

While RO is energy wise more efficient than thermal distillation in terms of KWh per 1000 gallons, thermal distillation can be more cost effective in caloric terms. Burning fossil fuel to heat water produces pure calories, without the typical loss due to 40% conversion efficiency to electricity. Most water desalination plants employ the waste heat from thermal power plants burning coal, oil, natural gas, or from nuclear power plants.

The most prevalent thermal distillation in commercial fresh water production employs a multi-stage flash distillation technique as described in Wikipedia.

Schematic of a multi-stage flash desalinator
A – Steam in
B – Seawater in
C – Potable water out
D – Waste out
E – Steam out
F – Heat exchange
G – Condensation collection
H – Brine heater

The inefficiency of boiling water to desalinate water is due to the large amount of energy used to heat water to boiling point and then even more energy required for the latent heat of vaporizing water. Condensing steam generates fresh water, and releases a large amount of latent heat of condensation. While this released latent heat is captured for heating brine as in the above picture, such exchange is lossy and inefficient.

Boiling point can be lowered by reducing pressure, e.g. water would boil at 50 degree Celsius at 0.1 bar pressure, or 80 degree Celsius at 0.5 bar pressure. New techniques that require much less heat for distillation involves low pressure vaporization and effective heat exchange to capture the latent heat of condensation.

After a week of mental experimentation, I found an effective way for solar desalination, combining the benefits of solar hot water generation and PV generation, both from concentrated solar power (CSP). I have purchased equipment to build a remarkably simple device that can serve as pump and condenser. If steam with higher pressure than 1 bar is used, the device also serves as a steam engine that can generate electricity directly. Also, the device can serve as a DC-AC inverter, which is often an expensive and bulky component to convert the DC power output of a roof top solar panel system into the AC power input to the house or the electrical grid.

An all in one solar umbrella: providing power, heated and purified water, and shade under the sun.

I have been building an eco-system at home for the Monarch. Here is a video of my monarch sanctuary, showing both monarchs that emerged from cocoons, as well as the caterpillars.

To build the sanctuary, first thing: plant milk weed. I bought and dug up some desert milk weed that is grown here in Arizona. It has no leaves but long green stalks, at the end of which greenish white small flowers grow. Monarch caterpillars love eating the flower and tender shoots at the end of the stalk.

I bought home everyday from SkySong a harvest of milkweed shoots. Boy, they ravage them and poop quite a bit. You see here a fat caterpillar hanging in under the SkySong canopy.

Unfortunately, a single desert milk weed usually hosts a single caterpillar, as Monarchs choose to lay a single egg per plant. Around SkySong, there must be at least a hundred milk weed plants. There has been a lot of Monarchs flying around in SkySong lately, until the cold snap that came about a week ago. Gee, it is cold here, something like 50 degrees, and you can see the snow covering Four Peaks, 8000 feet tall and about 50 miles away.

Here is a flush picture of the flush vegetation under the SkySong canopy

I was told that the butterfly plant, basically a red milk weed, is an excellent host for Monarchs, not only the caterpillars, but also the butterflies as it produces lots of pretty colorful small flowers, either yellow or bright orange. I bought three of them, one first which was practically defoliaged by three Monarch caterpillars. Expensive bug food, at $20 a plant.

Second thing: plant lots of flowering plants for the butterflies. A bought Montana, which carpets SkySong, a favorite nectar source for Monarchs. You can see Montana surrounding pedestrian sidewalks all around SkySong.

I bought also quite a few perenial plants to provide nectar for Monarchs, planted all around my house and in the Monarch sanctuary. In the following picture, you see Honeysuckle on the left, Montana in the center, a transplanted Desert Milk Weed, and on the far right, a climbing Esperanza on the fence.

We also planted several honeysuckle around the house to provide barrier from our next door neighbor.

We also planted rose bushes inside the Monarch sanctuary. They look gorgeous!

Here is another barrier plant we planted.

We then put a net around the pool pump area, which should be large enough for Monarchs to fly around, to lay eggs on the milk weed plant there, and to feed on the flowers we planted. You can see the netted area. The tall thin plant in the foreground is a bing cherry tree that can become a big tree for a Monarch nesting area.

Besides the bing cherry tree, we planted two other fruit trees, including a mission fig tree and a guava tree, both not as big.

Also bought a grape vine, which I think should climb well on the fences, but I have little expectation of getting Thompson grapes in hot Arizona.

Here is the guava tree I planted next to the indoor swimming pool. It already has some fruits on it. In the background are the ribs of a dead Saguaro Cactus that used to grace our backyard at almost 30 feet height. I am planting the bing cherry tree in its place.

Another interesting tree I planted is a Eucalyptus tree, yes the one that Koala Bears munch on its leaf. It is going to be big also, with beautiful flowers that provide nectar for hummingbird and insects, and is reputed to allow Monarchs to winter there.

I have planted so many shrubs and trees that I am getting sore. But it is all fun and lots of imagination.

I bought also online some butterfly memorabilia, including butterfly magnets (not shown), thermometer, feeder with nectar, milk weed seed, etc.

I got the milkweed seeds (swamp milk weed, common milk weed, and butterfly milk weed) earlier, and planted half of that earlier. They wilted as soon as they sprouted, due to the heat. I planted the rest about two weeks ago, and they never germinated. Tough! Here are the three trays of failed milk weed planting. Adding insult to injury, the plastic butterflies that is supposed to light up by solar panels did not work either.

The almost twenty caterpillars I bought home all turned into cocoons, and some successfully turned into butterfly. The net I built was not tight enough to keep them in, so most of them flew away, which I do not mind at all. The other cocoons have not hatched yet. It is kind of cold, so maybe they take a longer time, or maybe they won’t.

Anyway, the fun is building the sanctuary. Whether Monarchs take refuge there is hard to say, but I sure like to contribute to building up their habitat. Well, maybe just to raise Monarch awareness. That is enough.

I have been chasing after the Monarch Butterflies under the SkySong Canopy the past few weeks.

It all started one day when I sighted a beautiful Monarch Butterfly just right outside my office. I was able to get very close and took the following pictures of that butterfly.

This is a male butterfly, as it has a yellow lower wing lobe seen from the underside. It is feeding on the nectar of the Desert Milk Weed plant that is planted around the buildings of SkySong. The SkySong Innovation Center is a large campus built using a tax initiative approved by Scottsdale in the mid 2000, which is wonderfully landscaped with lots of trees and flowers that attracts birds and butterflies.

A few days later, I bare handed caught a female Monarch and brought it home, kept inside the indoor swimming pool. It died the next day and here is a picture of the dead Monarch on the river pebble floor of my indoor pool.

Besides color, for which a female is mostly brown without yellow on the underside, the female Monarch also has distinctively large white spot around the wing. I found out that Monarch cannot be kept indoor, so I decided to build a Monarch canopy annex to my house. That is the subject of blog for next week.

Over the weekend, I went to a Monarch Butterfly Exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden about 2 miles from SkySong. Here is a video of Monarchs which I find very inspiring.

The plant the Monarchs flocked to is called Salvio Clevelandii (Cleveland Sage or Chaparral Sage that is found in Baja and San Diego area). I am now looking for place to buy these plants.

In the past two weeks, I collected quite a number (more than a dozen) Monarch caterpillars from around the SkySong canopy. Here is a picture of these caterpillars which I relocated to several Red Milk Weed plants that the caterpillar loves to eat its leaves and the butterfly drinks its nectar.

Boy, these caterpillars are ferrocious eaters, and they soon cleaned up half the leaves of that plant which cost $20. So I decided to harvest Desert Milk Weed daily from SkySong and house the newly caught caterpillars in a small butterfly net I bought a while back. They chew up an ounce of milk weed flowers every day. You can see the well fed caterpillars climbed to the top and about to cocoon themselves.

These marauding caterpillars, if not caged, would travel all over the place to look for high grounds for cocooning. Here is one happy caterpillar on a narrow leaf milk weed plant that I bought from the Desert Botanical Garden.

A fat caterpillar shown in the picture would cocoon itself within a day or two, with the cocooning process taking only a few hours. Here is a picture of the well camouflaged cocoons on the Red Milk Weed.

Overall, my experience has been one of awe struck at the beauty and resourcefulness of the Monarch in various stage of development. I am waiting eagerly to video tape the Monarch Butterfly emerging from its cocoon, to be posted next week in conjunction with the Monarch habitat I am building now as annex to the indoor swimming pool.

As the modern day icon of american inventiveness Steve Job passed away last week, this blog makes a summary of what makes a great inventor and industrialist from his life story.

No man in modern times have created more inventions than Steve Job did, in the i-series of iMac, iPod, iPhone, iTune, and iPAD. This is added on top of his previous series of successes of the Apple 1 and 2 computers, the McIntosh, the NeXT operating system embedded in todays Apple computers, and the memorable series of CGI movies (computer generated imagery) produced by Pixar, started with Toy Stories.

Only Thomas Edison is more epoch changing and original in the media industry. I draw here the parallel inventions of Thomas Edison and the significant improvements of Steve Jobs. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph for music recording and playing. Steve Jobs perfected the iPod for personal music download and storage. Thomas Edison invented the movie camera that brought on mass entertainment. Steve Jobs transformed the computer graphical interface for multimedia presentation, giving us such pleasurable media windows as the iPAD complete with a camera. Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone for the telephone. Steve Jobs remade the cell phone not only for telephony but also for the Internet and brave new world of YouTube, Facebook, and GPS.

Thomas Edison is more inventive and scientific, with many more patents in his lifetime (more than 1000) compared with Steve Jobs (more than 300), and in more fields such as in energy generation (the electric motor), transmission (transformer, grid, and socket), and use (most notably the light bulb), as well as his forgotten ventures into mining and building construction. The broader impact of Thomas Edison is due to his long life and incredibly long hours of work.

But the tragically shorter life of Steve Jobs lends to more focus, urgency, and better business execution than Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison was reputed to be the best inventor but the worst businessman. His dealing with J.P. Morgan in electricity generation and distribution resulted in his ouster from the Edison Power Companies. General Electric, started by Edison, promoted mass production, such as the light bulb, but according to Edison, his light bulb invention did not make him money other than tears. Edison also tried to dominate the movie industry with exorbitant royalty fee on his movie camera invention, only to find the movie industry moved from his studio in Orange New Jersey to Hollywood California. His ventures into iron ore mining and modular building construction almost made him bankrupt.

Edison died with about the modern day equivalent of about 100 million dollars, no where close to the 7 billion dollars of Jobs.

We may wonder why the difference. The world mourned the passing of both men, due to the impact they made on people’s everyday life. I think they did the right thing. Edison focused on inventions in a broad range of fields and left the process of commercialization to the industrialist. Jobs focused on the consumer and made sure that his products deliver the satisfying and dazzling experience to the consumer. He is also consummate to communicate to the world his invention in terms of how to do things new and simple.

I believe that Jobs’ singular focus induced later in life by his bout of pancreatic cancer discovered in 2003 brought about the epitome of his success: the iPhone and the iPad. The touching Stanford commencement address tells how the threat of death and the brevity of life brought to him the urgency, the faith, and the focus on the purpose of his life.

The string of unbroken successes is truly amazing for Steve Jobs. Was it just luck? I do not believe so. Focus on the purpose and meaning of your life, strongly believe in your ability and instinct, work hard on what you believe, refuse to be diverted by anything else, and create suspense before communicating effectively with a wow.

You got to find what you love, and do what you love. Keep finding it, and never stop. Keep looking, and don’t settle. Follow your heart and your instinct. Those are the words of Steve Jobs.