Transcript: Panel: Energy R&D at DoD

ENERGY: A CONVERSATION ABOUT
OUR NATIONAL ADDICTION


ENERGY R&D AT THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE


INTRODUCTIONS AND MODERATOR:
AL SHAFFER

SPEAKERS:
TOM HARTRANFT, CHIEF,
ARMY ENERGY BRANCH, ERDC-CERL

RICH CARLIN,
DIRECTOR, ONR’S DIVISION OF MECHANICS
AND ENERGY CONVERSION

DR. MARK J. LEWIS,
CHIEF SCIENTIST, U.S. AIR FORCE



6:15 – 8:30 P.M.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2007


Transcript by
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.




    AL SHAFFER:   Hi, I’m Al Shaffer.  I’m the nominal moderator for tonight but my biggest job is to introduce the speakers because we have a very good panel of speakers, and then get the heck off the stage.  We want to have a fairly open dialogue; you’re going to hear from the services, Army, Navy and Air Force.  I’ve been in office as secretary of Defense long enough to know you always go in that order: Army, Navy, Air Force.  That’s what they teach you.  You know, when you go on the letterhead it’s always Army, Navy, Air Force.  I’ll tell you why sometime.  But they’re going to tell you about what their programs are in the three services for energy research and development.

    So without further ado, I’m going to introduce first – Tom, you’re going to have to help me out with the pronunciation.

    TOM HARTRANFT:  Pronounce every one of them: Hartranft. 

    MR. SHAFFER:  Hartranft.  That’s a wonderful name.

    Dr. Tom Hartranft is the chief of the energy research branch at the U.S. Army Civil Engineering R&D Center Lab at Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, or CERL.  Tom is a 20-year Air Force veteran, so we actually have three Air Force people up here on the stage with one Navy person.  Rich, take a step to the left.

Tom had a 20-year military Air Force career.  He was basically a tactical weapons systems buyer.  Returned to Penn State to pursue a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and started to get into the energy business.  He was a one-year visiting professor at Bucknell University in the year 2000, and accepted his current position as a senior scientist and grants chief at U.S. Army CERL in Champagne-Urbana in 2001.  The office leads the Army’s research development and field engineering of stationary power development, distribution, energy storage and demand-site energy conservation technology. 

    So without further ado, Tom.  (Off mike.)

    MR. HARTRANFT:  Well, thank you for that introduction.  Can you hear me in the back?  Great.

    I’m happy to be here tonight; I bring you good tidings from the Midwest.  It’s cold there; it’s warmer here. 

    I’ll start out with a little levity tonight from my daughter over the weekend, who’s a 30-something.  She says – on my gray hair, she says, one of the benefits of growing older is that in a hostage situation you’re likely to be released first.  So I thanked her for that word with me. 

    Looks like we’re starting with the end in mind; I’ll go back to the beginning.

    Across the top here, we’ve got several things that we worry about at our office.  Our office is in the Corps of Engineers Laboratory System.  I have 20 people who focus on power delivery, distribution, storage and energy efficiency.  Our mainstays and our expertise lie in energy efficiencies as well as in power delivery. 

Here, we’re talking about security; we’re talking about affordability, and we’re talking about sustainability.  We are nestled in the CERL office with a very competent environmental group focused on bogs and bunnies, and other things that would shut Army training ranges down; focused on ecology, land management; focused on outside-the-fence aspects of the growth of the civilian communities and the competition for scarce resources.  So we look very closely at sustainability aspects when we’re looking at affordability, when we’re looking at security as well.

Spectrum of power:  I borrowed this, and I have used it repeatedly since I first saw it from a colleague of mine, Mr. Dan Nolan, sitting in the back, from Army’s rapid-equipping force.  Great slide to illustrate the spectrum of power delivery, home station to foxhole.  Home station is on your right, installations, also training ranges.  In the middle is deployed bases; on your far right end is the tactical.

In the Army, we have well-established lanes of responsibility for research for stationary power; that’s through the core, that’s through the ERDC, Engineering Research and Development Center, and interred my branch.  For the tactical side, it’s research, development, and engineering command, large group, working for the war fighter, platform power, soldier power, et cetera.  In the middle is this somewhat of a no-man’s land as far as responsibility and motivation to go out and get arms around it, and that’s forward operating bases, and I’m going to get back to that later today.  Dan Nolan and REF have been doing a great many things in the last year on rapid equipping force on deployed bases.  We can help them do more.

The themes of our research, now, looking at stationary.  We focus on systems; we focused on applied research.  In turn, that typically translates into demonstrations of somebody else’s devised technology: Department of Energy, academia, industry.  Principally, it’s on energy conservation at the top, and it’s on power delivery at the bottom.  I’ll go into these in some more detail as I go through. 

Let me, however, pause on what’s at your upper-right-hand corner, that yellow background.  That’s an Army glide slope.  That’s a metric that Army takes very seriously for its stationary installations facilities to say, we aspire to a particular degree of BTUs per square foot of building stock.  Started out in 1985; in 2003, the Energy Policy Act came about.  In 2007, a new executive order came out and the executive order requires baseline to 2003 consumption, a 3 percent per year reduction of BTUs per square foot.  That’s a real challenge.  That slope on the far right is only 15 percent higher for all of Army’s building stock than my brand-new home in Champagne, Illinois, and it’s a tight building where I live.  So I’m saying that’s a challenge; technology is needed to be brought into play there.

Some things we’re doing in that area:  The Energy Policy Act of 2005 said for all government facilities, thou shalt be 30 percent more efficient than the standard ASHRAE efficiency standard – ASHRAE, Association of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers – 30 percent better than that.  Okay, great, I can do that.  I can do that.  How are we going to do that?  What does it mean to be 30 percent better?  What is the standard?

We have been supported from the assistant chief of staff for Installation Management Policy Office in the Army to go forward and address individual building types, barracks, dining halls, maintenance facilities, and convert the ASHRAE specifications into doable technologies, into prescriptive needs that go out into the Corps of Engineers’ request for proposals.  The barracks, the equipment maintenance facilities got finalized this fall, now required in every new construction, and we’ve provided a prescription and we specify to BITRS (ph) what consumption of energy they should meet and how they meet it.  We’ve given measurement and verification requirements as well. 

At the bottom is maintenance facilities, give you an illustration of, well, what kinds of things are we now prescribing as a result of our analysis with DOE and with ASHRAE.  Well, we say for maintenance facilities, thou shalt have radiant heating on the floor.  That’s as much a productivity as it is an energy efficiency because the troops are on the floor doing maintenance.  Instead of heating 20 feet from the ceiling down, and not even getting the heat to the folks on the cold floor, we’ll heat the floor with hydronic radiant heating.  We’ll provide solar collectors on the walls of our northern climate buildings, and preheat the air that’s coming in for vehicle exhaust replenishment off of the solar in the northern climates in particular.  We’ll put cool roofs on southern-climate installation buildings, et cetera.  So those are the kinds of things when we say, as our analysis, makes sense, it’s cost-effective, won’t cost an arm and a leg, and it will get us down that flag slope. 

What about the legacy buildings?  We’re not building just new; we’ve got a large inventory of other buildings.  Some pictorially aspects here:  We’ve got cool roofs up – I won’t use that.  That hand is on cool roofs.  The Navy’s already putting in some light-colored roofs.  Now, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has roofing that’s brown and other darker colors.  They’re reflective; they don’t absorb all the heat.

In the middle, at the top, is thermography.  We’re using that as a diagnostic tool to make sure we’ve got some beginnings of quantification, at least, of how leaky our building envelopes are.  On the far right, for you, is hybrid lighting, day lighting; take advantage of all of that lighting technology that’s available.  Lower left of your viewing is the radiant hydronic heating of the floor, where it’s practical to fit.  Bottom middle, that’s a tactical maintenance facility, that’s a tank coming out of there.  We’ve got all kinds of military platforms that go in and out of these motor pools, and they have all kinds of exhaust connections, and we want to have close capture of all of that exhaust to minimize the replenishment air that we also pay to position and bring back troops.  So we’ve helped on that.
   
    Can’t read this; it will be in the charts that are on the website later.  What we’re doing for the overall legacy is putting together return-on-investment analyses, the business case of what climate, what technology, what building are these kinds of technologies, be it day-lighting, radiant floor heating, cool roofs.  Where are they best applied?  What’s the return on investment timeframe if it’s put in in Maine versus put in in Arizona, et cetera?  These are published now; they’re available to our Army installation managers.  A chart at the end of my presentation has a website where anybody can access them. 

    Technology transition, turn gears, power:  One chart illustrates conceptually a power delivery aspect that we have embraced for three years now.  We showed earlier the spectrum of home station to foxhole; RDE-COM has now embraced this.  We’re looking at having an architecture on your right-hand side that brings in a variety of power delivery sources.  These are all distributed on the left-hand side.  On the far right-hand side are all the using demands ranging from soldier power, hydroelectric vehicle, tactical operations centers, forward camps, training centers and installations.

We should aspire to – we are aspiring to building-block technologies, scalable technology, seamless technology through that full spectrum.  And in turn, in CODIS (ph) installations in particular, we’ll still take advantage of the utility grid when it’s most affordable and when it’s up.  That’s the black and blue there to the right of the gold circle.

    The heart of the concept is something that’s the technical challenge, and that’s the power architecture, the control architecture.  The Electric Power Research Institute, the Consortium for Electric Transmission Utility System, all other kind of big think-tank entities, have stated for years, great concept but we need fast modeling.  We need the control architecture development; we need this, we need that.  That architecture’s not ready.  Nobody in this room could put together renewables with diesel jet sets, with buildings and dynamic power demands today, and have it operate like that.  When we bring in small-scale power delivery in a base-type application, there are different experiences in the power-side; there’s smaller inertia, smaller forgiving tolerances for disturbances that could collapse a local network system, different mechanics at our national power-grid system.  So, since nobody’s been doing this to any degree, it’s an unknown territory; need to get into that.

    Forward operating bases:  Nothing to accompany this, but some words from Tom.  Dan Nolan, rapid equipping force, has been pursuing commercial off-the-shelf energy conservation measures, some renewables, pre-screening modestly the contractors’ statements of what these capabilities can do, and they’ve been taking them in theater, ranging from foaming tents for energy efficiencies to some renewables, et cetera.  REF needs help; they need an entity or entities to help with a spectrum of technology maturation and expectation, as well as the screening and measurement and verification for a next generation of forward operating bases.

There is a new initiative out of Army tradeoff, training and doctrine command, that’s been chartered to initiate sustainable contingency operations, evaluations, for every facet of base camps and forward operating bases: sewage, dining halls, waste dealings with, powered energy are a part of that.  It’s supported out of a maneuver support center out of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; Mr. Kurt Keneven (sp) is a lead in that, and we’re actively supporting him along with mobile electric power from a power energy entity. 

    Get off the stage chart:  Again, for PowerPoint, three hyperlinks.  The top one in red is to our overarching office, giving the current activities and customers that we’re working for.  The DOD fuel cell site is a compendium of the activities we’re doing, specifically in fuel cells, stationary fuel cell deployment and our lessons learned on that, as well as some materials that we’re learning for a hydrogen economy and supporting defense logistics agency and other entities like that.  On your right is an international energy agency initiative that we are the lead agent for, and it’s directly supporting our energy efficiencies for the Army installations.  It’s a collaboration, blending together European, Canadian and Far East countries, their millions of dollars, their expertise, right people in an international community for government building energy efficiencies.  That’s leveraging our ability, in turn, to help the Army meet its flag slope for stationary power. 

    All of those energy efficiencies, technologies, that we’re doing for CONUS, head application for deployed bases; it’s a matter of standing back and addressing them in a way that’s logical for the portability that deployed bases bring with them. 

    Thank you very much.

    (Applause.)

    MR. SHAFFER:  Thank you, Tom, for starting us off. 

    I jotted down a couple of notes as we were going through this because I started off a little bit loosely, but I want to throw some facts out because Dr. Hartranft came up with some very good points about what his service is doing.  But I want to throw out some facts that are very, very important.

    Right now, the DOD gets about 10 percent of its CONUS energy from renewable sources.  That’s about double the national average, and it is by far and away the best of any of our federal government agencies.  Ten percent of our energy comes from renewable sources. 

    We lead, the DOD leads, the federal government in meeting the mandates of increasing energy efficiency.  He showed the one chart up there that showed the reduction in the Army in energy used per square footage.  Over the last roughly 15 years, the Department of Defense has increased our energy efficiency, per square foot, by about 28 percent.  That’s pretty significant. 

    Although not an Army installation, and perhaps Dr. Lewis will talk about this, the DOD now has the U.S.’s largest solar farm.  I think it’s either first or second in the world; I get conflicting reports, there’s also a very large one in France.  But Nellis Air Force base is going online with a huge solar farm, and it’s just about at the cost even, a break-even point. 

About 75 percent of the federal energy awards given each year go to DOD researchers and installations.  So there’s a number of good things the DOD is doing, the Army just led it off. 

We follow it now by Dr. Rich Carlin, who I’m proud to say is a very good friend of mine.  It’s fun to come and do these things because you learn things about them when you read their bios.  I hadn’t read his bio before, so I didn’t realize that he was from Alabama, or at least went to the University of Alabama.  Your accent – you’re from Alabama?

RICH CARLIN:  Yeah.

MR. SHAFFER:  Dr. Carlin is the head of the Undersea and Surface Weapons Division at the Office of Naval Research, but he has an undergraduate degree in honors chemistry from University of Alabama, a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Iowa State University.  And all I know about organic and inorganic chemistry is that it’s reason most of us are here and not in med school because most of us flunked that in college. 

Banged around for a little while in academia, went to SUNY Buffalo – you have a bad track, going Alabama, Iowa State and Buffalo. 

MR. CARLIN:  It’s working on my accent.

(Laughter.)

MR. SHAFFER:  Hopefully you had a good coat.

Went from there, and I said something about Air Force up here; banged around academia for awhile, and then ended up in 1992 in the Syler Research Laboratory on the Air Force Academy, working in power and energy and chemistry things.  Went and stayed there for three years, went up to industry for a couple years, then in 1997 showed up at the Office of Naval Research, where we’ve watched Richard’s career just go skyrocketing from research and program to lead, up to one of the senior SES scientists at Office of Naval Research. 

And Rich’s portfolio is energy.  Rich is the department’s expert – especially now that Dr. Browning has left Department, Rich is the department’s expert in fuel cells and fuel cell research.  He is the guy that we go to for all fuel cell activity; when I have someone come in to see me, I send that over to Dr. Carlin and say, is this good, is this bad.  He understands fuel cells, he understands energy, he understands thermal management.  And Dr. Carlin is here to talk about what the Navy is doing now in research and energy.

MR. CARLIN:  Thanks, Al.

(Off mike.)

MR. CARLIN:  But how can I keep them from getting me?

It’s off. 

    (Off mike.)

MR. SHAFFER:  If anybody else is like me and didn’t turn off their BlackBerry, please put it on mute. 

(Off mike.)

MR. CARLIN:  Thanks, Al, for that introduction.  I think I learned more about myself in a roundabout way, then I realized how much I kicked around, but that’s okay.  And I can guarantee – I played a little golf in Alabama, like we all do, and they do have a gorgeous course that they built the academy around up there at Colorado Springs.  So – I mean, it was the Air Force, that’s how they do it.

In my latest incarnation, I am now the department head at ONR, and within that department, I think for this particular group, the key is that power and energy belongs to us, for the most part.  So if you look at the funding that goes in power and energy, my department, owns about 90 percent of the total dollars in terms of that execution.  So what you’re going to get here and what I’m going to really focus today is the S&T aspects of what we do in power and energy, and kind of give you an idea where some of our things are going because we do have some very large initiatives that we’re looking over the next few years, in terms of how we’re going to deal with technologies over the coming 10 to 20 years. 

Within ONR, we have a range of what we call now focus areas.  And you can go to the website; you can pick up the brochure, and find out there’s 13 of these total.  Well, one thing that was sort of important is that one of the 13 actually is designated as power and energy.  And I’m not going to really read this whole thing to you; you can find it in the website.  But if you sort of go to the objectives, these are the key areas that we’re interested in: alternative energy sources, energy storage, efficient energy and power, very key from our standpoint – I’ll get back to that with the ship applications; and high energy and pulse power, also very important.  One of the big differences that, when you look at a military versus commercial or DOD installation site, is that we are very interested in pulse power capability.  So what you’ll see is a lot of the technologies that we work on you won’t find in the commercial market because it’s not necessary to hit these kind of giga-joule, kind of power levels that we need for some of the applications.

I think everybody’s pretty much aware that if you look at what you really need in a Department of Defense Navy example here is, when you look at the power spectrum that you have to deal with across military applications, it goes everything down from – in our case of course, we’re the Marines versus soldiers for the Army, individual Marine can be sensors, which go down into the milliwatts, even microwatt level, depending exactly what you’re talking about, ramping all the way up – and in our case, even up to looking at ship power; now, we’re talking about tens of megawatt power capability.  And within ONR, we deal across that huge spectrum of applications.  And of course, if you’re familiar with what goes on in energy and power, a lot of the basic science that we do, of course, applies across a wide range, but not always specifically, but it does – we do provide enabling science for across this range, and we deliver products to address those various issues. 

Very importantly, what this shows in this slide here that even though, as I mentioned, we have unique applications when you look at pulse power requirements, a lot of our stuff still wants to leverage against the commercial market.  In fact, ideally you can leverage everything against the commercial market because it’s a cost savings.  And so what we’ve done in this chart, just to give you an idea if you look across, you can see how the military systems map into commercial applications or into power levels.  Obviously, the requirements for the power systems are much more stringent in terms of ruggedization and reliability and so forth, but you might not necessarily acquire a commercial side, but a lot of it is very similar in terms of how you can take advantage of those technologies.  And so, we’re very cognizant of working across the spectrum of industry, academics and of course, other DOD and other federal agencies, and how we can take advantage of all of the things that are going into the commercial side so we can apply those to the Department of Defense.

I mentioned one of the things that we’re really pushing towards; I think people who are familiar with the Navy know that there is a desire for electric warships, there has been for a long time.  Well, I think we’re at that stage now where the technology has come far enough to allow us to really proceed on this path, and in fact the Navy has just stood up an electric ship office under the PEO ships.  It coordinates all the intent of the ESO, Electric Ship Office, is to try to come up with common architectures across all current and future ship designs, and heading towards – and I mean, very importantly towards an electric warship.  Well, very similar – and I know the Air Force has these efforts in terms of making it more electric as we move down various paths, just like the more electric airplane in terms of moving in directions to introduce the kinds of electric technologies that you need on a ship that will ultimately reach the full electric. 

And if you look at this – if you look on the right-hand side, that’s really the technology: power generations listed there, energy storage options; of course, motors and actuators, those are actually the loads but then, power-controlled distribution.  And interestingly enough, if you look at those particular categories you might notice it looks very close to Tom’s mini-grid.  And in fact, this ship is a mini-grid of power and in fact very self-contained, as required for a ship that’s on its own.

When you look at what we’re trying to do, it’s a little bit different though, compare that to commercial system.  One thing, we have to package it; even though ships are pretty big, they’re pretty small when it comes down to trying to package the power in.  So power density becomes a real big issue for us, and in fact if you look at the applications, censors, of course we have thermal management, integrated power, those are sorts of components.  But if you start looking on top side, electromagnetic gun; there’s where we’re talking about giga-joules of power.  Electromagnetic vertically launched systems, those could be also into the megawatt kind of systems.  High energy lasers, free electron lasers, is a system we’re working on right now in terms of that same kind of power levels; high-power microwave, both for – and of course, sensor applications but also electronic warfare capability; and of course, high-power sensor capabilities.  So what we’re really looking at is incredibly complex, broad-spectrum mini-grid that has required to do a full range of applications in terms of how it’s going to manage, control and deliver the electric power. 

And under there, if you see the little box at the bottom, next generation we’re going to power through NGITS; that is the approach that we’re taking in terms of how to move towards electric ship.  It’s looking at an overall integrated power system where you bring everything together, and so you’re not relying on like a generator to propulsion, and then a separate generator to auxiliary power.  The idea is to have the same primary power sources deliver a buffered form of electric power that you can move anywhere in the ship for propulsion, electric weapons, any other applications that you need. 

I mentioned a range of things.  Marine Corps – of course, we do support the U.S. Marine Corps; there is a department and we work with the department on that, George Solhan (sp) is the department head.  And those are just a quick list of some of the things we have worked and are working with them.  From power sources, there’s a new solid oxide fuel cell program that was derived from the Pentium 3 (?); it’s a $5 million per year that, thanks to Al putting that together, we thank Al for that one.  It’s an excellent program we’re putting together there.  It will be looking at desulfurized JPA, if you’re familiar with the issue with sulfur, big issue.  My big push is to try to start looking at desulfurized fuels to kind of move the sulfur problem out of the field, put it some other place to make the system more easily operated, lighter and more reliable. 

And of course, direct methanol, everybody’s familiar with that.  And then also, in terms of metal-air batteries, some people call it semi-fuel cells but there is work in zinc, aluminum and also lithium in fact, which has a very high energy content. 

Several – I forget how many years ago it was now; maybe it was four years ago an interact study was done and in fact, I noticed that on the CNA website it quotes General Mattis, and in fact, General Mattis was the person who sponsored this, and that quote to eliminate the tyranny of the logistics tail was actually from the ENRAC study, told us that at our kickoff meeting for that.

And these are some of the results that came out of that, very quickly – this entire report’s on the Web, you can find that, just go to the ONR site and type in naval research advisory council.  And if you go in, what you’ll see is that there was three main components of that; one recommendation was to move to HEVs, hybrid-electric vehicles.  While there is an opportunity for fuel savings, I can tell you every Marine that sat around at that time said, oh, good; fuel savings; we’ll put some more armor on, we’re going to put some more guns on.  So you never really got more mileage out of it, it didn’t work.  But the big selling point was the fact that if you did that, then you’d have your generator in your same vehicle so you wouldn’t have to be pulling a separate generator.  So that was the real selling point there.

Very, very importantly, from an energy standpoint, is fuel management.  And I think everybody’s aware of the cost of delivered fuel – much, much higher if you can improve on that, that’s very important.  From the Navy standpoint, particularly from the Marine Corps, how to you deliver the fuel and energy that’s needed to squads of Marines in a distributed operations environment.  That’s one of the real keys to the future operation of the Marine Corps is small groups networked together, getting what they need, when they need it, and how do you get the energy and the fuel there at the right time and the right place.  And, of course, it applies across the board, so all the services – and, of course, it applies to your holiday travels as well, hoping that all the gas stations are open with fuel.

A little more from the strategic side:  One of the recommendations was to go forward and start looking at – didn’t, as I say, recommend do it but start looking at how the DOD might participate in the manufacture of synthetic fuels, using whatever feed stock; there was no real press for particular feed stock.  It’s just some numbers were generated showing that yes, you could satisfy these demands with Fischer-Trope’’ approach in terms of synthesizing the fuels.  And a lot of the discussion really went down the route that we all kind of sort of have at this stage, is that incentivize the commercial market to go towards these kinds of routes, and make these investments, with the promise of future buys from the Department of Defense contracts, that we actually have the ability to do that, but that’s more of a policy and a political issue more than a technology issue.  The technology’s there to do this, and I can tell you we have people come in and tell us they’d make whatever fuel we wanted, JP-5, JP-8, you take your pick.  But we had to choose that.

One of the things that the Navy does is kind of unique, a little bit, to the Navy, and this is why we started taking the lead on this, is methane hydrates.  Methane hydrates offer a tremendous amount of future energy source.  Of course, there’s all of the issues associated with greenhouse gases, so that’s some issues on that; there’s a lot of issues, geopolitical issues, as well as stability of the ocean floor.  There are certain issues that, if you pull out the methane hydrate, you can have like slides, and this is not really good.  And so you actually need to be – and so a lot of the work, in fact most of the work, that the Navy does is trying to understand the methane hydrates.  But it does offer the potential for a future fuel in terms of a huge wealth of that, and of course methane gas, natural gas, of course, you could utilize that there. 

But that just gives you an idea of what you could do with it in terms of directly into the fuel cell combustion engine; make hydrogen from it.  Synthetic diesel, which we’re sort of pushing for from the military standpoint because of the chemical properties and the physical properties are very compatible with current systems, and also for operational requirements; and, of course, you could make other, more unique fuels such as methanol and of course, other alcohols.  But it’s an option to be considered in this case.

And I want to make this comment here:  What I’ve made the point a couple times is that there are always – we can make fuel.  It can be done; there’s no great technology challenge at this point in time.  We can certainly improve on that.  In fact, when I was a chemist I did some catalysis in the oil-type refinery areas so, you know, I know it can be done and I was doing it 30 years ago myself.  So if you look at this, why not instead of just making the Fischer-Tropes, why don’t we make the right fuel versus the Fischer-Trope’s standard products?  The companies were offering us to make JP-5, JP-8, but what if I knew there was a better hydrocarbon fuel to make?  Certain chain links, certain branching, certain varieties, certain additives; if I could make that fuel so that it had the optimum combustion properties in an engine – and by the way, I have a fairly large budget in engine materials and production, and so I could also work the engine side. 

But what we’re really doing within my department is working both sides of that equation.  We’re working the engine and fuel cell R&D work to optimize performance of those, with the material side and the combustion science.  Same time, looking at the logistics fuel R&D and putting those together with the hope that what we can develop is an optimum fuel and engine system for the benefit of the Navy systems, of course, other DOD platforms but also, if we do this right, we should be able to influence the commercial market.  If we can convince that the hydrocarbon we need has optimal properties for the DOD, optimal properties of the commercial side, then we can just buy the fuel commercially.  And of course, we do a lot of work in jet engine work within ONR too, part of the VATE (ph) program, and the first person running this program is also my representative on the VATE program.

And this is my get-off-the-stage slide.  This is our motto in my department: superiority, survivability, and very key for us is affordability.  And that’s why I made a number of comments about commercial applications, leveraging it and even trying to do the kind of work that might allow the commercial market to pick this up.  If they will do that, then it gives us a tremendous cost savings capability. 

Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. SHAFFER:  Thank you, Rich.

As I did after the first one, I’m going to make a couple of comments now as Rich takes his microphone off.  Some of you may be asking, why is the Navy interested so much in fuel cells.  When we send our young troops out into combat zones, right now we have so loaded them up with batteries that on some missions, combat troops will go out with between 50 and 90 pounds of batteries for a mission.  Think about that.  You got to go out and carry everything you need to do to survive and carry an additional 50 pounds of batteries.  If we can go to renewable fuel cells, much lower weight; makes a heck of a lot more sense. 

Something else I want to throw out there for your questioning after:  I saw some people trying to grimace a little bit when Dr. Carlin said, we’ve gotten better efficiency for some of our ground vehicles, and then going ahead and adding weight on there.  But I want you to think about the equation.  The equation is, by getting better efficiency you can add capability on that may keep people alive.  So, it’s a very, very complex equation.  We may not go for better fuel efficiency and leave the weight off; we may take that efficiency and turn that into weight to give greater capability for our young troops.  Very, very important factor.

The last speaker of the evening:  I’m very pleased to introduce Dr. Mark Lewis, the chief scientist of the Air Force.  And again, Dr. Lewis, Mark, is a friend of mine.  I learned things about him.  He got his Ph.D. from MIT in 1988, and has subsequently authored 275 papers.  I’m doing the math and that’s, you know, 10 or more papers a year, so very, very prolific academician. 

Dr. Lewis has a couple of undergrad degrees in aeronautics and astrophysics – astronomics, close enough.  I’m trying to remember this – (laughter) – but in addition to that, he’s also got one in – let me get this out, terrestrial science, I think it was – Earth and planetary science.  So he’s got basically the whole thing covered: geology through the atmosphere, through space, through aeronautics.  Turned that academic degree into a very, very good academic career; he is the – let me pick this up, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland, director of the Space Vehicles Technology Institute in College Park.  He’s currently on either sabbatical or on leave from that position to be the chief scientist to the Air Force.  Dr. Lewis is an expert in high-speed vehicles, aeronautics, hypersonics and just everything that has to do with propulsion and air propulsion.

So, Dr. Lewis, over to you.  Mark?  Are you wired up?

MARK LEWIS:  I think I’m wired up.  Let’s see, we just have to quit –

(Off mike.)

MR. LEWIS:  Thank you very much. 

Let me start, actually, by acknowledging two of my Air Force colleagues from the Air Force leadership, who are in the room.  Mike Imany (sp) and Paul Bollinger (sp) here; about half the view-graphs you’re going to see come from Mike and the other half come from Paul, so if you have any questions I’ll be deferring to members of the audience. 

What I want to talk to you today covers really, what I argue, are the science and technology challenges, sort of the big challenges facing us in the U.S. Air Force.  I won’t focus as much on the specifics of programmatics, as my colleague have; instead, talk to you about some of the things that I think we’re facing in the U.S. Air Force, and the direction that we see ourselves going and also, some of the fundamental limits on those directions. 

Let me start out with a rather bold statement but I think one that’s justifiable, and that is that when all is said and done, aerospace systems are ultimately energy systems.  An airplane is an energy system:  It converts chemical energy inside the fuel to useful kinetic energy of flight.  When we deliver weapons systems we’re delivering energy, either kinetic energy or maybe in the future direct the energy onto a target.  Space launch systems:  Space is all about energy; it’s having enough kinetic energy to be in orbit around the earth.  So all those systems, all the things that we fly and operate in Air Force really are about energy.

Over the last two years, the Air Force has actually declared itself to be a cyberforce as well as an air and space force.  And after we did that, we stepped back and said, well, what does that actually mean.  And we’ve adopted a definition of cyber-force that is really very broadly oriented towards any movement of photons, which means that once again, that cyber part of our portfolio is really about energy.

Now, I’ll make the even bolder statement, which is that every great advancement in the aerospace sciences has begun with an advancement in propulsion and power.  And I’ll take that right back to the Wright brothers, and you look at all the great things that the Wright brothers did, really above all, they built an engine that gave them a sufficient thrust-to-weight ratio that would operate their airplane.  Other people have built gliders; they did a lot of good work in aerodynamics.  But it was really the development of their engine and the development of the propeller that that engine can operate.  It was the great intellectual accomplishment of the Wright brothers that they realized that a propeller is a rotating wing, which other people had not realized.  Since that time, when we look at the history of aerospace; the (Nacka-Cowell?), you know, air-cooled engines; the development of the jet engines by Frank Whittle and Hans van Ohain; Goddard’s development of rocket propulsion.  All have been the leading technologies that then enabled future aerospace systems. 

Now, if you look at energy use in the U.S. Air Force, it breaks down as follows – some numbers:  The U.S. Air Force is actually the single biggest user of fuel in the U.S. government.  U.S. government accounts for about less than 2 percent of the use in the United States, about 1.7, 1.8 percent.  Air Force is a little bit over 50 percent of that, so we are the big users; we use more than the Army and we use more than the Navy and frankly, we’re not proud of that fact because it’s costing us a lot of money.  The Air Force budget right now is somewhere in excess of about $6 billion a year just on fuel.  A number that the secretary of the Air Force likes to remind us is, every time the cost of a barrel of oil goes up by $10, we pick up an extra $600 million a year bill, and it’s a bill that we haven’t budgeted for.  So fuel costs are extremely important to the U.S. Air Force.  Anything we can do to reduce those costs is absolutely critical.

Now, look at where we’re using our fuel.  The number-one consumer of fuel in the U.S. Air Force is air mobility, that’s our transport fleet; almost 40 percent.  Number two is our fighter fleet. So those two aircraft applications alone account for the area that we obviously see, and certainly in looking at propulsion efficiency.  Those are the areas that we see the greatest return on investment.  Notice the bomber fleet is a relatively small proportion of that, only about 5 or 6 percent.  Facilities is about 20 percent.

Now, interestingly enough, of course, facilities is maybe the area that it’s easiest for us to impact because we have this tremendous infrastructure and these capabilities for terrestrial energy production to pull upon.  Al mentioned, for example, that Nellis is a very green base.  The Air Force in general has adopted green energy across the board.  We win awards all the time for our green energy.  We can do solar cells, we do wind farms, but those are very hard to apply in the air, all right.  It’s hard to put solar cells on a transport airplane; it’s hard to put wind turbines on a fighter jet.  So for those applications, which are the majority of our fuel use, other technologies are important.

Just to show you, interestingly enough, the breakdown of our facility energy use:  You see by and large, the majority really is electricity, but the total facility energy use is close to $1 billion from this year.  So, if we want to have the biggest impact on this side, clearly it’s more efficient electric production and reduction in the cost that the fuel oil is bringing us.

Now, what can we do to address these problems?  Well, let me take you back to the issue of how to make a more efficient airplane because that’s our biggest consumer of fuel.  The bottom line is, it’s really hard to build a more efficient airplane.  Now, if you think about the basic range equation, for those of you in the audience who are aerospace engineers, you know, the basic range equation tells us very simply, if I want to improve how far an airplane goes on a tank of gas, I can do the following:  First, I can give it a more efficient engine.  That means I get more thrust per weight flow of fuel out of the engine, right.  Second, I can give it a more efficient aerodynamic shape.  I give it higher lift for the amount of drag that it’s fighting through the air.  Third, I can improve the structural weight fraction of the airplane.  The more of an airplane that’s composed of fuel that I’m expending through the engine, the further it will go on that tank of gas.  And, of course, finally there’s another solution that’s not obvious in the range equation, but it’s obvious to all of us:  If you want to burn less fuel in your air fleet, well, just fly less often. 

Now, if you step back and think about those options there aren’t, again, immediately easy solutions, all right.  Propulsion – bottom line is, it’s really hard to build a better gas-turbine engine.  For those of you who are in the gas-turbine engine business, you know, gas-turbine engines are about the most efficient machines on the planet today.  A compressor in a gas-turbine engine will have an efficiency in the 88, 89 percent range; turbines are well over 90 percent, overall cycle efficiencies are extremely high.  There are theoretical engine cycles that will do better than gas-turbine engines, but then you look at the practicalities of thrust to weight and it’s hard to beat what we’re flying today.  Lots of people are trying; lots of concepts are out there.  But nothing has really jumped off the page as being an obvious breakthrough in propulsion.

I often get proposals; I have people come to my office and tell me, we’re going to improve the efficiency of a gas turbine by 30 percent.  And you kind of have to look at them and say, well, I can build gas-turbine engines now that are 75 percent efficient, so how do you actually do that. 

Alternate fuels:  We have – and I think previous speakers also alluded to the fact that there are alternate fuel sources.  Can this reduce the cost of fuel?  Maybe; maybe it can.  That brings something else to the table though, and that is one of our concerns is the strategic side, where our fuels are coming from.  We do not want the U.S. Air Force or for that matter, the Army or the Navy, to be held hostage to foreign sources and fuel.  But if you ask, what different fuels would you use, again, there aren’t a lot of choices.  It’s kind of hard to beat a hydrocarbon fuel. 

I like to point out that nature has had about a 3.5 billion year head start on this in coming up with fuels, and nature has converged on a hydrocarbon system for organic systems and of course, the fuel that our bodies burn is chemically relatively similar to the fuel that we burn in aircraft.  It’s a very, very effective fuel, so beating that fuel is difficult. 

Configurations:  We can do better in lift-over-drag ratio.  There are a lot of concepts out there.  Some people will think that all airplanes have to be tubes and wings, and that’s certainly not true.  And so there’s a lot of room to be had there for improvements, and we have programs underway.

Let me come back to the issue of conservation.  I won’t say too much about it.  We often talk about ways to use less fuel just by flying less, and one obvious way to do that is, you do more with simulation.  That’s great in theory, but there are some practical problems.  There are some things I can simulate on the ground; if I want to simulate a transport airplane, it’s relatively straightforward.  You probably know in the commercial sector, commercial airline pilots will often train and certify on simulators.  An airline pilot can often take his or her first flight with 250 of their best friends in the back of the airplane, right, because they will have been certified on the aircraft in a simulator.  We can’t actually do that in the Air Force.  It’s hard to simulate a 9G maneuver in a fighter jet on a ground simulator. 

There’s also, frankly and honestly, there’s a cultural element to it.  The Air Force is, by and large, run by pilots, and pilots like to fly.  If you look up biographies on the Air Force website, you’ll see every biography of our pilots list the number of flight hours that they have.  So fighting that culture is also, frankly, a bit of a challenge.

Just to show you how we’re doing in fuel consumption, a sobering chart – fuel consumption, or our ability to use fuel-produced thrust, has kind of leveled off for the past 30 years.  You know, you look at a Boeing 707, starting in the late 1950s – by the time we got to the 1970s, we’re kind of at the thrust-specific fuel consumption, that’s the measure of how much thrust you get out of fuel, at the same level that we’re at today.  Forty percent improvement overall in a period of a little bit of 40 years, but if you kind of draw a straight line in that plot and squint, you’ll see that we’re not planning on doing a lot better.

How can you do it?  Well, Al’s going to hate this chart but I’m going to show it anyway.  There are still things that you can do to improve a gas-turbine engine, and I argue that one of the most important things you can do is step back and look at the cycle, and realize that a gas-turbine engine is, in fact, very efficient but it’s typically designed for a single design point, a single point in the operating envelope.  And any time you’re off that design point, you pay a penalty. 

Classic case:  The engines that run our C-17 transports were designed not only for efficient crews but also for short takeoff.  Now, to takeoff on a short runway, that means you have to have high thrust-to-weight ratio.  As a result of that, you take a fairly significant penalty in the range of that airplane.  Now, what if you had an engine that could do both?  What if you had an engine that could give you the high thrust-to-weight when you needed it, but also give you the high cruise efficiency when you needed it?  In many ways, it’s kind of like the transmission that we all have in our automobiles; it can run the engine at the most efficient point for any given spot in the envelope. 

That’s kind of where we’re going from the research side at the Air Force Research Lab.  One of our programs is the Advanced Versatile Engine Technology program, ADVENT.  It’s not a single concept; it’s a range of concepts.  It includes various parts of the geometry of a gas-turbine engine to try to change the bypass ratio to convert from a high thrust-to-weight ratio engine, perhaps, to a lower thrust-to-weight but more efficient cruise engine.

Now, important point:  What helps the Department of Defense may not automatically help the commercial sector, and we’re aware of that.  But yet, military gas turbine engines account for somewhere in the neighborhood of about 30 percent of total engines.  So, we believe that if we’re clever about this we can leverage the military investment with the commercial investment. 

We have some issues that the commercial sector won’t have.  Our airliners don’t generally optimize for high thrust-to-weight ratio; they’re not usually doing 9G pull-ups, we are sometimes.  And yet, there’s still some similarities, for instance, a desire for range.  You want to transport airplanes to go as far as possible.  Well, the airlines want their airplanes to go as far as possible as well.  And in fact, frankly we admit that the commercial sector is, in many cases, leading the DOD, the Department of Defense, things like doing engine washes, the way they taxi their aircraft, even the fuel management. 

I tell the anecdote that about a year and a half ago, I was flying back from Hawaii and we were flying into LAX.  And as we were landing – I was on a commercial plane, and as we were landing I was listening into the cockpit conversation, and the tower instructed the pilot to slow down to 210 knots on approach.  And the pilot came back and said, well, I’d rather stay at 220 knots because I’m more fuel-efficient there.  That was astounding – by the way, the tower would not allow the pilot to stay at 220; the tower insisted that he go to 210 knots.  We don’t do that yet in the DOD, and those are the sorts of things that we could do to enhance our fuel efficiency. 

Let me shift gears a little bit and very quickly talk to you a little bit about the non-fuel side of it.  I said that there are things that you can do to try to improve aerodynamics.  If I can improve the lift-over-drag ratio, I get more lift for the amount of drag that I’m fighting; I get a significant improvement in range.  There, we also haven’t done that well; compare a Boeing 707 to a Boeing 777 and you get a grand total of about 15 percent improvement over the 40-some-odd-year history of those designs.  But yet, we’ve got some concepts on the board as well.

Upper right-hand side, you see what’s called a blended-wing body; it’s a flying wing concept.  We have flown flying wings before, the B2 bomber is a flying wing, and something like that could give you maybe a 25 to 30 percent improvement in lift-over-drag ratio, which translates directly into a 25 to 30 percent improvement in range.  Now, needless to say we’ve got the same issues that the Army and Navy face when we do that improvement; people want to put more things on our airplanes.  They want to put more capabilities and more weapons, and that’s part of the tradeoff, that’s part of the equation.

Fuels as well, future fuels.  I don’t want to underplay this.  I said it’s hard to beat a hydrocarbon, but yet there are still things that we’re interested in doing.  Right now, like our sister services, we’re investing in building the support infrastructure for advanced fuels.  We’re interested in alternate fuels, and those primarily mean synthetic fuels.  And it’s not all economic; as I said, it’s also strategic.  One of our biggest initiatives, and it’s been led by Paul Bollinger, who I mentioned earlier, is to certify our air fleet on synthetic fuels.  Now, we started out by flying a B-52 bomber on a Fischer-Trope fuel blend.  We’re moving to a C-17.  We’re excited about the C-17 because its engine is also a commercial engine.  Our goal eventually is to certify our entire fleet.

Now, think about that.  We’re basically certifying our fleet with a fuel that no one will sell us yet.  So, why are we doing that?  We want to create the market; we want to create the opportunities.  We want to tell the people who would produce synthetic fuels, if you manufacture it – if you manufacture it in an economically viable price, by the way, but if you manufacture it, our airplanes will burn it.  They’ll be able to fly it.  Long-term, of course, there are other options: flexible fuel engines, maybe exploiting some of the exotic fuel properties for improved performance.

This is my get-off-the-stage chart, and I want to close with some challenges because in true academic fashion, rather than give you answers I’ll pose some questions to you.  These are some of the questions that I worry about in our broader S&T portfolio.  First, how much performance are we willing to give up or demand, versus such things as emissions and acoustics?  It turns out that some of the synthetic fuels will actually hurt emissions.  Some of the more efficient engine concepts we got will be louder.  The most efficient jet engine that was ever built was the unducted fan; it’s sitting right now in the Air and Space Museum because we couldn’t fly it, it was too noisy.  So are we willing to make those sorts of trades?  That’s a difficult question.

I mentioned we’re certifying our fleet for synthetic fuels.  Are we doing the right fuels right now?  Well, we’re planning a mark in the sand.  We’re doing a 50-50 blend for the Fischer-Trope fuels.  I’ve had people tell me, well, maybe it ought to be 100 percent Fischer-Trope with added aeromatics, maybe, but right now we want to plant the flag.

Getting the commercial sector to join along with us:  How do we convince the other air fleets in the United States and around the world to use synthetic fuels?  We want to lead, but we can’t be the only ones who do it. 

Strategic advantage versus economics:  Are we willing to pay a little bit more for a fuel that comes from a secure source?  Possibly; possibly, the answer is yes.

Fitting into existing military infrastructure:  The United States Air Force operates an air fleet of roughly 6,000 airplanes.  Unfortunately, they’ve got a pretty old average age, about 25 years.  And a replacement rate, if you do the numbers, if we get every dollar that we’re asking for from Congress, we wind up replacing those airplanes at a rate of about 60 per year.  That means the engines we are flying today will be extraordinarily similar to the engines that we’re flying in about 25, 30, maybe 50 years, so if you want to certify for a fuel, you’ve got to certify for a fuel that will probably work in the engines that we’re flying, or maybe that will be very similar to the engines that we will be flying.

And finally, in the last bullet, I’ll braid a little bit.  I think we’re already very efficient.  We’re extremely good; a modern aerospace system is an incredibly efficient system.  The U.S. Air Force as a whole is very energy conscious; we take this very seriously, throughout everything we do.  So when you already do a good job, how do you do even better?  And that’s probably our biggest challenge of all.

And with that, let me thank you for your attention.

(Applause.)

MR. SHAFFER:  Thank you, Dr. Lewis. 

And a couple of comments:  You mentioned the Air Force, every time the price of a barrel of fuel goes up $10, it costs the Air Force $600 million.  It costs the Department of Defense between 1.3 and $1.4 billion for a $10 a barrel rise in the cost of crude oil.  That’s a huge amount of money to have to find in the execution year. 

Couple of factoids:  Why am I up here?  I’m up here because I’m leading the DOD Energy Security Task Force, trying to give the Department of Defense options for dealing with the increased cost of energy, for dealing with what energy does to us operationally.

Some other facts – between 2005 and 2006, the Department of Defense decreased the number of BTUs that we used.  And yet, the cost that we paid for fuel, for energy, went from $11 billion to $13 billion.  We were more efficient and yet paid $2 billion more.

    As a taxpayer, I don’t like that.  I don’t like getting less for more.  You are all taxpayers.  We at the department work for you.  It’s our job to be as efficient as possible.  And then, one final thing I would like to point out, with all of the other things that go on with this, the Air Force has really stepped up with this business of testing airplanes with synthetic fuel.  And, in fact, anybody who’s bored a week from now can drive up to McGuire Air Force base in New Jersey; it’s a short drive away.  I don’t know what time they’re landing.  C-17 is landing, the first transcontinental flight of a C-17 flying on 50/50 synthetic fuel, conventional fuel, coming from Edwards Air Force base to McGuire Air Force base in New Jersey.  That’s a pretty significant feat.  So with that, what I’d like to do is open it up to questions, comments, critiques, for any of our three panelists or for me.  Questions?  Sir.

    Q:  Question for you, sir.  Can you characterize the total amount of money DOD is spending on energy research and describe briefly how DDR&E allocates the work so that there is no excessive duplication – (inaudible, laughter).

    MR. SHAFFER:  Well, first off, I really have to thank you for thinking that we’re, you know, omnipotent, we can go ahead and direct the services to do something.  (Chuckles.)  As DDR&E, you know, we kind of are like the politician.  We have to sit there and kind of make the services think or go where we think we want them to go.  So we have – we do have a process in place where we gather up all of the energy RDT&E across the department and it’s roughly order of magnitude $500 to $600 million per year.  That includes the synthetic fuel research across the department.  We align each of the various pieces and make sure there’s no unintended duplication. 

The key word there is unintended.  You know, sometimes, you want to have a competition.  Sometimes, I want all three of these guys to be working on different types of fuel cells to see who gets to the finish line first.  What I don’t want is to have them work on something and not share information across the enterprise.  So what we have done, we put in place a couple of websites where people can go ahead and post up what they’re doing.  We’re moving into a wiki for energy because that’s kind of the buzzword du jour where energy researchers can bypass their headquarters and put out there what it is they’re doing so you can get to people who are doing the work to talk together.  And really, from an OSD perspective, what I’m trying to do is make sure that we get folks talking and working together.  Does that answer your question?

Q:  It does.  Thank you.

MR. SHAFFER:  Other questions?  Sir.

MS.    :  Get them to identify themselves.

MR. SHAFFER:  Please identify yourself.

Q:  I’m Mark Crawford with the Department of Commerce.  And I’m curious as to whether the wiki you just mentioned is a closed-network wiki or is it open to the public?

MR. SHAFFER:  We have different levels for our energy website, going everything from closed DOD through the rest of government.  So if you see myself or – Pat Butler, are you here still?  One of the folks who works for me in Energy, Pat Butler, is in the back.  He’s got a bright red Christmas tie on, so you can either see myself or Pat and we’ll get you hooked up.  Yes, ma’am?

Q:  Pat McArdle with Solar Household Energy – I had three questions actually.  One, you’ve mentioned, some of you have mentioned fuel cells and I wondered what are your sources for the hydrogen for the fuel cells?  And also, is there any – are you looking at getting – (inaudible) – using wind energy to generate hydrogen?  And my other question was, on the solar ray, the largest solar ray – I think Dr. Hartranft mentioned that – is that photovoltaic e or solarthermal array?  That’s all.

MR. SHAFFER:  Let me take these one at a time.  First, remember when I was up here, I said, whenever I have a hard question on fuel cells, I duck and turn it over to Dr. Carlin.  Rich, would you like to answer the question on fuel cells?

MR. CARLIN:  The big push from the Department of Defense has always been in terms of how to do reforming of the logistics diesel fuels.  It’s a real big challenge because of the sulfur.  It doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been a lot of work also in methanol, but that’s for like person-portable power.  And we do have some programs looking at hydrogen, where it would be derived from – maybe just take it into fuel as packaged hydrogen for some very small applications.  The largest application, this is from – I should point out, from a tactical standpoint – is through the logistics fuels.  I think if you look at the facility side, a lot of it would be from reforming of natural gas. 

MR. SHAFFER:  Please.

MR. HARTRANFT:  You asked last about electrolysis.  We, in stationary power, are beginning to get into the potential of electrolysis.  We’ve got a modest electrolysis lab going up at our Champagne site in collaboration with the National Automotive Center out of Detroit.  Fuel-cell electrolysis, traditional gen-set, looking at the optimization of – again, systems approach is our approach – optimizing the fuel efficiency of a diesel-fired gen-set for power production, using some of that for electrolysis, generating hydrogen, using hydrogen later. 

One concept for deployed bases there is the concept like silent can.  Can we afford west for the diesel gen-sets at deployed bases by using some of the power at an optimal efficiency setting of the gen-sets to generate through electrolysis hydrogen, store it, and then use that in nighttime-type evening hours with fuel cells and then allow the gen-sets to be worked on, not making noise, no thermal signature, et cetera; we’re just beginning those kinds of activities for stationary power.  

MR. SHATTER:  And I think there was a third question in there about the –

Q:  The solar ray with the portable tank.

MR. SHATTER:  What about that?  I’ll get you next after – I think you had a question, sir?

Q:  Yes –

MS.    :  Who are you?

Q:  I’m Mark Crawford with the Department of Commerce. 

MS.    :  We’re trying to keep a track of that.

Q:  Oh, I see.  Battery research – is it worthwhile making the major initiative basic research through – (inaudible) – electric chemistry to increase energy density?

MR. CARLIN:  Okay, as the electrochemist, yes.  (Laughter.)  We’ve done a lot.  One of the things, my thoughts on this is that we have done a lot of basic science that hasn’t really been taken advantage of quite yet in the commercial market.  I mean, you hate to throw out the buzzword nanomaterials, but there has been a lot of work that’s been done in that area.  It increases concurrently power and energy content because you’re just accessing more of the material. 

There is some other chemistry that’s been developed.  I think internationally, lithium sulfur is becoming a phrase I see pretty much every country I visit now.  And so, that was work that required a lot of basic science and how you adjust the various passive layers that are necessary to make that chemistry work.  I believe there is.  I mean, some people will say, it’s chemistry and we’ve reached the limit; we’re not going to do any better.  But if you really know the periodic table, you realize we’re not even close to theoretical and it’s because of the various issues if you’re familiar with the chemistry of lithium sulfur itself.

Q:  (Inaudible, off mike) – basic research in chemistry is relatively cheap relative to a lot of other things.

MR. CARLIN:  It is.  The big issue with batteries, I can tell you, having run the program for a while is getting new ideas back out there again because I think, in my opinion, it kind of stagnated for awhile.  Maybe it’s because the investments went down and so the thought process shifted other directions.  But also in having a market here in the U.S. in particular is a little tough, so it makes it a little harder to get investment going, I think.

MR. SHAFFER:  Well, let me, if I can, Rich, let me turn it around.  Since you’re from the Department of Commerce, are you asking on behalf of Department of Commerce or NIST or just as a citizen?

Q:  No, I have about 25 years of energy background and watch the – you know what Hupper’s (?) curve is.  And whether you believe it’s here or not, we’re close.  And so, we face a lot of economic disruption in the future, not only in our society, but around the world.  And, in terms of dealing with our partner hydrocarbon addiction and our transportation systems, if you could produce a battery that could drive mid-sized car 200 miles at zero degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s the key parameters, zero degrees Fahrenheit, you could solve about 90 percent of our liquid transportation fuels in this country.  And that makes DOD’s supply situation look a whole lot better.

MR. SHAFFER:  Thank you.  Oh, by the way, I grew up in Vermont, so zero Fahrenheit wouldn’t help much. (Laughter.)  Doctor Branning?

Q:  My name is Valerie Branning.  As of two days ago, I was a – (inaudible) – program manager.  I am now unaffiliated.  I retired.  My question is actually for all three of the speakers.  You all alluded to a desire to leverage commercial, commercial developments.  And at least with the Air Force, you indicated that a good portion of your expense has to do with moving fuel around.  Have you considered the possibility of trying to lift or shift some of that burden to the commercial world and take in the major fact that their big motivator is profit, right?  So they are going to try and view it as much efficiently as possible. 

MR. LEWIS:  That’s actually right now an interesting policy issue because, you know, we have some in Congress who say we should be doing that.  Possibly.  I don’t think we’ve got a firm position on that yet.  The reality is that – and you’ve hit upon a very important point – that it’s not just the cost of a gallon of fuel; it’s the cost of getting that gallon of fuel into an airplane.  Now, if it’s an aerial refueling, that can be a very expensive proposition.  We’re not always sure what the fully burden cost is for a gallon of fuel.  But you start figuring out, you know, I’ve got to do a tanker operation; I’ve got to get the fuel to that tanker; I’ve got to drive it on a convoy; I might be operating in a very bad part of the world to get that fuel to the tanker and the convoy.  It can drive the cost per gallon up by an order or two orders of magnitude. 

There is also perhaps a logistics element of that, making sure that every time you send a tanker up to tank up your aircraft, you make sure that the aircraft is there and ready to receive the fuel, which frankly doesn’t always happen for our services.  So these are all key elements.  You know, there are certainly some logistics issues about depending on a commercial source, whether you’d want a commercial operator to be in a – flying airplanes in a dangerous part of the world.  And I would submit that those probably aren’t S&T issues; those are policy issues.

MR. CARLIN:  Just a quick comment there – back when I was – I’m not as familiar with all of the details on where that may be heading, but I can tell you, when we got briefed at the, in Iraq, you saw the trucks that were delivering fuel in Afghanistan.  It was every fuel truck in Afghanistan going through the mountain trails.  And so, it’s already a lot of ways, it was this big string of commercial trucks.  And so, I’m not so sure that if you say if you’re going to go to the commercial side, you get the savings in a lot of things that Mark pointed out is an issue of course, is that, do you want to take them into harm’s way and particular application?  I could see some real issues associated with that. 

Q:  Hi, my name is David Freud.  I’m president of the Energy Tribune (?).  I was wondering if you’ve actually done any significant research into JPE as produced by algae (ph).  There’s at least a few early tests on the record today that seem to be significantly – (off mike).

MR. SHATTER:  I’ll take that one on – I always hesitate to answer a question with an adjective or an adverb in it because I don’t know how you define “significant research.”  What I will tell you is that DARPA, for a couple of years, has had a research program looking at high-energy density – conversion of high-energy density plants to include rapeseed, to include algae, to include other things, looking at the conversion process for these higher-energy density to jet fuel.  And JP8, JPA, JP5, they all have different characteristics. 

Now, significant?  I don’t know what you would say is significant.  We’re up in the – I think several million dollars-ish.  We’re coupled then working and collaborating and sharing information with Department of Energy.  And I’m going to throw one back at you.  If you can come to me and show how you can make that particular product cost effective, you and I might be able to have a conversation that becomes serious. 

Q:  Hey, Al, could you frame the questions when you answer them?  We in the back can’t here exactly what’s going on.

MR. SHATTER:  Sure, I’m sorry.  Mike, I’m sorry, the question, the question was – oh, you got that one, you got it?  Geez, we’re driving them away.

MR.    :  The question from Mike was, could we rephrase the question?  (Laughter.)

MR. SHATTER:  Mike, I just want to drive you out in case there was a question that I couldn’t answer on Air Force installation.  You know, I just had to see where you were sitting.  Other questions?  Yes, sir.

Q:  Yes, James Donnelly at CNA – you mentioned the Air Force is spending $6 billion dollars –

MS.    :  Can you use your mike?

Q:  Here, okay?  The Air Force is spending $6 billion, so I guess the full DOD is spending $12 billion.  At this last talk I was at, the Department of Transportation guy said the cost of idling in traffic in L.A. is like $10 billion a year.  I was wondering then if you were working at all with the auto companies like GM and stuff.  It seemed like it would be a better, cost-efficient way to solve your problem, basically just take the heat off you by basically allowing, doing research to make their stuff more efficient.

MR. SHAFFER:  I like this.  I feel like a lounge singer.  (Laughter.)  The question had to do with the department and spending and figure about $12 billion.  Last year was about $13 billion a year.  And let me see if I got your question correctly.  You said that, within the Los Angeles basin –

Q:  Actually, that was the last talk – the last talk at the Doubletree like a month ago.  And the Department of Transportation guy said the cost of essentially fuel waste in the L.A. area per year is like $10 billion.

MR. SHAFFER:  Okay, so the quote was – and since I wasn’t here, it’s hard for me to talk about it.  But the cost of fuel waste for automobiles in the L.A. basin was $10 billion a year?

Q:  Yeah, so basically I was assume then that the DOD actually, the commercial energy use in this country far exceeds the DOD use, so I was wondering if you guys actually collaborate then with the auto companies to sort of help you. 

MR. SHAFFER:  So the question was, do we – because the DOD is a small niche player in the energy market in the country, do we collaborate?  Well, let me put it in some perspective.  DOD uses about 1.5 to 2 percent of the national energy burden each year.  So 2 percent is a small amount.  We are also the nation’s largest single-entity energy user.  So there’s a lot of things around. 

Now, do we collaborate?  You bet, anywhere we can.  We will use anybody’s technologies; we will use anybody’s research.  Case in point – this year, we funded something called the fuel efficiency demonstrator with the U.S. Army TARDAC, Tank Automotive Research Development Engineering Center, in Warren, Michigan, gave that to a person who I know is very creative to go out and create six to 10 prototypes of fuel-efficient tactical vehicles.  The guy who’s running this, his name is Tom Mathis; he’s their chief technologist.  Tom has gone out and gotten with industry, both large and small industry, and forced them to couple and partner and bring in proposals.  So we will use the best of technology from the commercial sector, wherever we can get it.  Anybody else want to pile on?

MR. CARLIN:  Yeah, I have to jump in because from the Marine Corps standpoint, we do work with the Army, which of course means we work playing off of the commercial side.  And, in fact, two pieces on that is what happens with us, in fact, is some of the companies that actually do that advance engine development on the commercial side do come and talk to us about advanced engine design for high efficiency and so forth.  So we actually kind of almost get in pre-commercial on that, on that side of that.  But also, I just got back from a NATO conference, where it’s the international effort (?) – (inaudible) – is a participant there.  And I was just trying to remember the title of one of their working groups that we’re pushing through.  It was something like hybrid-vehicle criteria assessment. 

So across the entire NATO group at least, there is interest in terms of doing and – establishing the criteria for assessment of hybrid vehicles, along the same lines that Al was just talking about, a program they already have here.  So yes, very much so following that.  But again, you do have to come back to understand that the driving environments from the commercial side don’t necessary match up as well from the military.  So that’s a key to really understanding how you gain efficiency and how to utilize the commercial market.

MR. LEWIS:  And if I – I can give you one example where the Air Force is leveraging the commercial sector and the automotive sector.  Even though we mostly fly airplanes and satellites, we do have a lot of cars driving on our air bases.  It turns out that, in most cases, your car doesn’t have to drive very fast on an air base.  In fact, if you drive too fast, you get a ticket.  So it actually becomes a ripe environment for highly efficient electric vehicles.  And so, we actually have an initiative where we’re bringing more electric vehicles onto air bases.

MR. CARLIN:  Yeah, and Navy is doing the same thing. 

Q:  You’d like to see my badge before I can ask a question.  (Laughter.)

MS.    :  No.

MR. SHAFFER:  Show us your papers.  (Chuckles.)

Q:  I give up already.  Ahsan Khan, Department of Energy – I think it’s important, a couple of things.  The first thing is that the coordination with the Department of Energy office of science has done a lot of basic research needs assessments.  And we have reports on these.  And I can make – give you the website which can be distributed then.  In fact, ma’am, you can distribute them.  Yes, if you accept me.  (Chuckles.)  I know.  I left it there.  It was a big name tag.  I couldn’t carry it.  So I will definitely give you the – we have done it on – (off mike) –

MS.    :  In the mike.  Keep talking in the mike.

Q:  Batteries for the vortex, geosciences, a whole spectrum of things.  And what was done was to bring from all over the world the best scientists in these areas to assess what the research needs are and the importance of the 300-mile vehicle cannot be overemphasized.  That’s really important.  That’s the first question. 

Second point was just comments. 

MR. SHATTER:  Yeah, that wasn’t a question, Dr. Khan. 

Q:  Oh, I beg your pardon.  It was a comment.  (Laughter.)  Second comment was that when it comes to efficiency improvements, if the supply-side efficiency improvements have a much, much greater impact than the demand side; you know that.  And we’ve done this and I’d be happy to share some work we’ve done on this to show how 10 percent improvement on the supply side cannot be matched by any degree of improvement on the demand side, just about.  That’s an important point.

The third point is, I spent 10 years on SDI.  We did a lot of work on SDI on pulse power and things of this sort.  We have to try and take advantage of some of those things.  And that’s really critical.  Let’s not forget that.  And finally, Paul Bollinger, is he here?  Paul?  Okay, hi, Paul. 

We are working together on a number of things.  He’s got a very good task force going.  And at this point in time, we are focusing a little bit, from my perspective, on gas to liquids.  And some of the people are going to Alaska and other places to see how we can capitalize on the natural gas there, convert it into liquids for the military applications.  So I just wanted to point out, give you a few comments on types of things that the Department of Energy is taking active interest in.  And this could also help you all. 

MR. LEWIS:  Actually, even though it wasn’t quite a question, I’ll respond anyways and actually second that.  What I will tell you is, one of the good-news stories in energy coming out of the U.S. government has been to strengthen ties between DOE and the DOD.  Our previous under secretary of the Air Force, Ron Sega, forged a very close alliance with Ray Ohrbach at DOE.  And that alliance is continued.  So I would say we are really joined at the hip now on energy issues, so much so that we actually do have the conversations now in the Air Force of, well, gee, let’s let the DOE pay for that.  (Laughter.) 

Q:  (Off mike) – Adam Siegel, Energy Consensus – think of this question in a different way, which I think every single research director loves to get this question.  A lot of the plans on energy talk about major increases in R&D.  What do you think – let’s say somebody is going say, we’re going to be doubling energy R&D in the next two years.  Where do you think you want to prioritize your funds?  What are the great needs, the great opportunities, I guess for all four of you that aren’t being exploited in the Department of Defense on energy research? 

MR. SHAFFER:  The question from Dr. Siegel from the back, I don’t know if you could hear it or not.  It’s a hypothetical.  Suppose somebody were to double energy research funding in the next couple of years.  Where would we like to spend it?  Actually, this is a great question for me to turn over to the services to find out where their gaps are.  So I’m going to let them handle this one. 

MR.    :  You say the Army goes first.  (Laughter.)

MR.    :  (Off mike.)

MR. HARTRANFT:  Much of what we do, much of what I shared with you from the systems activity is customer funding; it’s not research funding.  It’s customers in the Army installation, the management command, the assistant chief of staff for installation management saying I have a problem today and I’m on a glide slope; it’s not going to get there.  I have energy security issues today.  So they get out their checkbook.  What they’re not willing to pay for yet is that microgrid concept, what the Navy is doing for the shipboard. 

If I had the lottery winnings, it would go toward the architecture development soon.  We must begin to lift up the rocks and understand what instabilities await us when we tie together all of these disparate good power-delivery distributed energy sources, power resources, together in ways that nobody has ever done before.  When we’re successful with those islands of mini grids, for installations, they will be readily doable for power-delivery in our training ranges, which are going to get more and more energy hungry in the future.  And they will also be proving grounds for deployable bases.  It has the spectrum aspect to it. 

People are reluctant to invest in microgrid concepts for CONUS installations because we have that big plug that we plug into called the utility grid.  But there’s a military reason to do proof of concepts today in peacetime in an environment that’s very controlled to build our knowledge base, to build the contractor intellect to be able to take it further.  That’s what I’d do with my lottery winnings.

MR. CARLIN:  I guess from the Navy standpoint, Tom and I are kind of on the same track here because, in reality, I mentioned the ship as the mini grid.  In fact, our largest investment over the next probably eight years is really to do the technology, some of the Naval technologies, but also the architecture for the electric war ship.  And, in fact, I could really use that lottery because in ’09, our PDM-2 ends in energy and power and we actually see a drop. 

So, in fact, we are making requests for more funds in the out years to do that.  And it’s exactly what’s necessary is to put all of the pieces together in the right type of efficiency to get what we need from that.  I would also do a lot more basic research.  I think the issue brought up from the batteries and so forth – I think there’s a good time to make a step back and start some programs, get in basic research in terms of reinvesting in some of these areas.  We have areas in that, but really they’re not quite a critical mass in some of our cases.  So we’d need a little bit of a spread from the Navy standpoint. 

You may, you may want to kick me off the stage when I say I’m not going to increase fuel research very much for DOD.  We have a smallish investment; we might increase that a little bit in the next few years.  But in reality, what we really want to do from the DOD is put time in in terms of tracking what’s going on more so than actually investment and that.  In terms of S – and I’m talking S&T here though, not necessarily the certification and so forth, which is a different story.

MR. LEWIS:  I guess the official sense, Air Force sense is we already have a robust energy program.  (Laughter.) 

MR.    :  Politically correct.

MR. LEWIS:  Politically correct.  You know, I guess I’ll echo some of the comments.  My biggest concern would be that we have such a strong emphasis right now on the immediate needs in energy.  We have such high fuel bills right now.  We have such a pressing needs for higher energy efficiency.  I just want to make sure we don’t lose the longer-term view of what we call our 6.1, our basic research.  And, you know, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing the more immediate payoffs.  I think the full spectrum is required.  But keeping an eye on the distant future is very important as we’re pursuing these near-term goals. 

MR. SHAFFER:  And just to round it out, I’ll give a OSD perspective because Osd has to be different.  I’m going to frame the answer.  First off, I agree that I would take some amount, one third, one half, I don’t know what, and really invest in some stretch basic research.  I was kidding earlier when you came to the table about cold fusion.  I probably wouldn’t do cold fusion, but I would look out there at the 25-year time horizon because we, the nation, have a problem. 

But in addition to that, I would start to look very seriously at what are some of the drivers to our fuel usage.  And one of the things I would take on would be electricity.  We’re in the process right now of fielding mine-resistant ambush-protection vehicles.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, MRAPs.  They are great vehicles.  They weigh about 60,000 pounds.  They protect our troops from improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs. 

Sixty thousand pounds is tough to get even with a very efficient engine.  It’s very hard to get much fuel efficiency.  So until we can better protect the young men and women we’re sending out into harm’s way with other types of protection, we’re going to be stuck in this very, very heavy fuel-use construct.  If I can get the very, very good electronic protection, active protective systems, I can reduce the weight and then, I can start to go ahead and make an impact on fuel efficiency.  So you have to take a look at what are the drivers to our energy use.  We’re doing great in a number of areas.  But the reality of the world, as we move into the conflicts we’re in, we have to think about different ways of protecting our folks.

Q:  My name is John Clark –

Q:  Before we finish that, could I add one more to that research need?

MR. SHAFFER:  Please.

Q:  Yes, I’m Mike Emeny (ph).  Sorry, I got yelled at today, only the second time.  Al, what I would suggest is another research need that is in a soft area.  And that’s in behavioral sciences.  As was mentioned by the DOE speaker earlier, there’s a lot that can be made by people conserving energy.  And so, what is the culture and how do we drive culture change in the Department of Defense to be effective energy consumers, now and in the future, not just now when the energy needs are critical and the cost of gasoline is high, but, say, five years from now, when all of us are gone and costs have gone down or whatever; they might be in the future.  So I’d share just a little bit of that lottery winning with basic behavioral science of how do we get folks to conserve energy in everything they do? 

MR. SHAFFER:  That’s a good answer, Mike.  Sir, a question?

Q:  John Clark – I have a question and a comment.  The first question is rather trivial.  On your glide path on the efficiency of heating buildings per square foot, we need a time to mention in there.  There was no time mentioned on that chart and I would be interested to know whether it was per hour, per day, per year, whatever.  If anybody could tell me what that is, it would make the chart meaningful and then I could compare it with domestic use. 

MR. HARTRANFT:  Now, for a quick follow-up, we have no meters on our buildings today.  We are in the process, because of the Policy Act of 2005, of putting meterage on substantial energy-using buildings.  That will facilitate the beginnings of what your raising, a very good point.  But we’re unable to do that today with our blunt surgical instrument.

Q:  Well, that’s a nice answer, but it wasn’t quite to my question.  My question was, what is the time element on that particular chart so that I can give it its energy per square foot?  And that doesn’t make sense.  It should be a power per square foot.  It needs a time element mentioned in the units of the chart before it can be used.  But that should have a quick answer if anybody knows it. 

MR. SHAFFER:  The answer is that installations and environment folks who gather up that information measure it in the terms of BTUs per square foot.  I don’t know what the time element is –

Q:  Per year?

MR. SHAFFER:  But it doesn’t matter – per fortnight, per day, per millisecond.  It’s how much energy is used per square foot of building. 

Q:  Of course it matters.

MR. SHAFFER:  No, it doesn’t.  (Laughter.)

Q:  May I go on to my comment? (Laughter.)

MR. SHAFFER:  Yes, you may. 

Q:  Anyways –

MR. SHAFFER:  There are 24 hours in a day, 365 days a year.  Pick your time horizon; we can measure it. 

MR.    :  For comparison with commercial buildings is what he is saying, in which case it does matter.

MR. SHAFFER:  He didn’t say that.

MR.    :  (Inaudible.)

Q:  I said for comparison with domestic buildings.  Anyways, let’s forget that one.  I want to convey a perspective on automobile propulsion.  Dr. Lewis mentioned an issue on gas-turbine and jet-engine propulsion and efficiency.  And he was pointing out correctly that they need to do a better job of designing for both power and crews.  Now, the automotive case is even worse in that direction.  Most of our cars today are capable, in terms of their power, of doing about 120 miles an hour.  At half that speed, a nice cruising speed, they only need one-eighth of that power, roughly. 

Now, that means that nearly all of our fuel is actually consumed at an extremely small proportion of the power capability of the engine.  And yet, our engines, in practice, are still designed for their maximum power.  And it is time for a change in perspective.  Design first for efficiency at low power and provide the capability transiently of achieving high power.  And our motorcar construction people are going to be sidelined again, sideswiped again, probably, if they don’t realize there’s more to come after hybrids.  And it could happen again to their problems.

MR. SHAFFER:  Anybody want – I mean, it’s more of a comment.  I agree with what he said there. 

MR. LEWIS:  Well, since you agreed with me, I’ll have to thank you for the insightful comment.  But I think one of the challenges that we do face, though, I remember certainly from the airplane side, we could never design a fighter jet so it doesn’t deliver the thrust-to-weight when you need it.  You know, when the fighter pilot hits the after burn and the darn thing better accelerate at nine G’s.  So I think the real challenge is, as you point out, not designing for the nominal operation, but designing for those few moments.  And you’ll never be able to get around that from the airplane example.  You might be able to get around it for the car, but not for the airplane example.  Yeah, exactly.  And that’s why the variable-cycle engines are, I think, a very – not sure, but I think a very promising direction.

MR. SHAFFER:  I think this will be the last question and you got it.

Q:  (Off mike) – and I was just wondering, the amount of research that’s been done to photosynthetic rather than photoelectric solar devices within your respective branches.
 
MR. LEWIS:  The question was the amount of research that’s been done in photosynthetic versus photoelectric? 

Q:  Right.

MR. LEWIS:  And our respect to services. 

MR. CARLIN:  If you’re referring to such as like hydrogen – photosynthetic generation of hydrogen –

Q:  (Off mike) – technology using plant enzymes in case in (a blast ?) for instance. 

MR. CARLIN:  Okay, right.  Okay, that – we really haven’t done that much.  There has been some similar work in that it’s like individual efforts at O&R funded, but NRL has done a little bit of that because I saw a review, oh, about six months ago, where they were using the sort of biomimetic approaches in terms of that, in terms of looking at the plant structures and how those optimize electron transfer, electron separation.  So I’m not really familiar if they’re doing it specifically or just taking it, extracting from the plant, but I have seen cases we’re trying to take – and there’s some very promising results in that that we saw.  I know there’s a bigger – (inaudible) – I’m just not familiar with it. 

MR. SHAFFER:  I have an answer for you.  And the answer is, I don’t know, but I have it on very good authority that DARPA has done some work in the area.  And I can lash you together with someone who can talk to you about what DARPA has done.  I don’t know.  And I think, Mitzi, I think that’s it.  It’s eight o’clock.

MITZI WERTHEIM:  The next one is on January 14th.

MR. SHAFFER:  The next one is on – would you please get up at the mike, just help me out here.  (Laughter.)

MS. WERTHEIM:  My name is Mitzi Wertheim and I’m one of the shepherds for this program.  And I’m really big on everybody wearing nametags so we get acquainted.

MR.    :  We noticed.

MS. WERTHEIM:  We’re trying to build networks.  We’re trying to learn from one another.  Our next session is going to be on January 14th.  The February one is – you all know this as it comes to announcements, we have the science advisor to the president coming in February.  And anyways, we’ll let you know about others as they – the invitation will be coming out shortly for the January one.  So I hope you all have a wonderful holiday.  I want to thank everybody from the panel who has put on such a great performance for us, and thank you all for coming. 

(END)

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