Systems of Systems Integration - Applications for Engineering in cleantech: A talk that ESP students and engineering students should have attended

(Any mistakes made in this post are mine. I would appreciate any feedback on erroneous information.)

Today, I attended a very good talk by a engineer/scientist/corporate leader/analyst named Dr Michael Quah after he gave a talk about "Systems of Systems Integration - Applications for Engineering in Cleantech". (You have to love engineers =) )

The motivation for writing this is to share:

1. Why we need Cleantech research
2. An introduction to Cleantech: Constraints, Potential and Economics
3. The geo-socio-economic reality of Singapore's situation
• How does being part of ASEAN affect Singapore
  
• What kind of cleantech research really makes sense for Singapore
4. "Negawatt" - The large potential in being energy efficient
5. Relooking existing processes to make them more environmentally friendly - carbon sequestration
6. Future research areas with large potential for Singapore
   
7. Systems of systems integration approach - Weighing research vs economic value as engineers
   

(The structure will follow loosely the motivations above. It is quite long, so if you are in a hurry, just skip to the conclusion.)

First, some background about the speaker.
Background (Dr Michael Quah)

Michael has extensive research, engineering, corporate and defense experience. He was primarily based in the US, but just recently moved to Singapore to help Singapore's cleantech research. Sharing his experience from DuPont, he first gave an introduction to the role of research in DuPont.

Insights from DuPont - How research is driven

Research in DuPont is divided in Basic (fundamental) -> Applications -> Real, which forms a feedback loop.

Basic or fundamental research is important, as potential new discoveries are a source of patents and competitive advantage. However, the direction that basic research takes is still guided by the demands of the market. This does not undermine the academic rigor, as there was a healthy proportion of 2,000 PhDs in a working staff that's 6,000 strong.

This does not undermine the academic rigor. For example, when he was at DuPont, the DuPont Headquarters in Wilmington had a healthy proportion of 2,000 PhDs among the 6,000 staff.

DuPont has a very interesting policy regarding their library of patents. If a patent expires and the management of DuPont decides that it's not worthwhile to renew the patent, the original inventor is free to take the patent and develop it. An example of a patent that got away is GoreTex, which made its inventor billions =). Obviously, DuPont cannot guard against these losses, but that's part and parcel of being a large company.

DuPont also allows their researchers senior researchers to work 1 day in academia.
(Not just Google, 3M =) )

The US Research ecosystem

MQ also shared about how it's not just the universities (MIT etc) that play a major role, but companies arrayed along the Routes 128 and I-495 in MA. The companies play an important role in drawing out the intellectual capital from the universities for developing products and services.

(Is this tight industry integration lacking in Singapore?)

Why do cleantech research?
The world is currently facing a shift to renewable sources of energy. This is due to the inevitability that fossil fuels will eventually be depleted. However, Dr MQ feels that usage of fossil fuels will still persist for 30 - 50 years, due to our addiction to high energy density fuels and their ease of transportation. Furthermore, this addiction to fossil fuels has affected the current state of world politics in an undesirable way.
(I guess the costs of replacing the current infrastructure is too still exorbitant or no one wants to pay for overhauling the creaking infrastructure.)

Energy supply - Renewable energy vs Fossil fuel based

Dr. MQ also highlighted the differences and potential implications.

The renewable energy diet consists of technologies like solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, nuclear etc.

For the US, for it's "liquid" diet, it is 60% dependent on foreign sources. For it's "electronic" diet, it's foreign dependency drops to 10%. Unfortunately, reliance on fossil fuels introduces dependencies on certain oil-producing countries. Obviously, this carries some national security implications for all net oil importing countries.
(Time to talk to some friends in the MFA..)

The real peak oil debate

Dr. MQ also showed why the current debate about peak oil production is redundant from the engineer's point of view.

If you integrate the peak oil curve (sum up all the production both past and projected), you will get the sum of the sun's energy which has been stored in the form of fossil fuels via geological pressures and temperature cycles (update) over the last 3.4 x 10^9 billion years.

We are going to use this accumulated energy in n x 10^3 years.

By debating about peak oil production, we are actually just arguing about the value of n, and not how much oil there is there.

What is Sustainable Development?

Dr. MQ also shared his definition of sustainable development that he feels is most appropriate.

"Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the future generation."
(Hmm.. so the current generation should think of ways to leave the world for us.. =) )

What is the potential of ASEAN?

ASEAN is a large economy that is the combined size of Canada and Mexico, with a population larger than Europe.

Some of the key issues for ASEAN are protection of land and marine environments, biodiversity. Transportation of fuel will be a problem. Another is access to water resources. Grid security and infrastructure will also be important.

Why some cleantech research does not make sense for Singapore

According to Dr MQ's calculations, if we covered the whole of Singapore with solar panels, it would only meet 22% of Singapore's current energy demand. This is taking into account current levels of conversion efficiency. However, the solar panel industry does play a role in creating jobs for the workforce that were previously working in the sillicon wafer industry.
Similarly, for biofuels, if we take a crop such as soybean, it would take 183 Singapores to grow enough soybeans to fuel Singapore's energy demand. This does not even take into account the water needed for the cultivation. However, other biofuels might be worth considering, such as the cultivation of micro-algae using sea farms. If inexpensive cultivation tanks and processes can be made, algae could be grown offshore without the limitation of land.
Update:
Biofuels proponents often push for a certain crop species and suggest that land can be found in neighbouring countries for cultivation. Singapore would be able to grow biofuels in other countries and import the crops. However, it is more important to maintain bio-diversity through crop diversity and crop cycle rotation than sticking to mono-cultures.
(I wonder whether the effect of the transportation costs of the crops negates any environmental savings.)

Hydrogen is also not very economical, when you factor in the total energy required for the electrolysis of water for hydrogen production.

"Negawatt"
A key point of Dr MQ's speech was on how there is a lot of low hanging fruit in energy conservation and energy efficiency. For example, he did a simple calculation involving the hypothetical trapping and usage of waste heat from US industries. If 20% of waste heat was captured, that would be an amount equal to the total amount of energy currently generated from all the renewable sources in the US.
For the chemical engineers, Dr MQ also introduced the concept of capturing waste heat in combined heat power generators with a double closed loop Rankine cycle. This results in a huge jump in efficiency.
(Please google "cogeneration" and "trigeneration" for more details.)
(It's easier to save most of the time than to generate additional supply.)

How to improve existing processes - Carbon sequestration?
Dr MQ also mentioned that coal plants need not necessarily be a bad option. Coal resources are cheap and plentiful. Hence, coal might still be an economically preferred choice for many countries. (I do know that US and China still have large coal reserves.) With carbon sequestration techniques that capture 45 - 65% of the carbon emissions, coal plants would have comparable environmental impact to a natural gas fired plant. Of course, this means a large potential area for research.

Future research areas
Dr MQ identified several research areas that were very interesting. (I did not have time to take down the details, I'm just guessing for some of these categories using my own knowledge)

1. Water - Access, management, marine environments
   
2. Energy security
   
3. Waste conversion to energy
4. Logistics - logistics of distribution
5. Command, control & infrastructure of grids - smart grid technologies, cybersecurity, sensors, optimization, reliability, performance, safety
   
6. Materials - new membranes, engine lubricants, catalysts
   
7. Transportation - electric vehicles, public transportation systems for cities
8. Carbon footprinting
   

Systems of Systems Overview
This diagram captures Dr MQ's view of the research value chain and economic value chain of cleantech.

While basic research is important, it is worthwhile to take note that most of the value to industry is in the higher levels. As engineers, we want to focus on these areas.

What I liked
Besides Dr MQ's sense of humour, he was able to break down difficult concepts into several levels that were executionable. He started with a broad overview, then gave a clear rationale for each of the decisions and the various consequences of the choices that he weighed. Each conclusion was supported by empirical evidence. His passion for renewable energy was also very inspiring. He gave not just the context, but also the rationale and the inspiration.

Quotes:

• Olivia Lum did not become rich from inventing a membrane. She became rich by selling entire systems that worked.
• Carbon needs a price.

Conclusion
A lot of low hanging fruit in energy efficiency
We are still going to be using fossil fuels for the next 30 - 50 years, so there is a lot of potential in improving existing processes.
The slide captures many of the points about the technology research landscape and the economic value associated with each step.

Can we be the first city to be really green? I do know that we are horribly energy inefficient with all our air-conditioners running with no one in the room.

Given that our economy is export driven, and we depend on imported energy, we have to reduce the costs of production to stay competitive and for national security.

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(Edits made after Dr MQ's comments.)

Mostly, I write this blog to capture my thought process and learning, and not always necessarily for a target audience in mind.

However, I really hope that my year 1 juniors read this, and start thinking about why you chose this programme. If you really understand what is the potential of what you are being taught, and how you can use it to change the world, you will find that it's one of the most fascinating courses ever offered. I only realized this recently, and I find a lot of holes in my understanding which irritates me. I can only try to patch my holes with the limited time I have left before I graduate.