Pump it up, harness it, grow your own: CSU lab's work includes natural gas, smart energy grids and biofuels.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: COTE'S [colorado]

SECOND OF TWO PARTS

Taking a one-hour tour with Bryan Willson at the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory is like taking a crash course on the research under way worldwide to curb global warming and decrease our dependence on foreign fuels.

From energy-efficiency and pollution-reduction initiatives aimed at the developing world (featured in this column last month) to natural gas, smart grid and biofuel applications targeted toward traditional and emerging markets, the professors, students and entrepreneurs working at the Colorado State University lab are developing technologies aimed at the here and now.

Some of the work - such as the algae fuel farm outside the Fort Collins lab now being ramped up for larger scale production on scrub desert near Durango - could see widespread commercial use in just a few years. Other projects, such as engines that propel the U.S. natural gas pipeline system, have already made their impact.

"We began working with the natural gas pipeline industry even before I started the lab," said Willson, who established the CSU research center in 1992. "At the lab we ramped up that work to establish this lab to facilitate the development of new technologies to reduce emissions and fuel consumption from these engines."

Standing in front of an engine used to transport natural gas, Willson described the need to compress the gas as it enters the pipeline and recompress it every 50 to 100 miles, a process that can consume as much as 5 percent of the gas - thus the need for greater efficiencies.

"Almost every engine on the pipeline system uses some technology that we developed here at the lab or facilitated the development of," said Willson, 50 "In the aggregate, that suite of technologies has reduced emissions for the pipeline industry by the same amount as removing somewhere around 120 million automobiles from the highway."

The vast majority of the lab's funding comes from commercial sources, thus the Caterpillar logo stamped on a giant 1.8 megawatt engine that Willson says could deliver enough electricity to power about 1,200 U.S. homes. The natural gas engine uses spark plugs, which limit the performance of the engines. Researchers at the lab are developing a laser ignition system that replaces the spark plugs.

"We used focused lasers instead of spark plugs to ignite the mixture. And while we weren't the first to do this, we've come the farthest in terms of developing this to a commercializable technology."

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