ENERGY

Nano-applications to Energy  --   Bio-based Chemicals & Fuels  --  Fossil Fuels 

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Geographic location is of particular strategic importance for the study of energy and the environment.  Rice University is located in Houston, Texas --  center of both the energy industry and the world's largest petrochemical complex  -- and as such is uniquely positioned to make a difference in energy research and education:   

The Energy & Environmental Systems Institute partners with outstanding Rice University programs, centers and consortia that are dedicated in whole or in part to 21^st century energy challenges:

• The Rice Energy Program, a joint program developed with the Baker Institute for Public Policy, includes activities addressing energy science and technology policy and research on emerging energy technologies, environmental implications of energy production and use, and sustainable strategies for fulfilling the world's energy needs. 
• The  Shell Center for Sustainability promotes the development of technologies to advance environmentally sustainable economic growth and to assess the social, economic, and environmental impact of technologies.
• The Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology maintains a significant research program dedicated to the application of nanotechnology across the energy supply, distribution and storage chain.
• The Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) aims to transform nanotechnology into a tool to solve real-world problems.
• The Center for Computational Geophysics combines the interdisciplinary expertise of several departments ot conduct work in seismic imaging. 
• Other centers and programs address cutting edge research related to fossil fuels, including the Brine Chemistry Consortium and the Processes in Porous Media Consortium.

THE GLOBAL CONTEXT
The late Dr. Richard Smalley, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and long-time member of the Rice faculty, maintained that our most pressing global problems -- population growth, economic development, water and food supply, and the global degradation of the environment -- are inextricably linked to energy and will remain intractable until the energy challenge is met.

That challenge consists of three not easily reconciled imperatives: 1) increase the energy supply; 2) diversify geographic and technological sources of that supply; and 3) decrease the environmental impact associated with energy consumption.

If demand were not expected to increase, reducing environmental impacts of would be much less difficult. If the environmental impact of fossil fuel consumption were inconsequential, satisfying growing energy demand would be less daunting. And if fossil fuel reserves were more equally distributed globally, or particular energy needs were less dependent upon any one fuel source, the risk of political instability would be less acute. This combination of factors has created  a challenge of historically unprecedented proportion.

Time is decidedly not on our side. While the world's  population is expected to increase by 50% by 2050, global energy demand and carbon emissions will be nearly 4 times the magnitude of the year 2000. Most of the growth in demand as well as in population will take place in developing countries. Electricity consumption will grow at an even faster pace than overall energy consumption: in less than twenty years electricity consumption in developing countries is expected to equal that of the developed world today.

RICE UNIVERSITY:  MAKING A DIFFERENCE
The following provides a sample  of only a fraction of energy research currently underway at Rice.

Nano-applications to Energy
Advances stemming from the application of nano-technology have been, and will continue to be realized across the energy spectrum, from fossil fuels to solar power. 

Solar Power and Solar Panels
Rice's far-reaching research program in nano-photonics has the potential to enhance the absorptive capacity of solar panels and to extend their longevity.

Energy Transmission with The Q Wire
One of Rice's most prominent energy research initiatives is the development of quantum wires.  Centered in The Smalley Institute, quantum wires are carbon-based nano-tubes capable of transporting energy vast distances with little or no power loss. Combined with solar power as an energy source, quantum wires could satisfy power demands in a sustainable manner and on a global basis.

Energy Transportation & Fuel Cells
Part of President Bush's energy vision is the development of pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. That objective cannot be achieved with current fuel cells. Researchers at Rice have used nano-technology to develop an iron-based ceramic membrane which offers similar proton conductivity to the commercially available membranes, but which costs less, operates at higher temperatures and exhibits greater longevity. Research on other aspects of fuel cells is also underway at Rice.(Top)

Bio-based Fuels & Chemicals
Fossil fuels not only meet our electricity and transportation needs, but also provide the feedstocks for making plastics, synthetic fibers, paints, coatings and all the other "miracle" materials so often taken for granted. As fossil fuels (particularly oil and natural gas) become scarce and more expensive, we must find alternative feedstocks. Bio-mass (plants and agricultural or other waste) is the only renewable and sustainable source of hydrocarbons for making the materials we need. At the same time, bio-mass can meet a significant percentage of our liquid fuel needs in the form of ethanol or bio-diesel. According to the most conservative estimates, bio-mass can meet about 20-25% of the demand for transportation fuels and bio-based materials in the next 15-20 years, assuming that we make the appropriate investments in research and development

While bio-fuels and bio-based materials are technologically feasible, they are not yet economically competitive. Much more basic research, centered at Rice is the cross-disciplinary Bio-based Chemicals & Fuels Initiative, is needed to develop optimized fermentation or thermo chemical processes for efficient and economically viable production of bio-fuels and bio-chemicals. A major objective in this area is the development of bio-refineries that can convert, like oil refineries, various feedstocks (plants or agricultural waste) into multiple products (liquid fuels, chemicals, materials or other bioactive compounds). Rice faculty currently are using metabolic engineering, systems biology and systems engineering to study the fundamental processes involved in the conversion of sugars or byproducts of certain reactions to chemicals and fuels. Already, significant strides have been made in the development of fermentation systems that can produce bio-chemicals from glycerol, a byproduct of the reactions that convert vegetable oils to bio-diesel, the genetic engineering of microbes that can convert sugars to bio-chemicals, the optimal design of bioreactors, and the production of bio-diesel from waste oils. (Top)

Fossil Fuels:  Cutting-edge Science and Engineering
Fossil fuels will dominate the energy supply picture for at least the next several decades. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 85% of U.S. energy is derived from fossil fuels. Even with the aggressive deployment of renewable fuels, D.O.E. expects the nation's reliance on fossil fuels to increase over the next two decades. Rice faculty is actively engaged in developing new technologies to enhance the exploration and production of oil and gas and to assess the environmental impact of fossil fuel use.

Oil & Gas Exploration
Rice has internationally recognized expertise in several types of seismic imaging techniques, e.g., forward modeling and traveltime tomography. This research has formed the basis for sedimentological and climate studies in the Maldives, the Gulf of Mexico and the Antarctica, and has been used extensively in the research conducted on gas hydrates. Much of the work in seismic imaging is conducted at the university's interdepartmental Center for Computational Geophysics, which combines the expertise of Earth Science, Computational and Applied Mathematics and other departments.

Unconventional Oil Recovery
Roughly 70% of the oil discovered in the world cannot be produced economically by conventional technology. Recovering this heretofore-untapped resource requires a spectrum of technologies. The world energy companies come to Rice to find technological solutions. Members of the Rice faculty have developed significant expertise and reputation in enhanced oil recovery and flow assurance based on research produced in long-standing industrial and DOE funded consortia. These technologies include self-assembling smart fluids that preferentially direct oil to producing wells, molecularly based technologies to maintain flow by preventing deposits from scale, gas hydrates, and asphaltenes in production operations, and new materials and design methodologies that allow production in more challenging environments.

Gas Production
Over 90% of the world's natural gas (a relatively clean burning alternative fuel) is contained in an unconventional source, gas hydrates, a naturally occurring nano-crystalline solid mixture of water in buckeyball-like structures encasing natural gas molecules. Rice researchers in the interdisciplinary Gas Hydrates Initiative have made significant advances in magnetic resonance imaging of gas hydrate formation and in seismic imaging and computational modeling of the gas hydrate distribution in sub-sea environments that help minimize hazards associate with gas hydrates and will eventually allow for the production of natural gas from hydrate formations. (Top)