News Beyond Our Borders

Strategy to advance geoscience

Natural Resources Canada – The Pan-Canadian Geoscience Strategy outlines Canada’s intention to produce world-leading geoscience in order to meet the growing demand for responsibly sourced minerals and metals.

The strategy was developed by federal, provincial and territorial geological survey organizations across Canada and was recently endorsed by Canada’s minister of natural resources. It represents a renewed commitment to improving collaboration and the availability and accessibility of public geoscience data and knowledge.

Five priority areas have been identified:

• advancing framework geoscience
• advancing information on mineral and energy potential
• facilitating access to online geoscience data
• supporting the training of geoscientists
• enhancing public literacy in geoscience.

These priority areas seek to increase the impact of geoscience by supporting robust science and data, developing skilled scientists and growing exploration and collaboration. This will support Canada’s critical minerals strategy currently being developed.

Accessible geoscience data can help lower exploration costs, inform evidence-based land-use decisions and support geo-hazard risk management and climate change mitigation. This results in a more competitive minerals and metals sector and serving the public good.

The Pan-Canadian Geoscience Strategy can be viewed online at www.geologicalsurveys.ca/.

Hydrogen fuel cell-powered locomotive advancing

Trains/Canadian Pacific – Canadian Pacific (CP) released a video in January showing its hydrogen fuel cell-powered linehaul freight locomotive prototype known as H20EL.

CP’s Hydrogen Locomotive Program aims to develop North America’s first line-haul hydrogen-powered locomotive. The program involves retrofitting a line-haul locomotive with hydrogen fuel cells and battery technology to drive the locomotive’s electric traction motors. CP CEO Keith Creel said it will roll under its own power by the end of the year and then enter test service next year.

This is the first project to use fuel cells and batteries to power a freight locomotive’s electric traction motors. The diesel prime mover and traction alternator are being replaced with hydrogen fuel cell and battery technology to power the unit’s electric traction motors. Six 200-kilowatt fuel cell modules will provide a total of 1.2 megawatts of electricity to power the locomotive.

Creel said he was on an inspection trip last year when the “talented Dr. Mulligan” pitched the concept.

“He said, ‘I’ve got an idea. I believe I can connect all these components and we can create the first-ever freight version of a hydrogen battery locomotive,’” Creel said.

Dr. Kyle Mulligan has a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Sherbrooke, in addition to two degrees in computer systems and electrical and biomedical engineering. Mulligan went through CP’s railroader training programs and is a certified conductor and locomotive engineer who understands both operations and technology.

“Sustainability to me means doing the right thing, not the easy thing,” said Mulligan, who is leading the project as Chief Engineer, Railway Technology.

“The Industrial Revolution enabled a comfortable way of life, but that does not mean we can take it for granted. There are more efficient, cleaner and environmentally-friendly ways of achieving the same standards and goals in life.”

Mulligan and a five-person team are developing the prototype locomotive in Calgary. Creel emphasizes this project is an experiment.

“And again, it may not work out. But I think it’s the right thing to do,” Creel said.

“We’re not betting the farm on it, for lack of a better term.”

Creel said he wants a hydrogen locomotive that has the power and range of a diesel-electric.

“I’m operationally minded,” he said.

“Don’t come to me with a solution that causes more headaches. So if you don’t get the range of a diesel locomotive, we’re not going to have that discussion.”

“For a modest investment, he said just let me prove the concept,” Creel said.

“This has gone from concept to reality. We’ll be running the locomotive this year. It will move this year. We’ll be switching with it next year.”

The $15 million CP is investing in the project was matched by a grant from Emissions Reduction Alberta, which will fund the conversion of a switcher and a high-horsepower unit. Also included in the grant is funding for hydrogen production and fuelling facilities at CP’s yards in Calgary and Edmonton.

The Calgary facility will include an electrolysis plant to produce hydrogen from water, with electricity supplied by CP’s solar array. The Edmonton plant will include a small-scale steam methane reformation system that extracts hydrogen from natural gas produced in the energy-rich province. The facility will be built to accommodate equipment that can capture greenhouse gases.

CP will share information with locomotive manufacturers and, if the project is successful, see if they have an interest in building production versions of hydrogen locomotives.

World’s most powerful magnet wins Japanese scientist major prize

BBC – Dr. Masato Sagawa has been named the 2022 laureate of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

The Japanese scientist invented the neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnet. This is the strongest permanent magnet in wide-scale use today, found in everything from cars to computers.

“The essence of engineering is that you have to deliver,” said Lord Browne of Madingley, who chairs the QEPrize, He said Sagawa’s manufacturing process gave him the edge – in the view of the judges – to win the prize.

“Scientists come up with lots of great ideas; the Higgs Boson, fantastic. But engineering has to do something, and Sagawa’s innovation did this very successfully.”

Nd-Fe-B is one of those indispensable materials, without which everyday life would be a lot less efficient.

The magnet’s importance is only going to increase as the green revolution takes hold. The material will be at the operational heart of many renewables systems, such as wind turbines.

The market for Nd-Fe-B magnets is expected to be worth some $20 billion by the middle of this decade.

Dr. Sagawa made his breakthrough in the early 1980s when the strongest permanent magnet at that time was a samarium-cobalt (Sm-Co) combination. But cobalt metal is a rare resource and Dr. Sagawa recognized that if a solution could be found based on iron, a much cheaper and more useful product could be produced.

He accomplished this by combining iron with neodymium, which is the third-most abundant rare-earth element. The addition of the element boron raises the so-called Curie temperature – the point at which magnetic properties are lost. This is important for using the batteries in cars where the engine compartment can get especially hot.

Dr. Sagawa has won many awards for his innovation but he said this one topped the list. One of those prizes is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) 2022 Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies.  He shares that with Dr. John Croat. The American independently arrived at the same material solution at the same time when working with General Motors.

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering has been called the “Nobel for engineering” and the recipient gets a cheque for more than $800,000 Cdn dollars, along with a trophy that is presented by the Queen or her representative.

Dr. Sagawa has a BS and master’s in electrical engineering from Kobe University (1966) in Japan and a doctoral degree in materials science from Tohoku University (1972). He began his career as a research engineer at Fujitsu Ltd., in 1972, working on magnetic materials for electric relays. He worked on the Nd-Fe-B magnet as private research for five years, patenting it in the early ‘80s, before joining Sumitomo Special Metals Co in 1982. In 1988, he founded Intermetallics Co. Ltd in Kyoto and became its president.

Fusion technology matured by B.C. company

Global News – General Fusion from Burnaby, B.C. announced it has matured a technology that it says could lead to the world’s first commercial fusion energy plant.

Darren Ross, a mechanical engineer at General Fusion, is one who has worked on its Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology. It uses a swirling cylinder of liquid metal to safely compress and heat the required plasma to the right conditions.

“It’s fascinating. It’s great motivation to know you’re working on a project that could change the world hopefully one day,” said Ross.

“The consequences of stuff not working are remarkably high for us; there’s a lot of pressure for us to perform.”

Fusion power is a proposed form of clean energy generation that involves heating two substances – deuterium and tritium – until their atoms collide and fuse into helium and a neutron, which contain a substantial amount of energy. That energy can be harnessed and used to create electricity.

General Fusion’s CEO said the company has achieved milestone targets for the prototype of its fusion demonstration plant, which can accommodate the extreme conditions of fusion, such as temperatures up to 150 million C.

“When you’re trying to contain a plasma, which is a super-heated form of hydrogen, at conditions and temperatures at the centre of the sun … it’s very hard to think of putting it inside a machine and that machine lasting the lifetime of a power plant,” explained CEO Chris Mowry.

“The temperatures and conditions just destroy any solid structure known to man, so by interposing this liquid metal wall, which also acts as a shield between this burning fusion plasma and the machine, you basically protect the machine,” Mowry explained.

“That’s an example of how this liquid metal vortex, as you called it, creates a path forward that actually solves the practical challenges that face making fusion a clean-energy technology.”

General Fusion now plans to build a demonstration plant in the U.K., momentum that has attracted investments from Jeff Bezos, Shopify’s Tobi Luke, Bill Gates and more.

“General Fusion is driving on a path where we could be putting a shovel in the ground on the first commercial plant before the end of the decade,” said Mowry.

Record amount of fusion energy

BBC – European scientists say they have made a major breakthrough in their quest to develop practical nuclear fusion.

A record amount of energy has been extracted by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen.  This new record was set by the UK-based JET laboratory.

The lab’s experiments produced 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power). This is more than double what was achieved in similar tests back in 1997. That’s enough energy to boil about 60 kettles’ worth of water.

The significance of this record is that it validates design choices that have been made for an even bigger fusion reactor now being constructed in France.

If nuclear fusion can be successfully recreated on Earth it holds out the potential of virtually unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy.

Small modular reactors in might not be ready by 2030

CBC – Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) may not be ready in time to replace electricity generation lost from the phase out of coal power in 2030, a former N.B. Power CEO, Gaëtan Thomas, told a committee of MLAs.

The climate change and environmental stewardship committee is hearing from experts and stakeholders to develop recommendations for a new five-year provincial climate-change plan.

Thomas said getting to net zero in New Brunswick won’t be possible without nuclear because wind and solar power are generated intermittently, so, there needs to be a more reliable, all-weather source of electricity to back them up.

“The reality is solar and wind will never be 100 per cent in New Brunswick. … If you get out of oil, gas and coal, what else is there in New Brunswick?” said Thomas.

However, he said it’s not a certainty SMRs will be approved by 2030 when coal is phased out. N.B. Power’s Belledune generating station must stop burning coal by 2030 and the utility is looking for a way to replace electricity from the plant with an energy source that doesn’t emit carbon dioxide and contribute to climate change.

Thomas pushed back when it was suggested that SMR technologies being developed in New Brunswick are unproven. He said it is getting the proper regulatory approval for its new fuel-handling requirements that won’t be quick.

“That’s new, and that, in some cases, will delay this by three or four years, and may get us in a situation where we cannot meet the targets for 2030 or 2035,” he said.

He predicted that eventually, about one-third of New Brunswick’s electricity will come from wind, a third will come from nuclear and a third will come from N.B. Power’s

hydroelectric dams and from hydro energy bought from Quebec and Labrador.

Saint John Energy vice-president Ryan Mitchell also appeared before the committee warning about SMRs. Mitchell told MLAs that the technology may take a long time and could prove expensive.

“The pathway to decarbonize the province and the electricity system is going to require many different solutions. There really is no silver-bullet solution. We do believe that there is a role for nuclear within that,” he said.

“We certainly would suggest there be caution in terms of the timing that solution would be available, and basically the cost that might be associated with that.”

Saint John Energy is now working on a wind farm on the western edge of the city that would produce about 15 per cent of the utility’s electricity and would save it about $4 million annually.

Two companies operating in Saint John, ARC Clean Energy and Moltex Energy, have received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for their research from the federal and New Brunswick governments.

John Deere self-driving tractors touted as solution to rural labour concerns

CNET/The Verge – John Deere’s first fully autonomous tractor will be available in a limited rollout later in 2022.

Minnesota farmer Doug Nimz’s farm served as a testing ground that allowed John Deere’s engineers to make continuous changes and improvements over the last few years.

“It might surprise you, we have more software development engineers today within Deere than we have mechanical design engineers,” said Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer for Deere & Co., said in a recent interview.

“That’s kind of mind-blowing for a company that’s 184 years old and has been steeped in mechanical product development, but that’s the case. We do nearly all of our own internal app development inside the four walls of Deere.”

The world got to see the finished tractor as the centerpiece of the company’s Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2022 press conference.

John Deere isn’t the first agriculture equipment maker to develop an autonomous tractor. But as the world’s No. 2 maker of agricultural equipment, it’s one of the most notable.

John Deere’s tractors have been capable of steering themselves for two decades – as along as the farmer still sits behind the wheel. That fact makes the move to a fully autonomous tractor less of a stretch for a farmer than other people operating other types of vehicles.

Two boxes – one on the front and the other in the back – contain a total of 12 stereo cameras and a graphic processing unit (GPU) that let a farmer control the machine from a smartphone, starting it with a swipe of a button and watching live video as the machine moves across a field.

That differs from most autonomous cars being tested, which use a depth sensor called lidar, while Tesla employs an array of cameras, sensors and radar. John Deere, however, believes that stereo cameras are the way to go. John Deere mounts a stereo camera pod on the front of the tractor and another pod on the back. Each pod has three pairs of ruggedized stereo cameras that essentially work like human eyes. Images are collected by both and are then combined to help the machine locate potential obstacles that are between 45 feet and 90 feet away.

At first, the new tractor system will only be able to till fields. By automating that task, John Deere hopes to take away one responsibility from farmers’ long lists of duties. And with tillage, if something happens to go wrong with the self-driving tractor, a producer has time to fix the problem before spring planting. John Deere views it as the simplest task to automate.

While some are concerned about the move to automation, for farmers, it is embraced as producers find workers in short supply and younger people moving to larger communities. Some believe autonomy may be the only way to ensure enough food is grown to feed the world.

John Deere’s plan for 2022 is to rent a full tractor and chisel plow to about 10 to 50 producers who have steady internet connectivity on their farms and have an interest in using the technology.

Later, the company will let farmers retrofit their tractors with the autonomous technology. It plans to support at least the past three years of tractors and may eventually support older machines. Because John Deere tractors have had self-driving technology for decades, configuring them to be fully autonomous is relatively easy, said Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer for Deere & Co. It will take only about a day to install the equipment and test a machine before a farmer can take it home to use in the field.