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Share/BookmarkQuick Look for Processing

  1. Find your Processing App
  2. Command click and choose “Show Package Contents”
  3. Go inside your Contents folder and open Info.plist with TextEdit (or other text editor)
  4. Add the following code just before the last </dict> tag


    UTExportedTypeDeclarations


    UTTypeConformsTo

    public.text
    public.plain-text

    UTTypeDescription
    PDE code file
    UTTypeIdentifier
    org.processing.pde
    UTTypeTagSpecification

    com.apple.ostype
    TEXT
    public.filename-extension

    pde

  5. Save this file
  6. Make sure Processing is closed and open terminal
  7. From your home directory execute “touch /Applications/Processing.app”
  8. Now you should be able to Quick Look for Processing .pde files!!
 

Share/BookmarkLithium Ion LCA

Material Flow(Inputs and Outputs)

References

Lithium-Ion Batteries: Solid-Electrolyte Interphase
>Perla B Balbuena, Yixuan Wang; Imperial College Press
Environmental Burdens of Large Lithium-Ion Batteries Developed in a Japanese National Project
>Kaoru ISHIHARA, Nobuo KIHIRA, Nobuyuki TERADA and Toru IWAHORI
Life Cycle Assessment LCA of Li-Ion batteries for electric vehicles
>M. Gauch, R. Widmer, D. Notter, A. Stamp, H.J. Althaus, P. Wäger
Li-ion and NiMH battery recycling at Umicore
>Jan Tytgat
Tesla Motors Engineering Blog
Dan Steingart, PhD
>Assistant Professor – Dept of Chemical Engineering (City College of NY)
Building better batteries
>M. Armand and J.-M. Tarascon
Issues and challenges facing rechargeable lithium batteries
>J.-M. Tarascon & M. Armand

 

Share/BookmarkFinal Presentation on Lithium Ion Battery Cells

Lithium Car Batteries Intro

In my reconcepualization of the EV car battery cell, it was nessiary to concider improvements to multiple stages of the cell lifecycle. The most efficient chemistries are already being considered for use in these batteries. The biggest question I had become a matter if improvements in efficiency outweighed the environmental impact compared to past battery chemistries.

Where to Intervene

From a consumer standpoint, batteries are typically examined in terms of efficiency and safety, therefore these are the factors that drive the market and innovation. I did not consider chemistry because these factors are driven by efficiency of the battery. Also, all current raw materials used in secondary cells have similar environmental effect as seen in the previous chart.

Materials Production

The production certain raw materials in Lithium-Ion and other secondary cells causes environmental issues including greenhouse gases and high levels of acidification. There is considerable amount of Sulfur Dioxide released into the atmosphere from the mining of materials such as nickel. Technology is now being developed that can be used to retrofit existing factories with hardware that would allow the breakdown of sulfur dioxide that is being released in production process.

Sustainable energy use for both materials production and transportation is also another way to reduce environmental impact. This would significantly reduce C02 emissions, which currently have the largest environmental effect in the manufacturing of NiMH and Lithium-Ion batteries in comparison with lead-acid batteries used in combustion engine vehicles.

Transportation

Transportation is a major factor in CO2 emissions and energy consumption. Again, a switch to the use of sustainable energy can dramatically improve environmental effects. Both Toyota and Sanyo have recently constructed cargo ships that run partially on solar and wind energy. Another way transportation affects can be altered would be through the reconcideration of where materials or sourced and the location of fabrication. It would be an intelegent investment opportunity to setup a battery manufacturing in a strategic location that has locally available resources.

Use

It is important to educate the consumer on best use practices that would prolong the life of the battery. It would also be more sustainable limit the power draw of the vehicles that use the batteries. This would mean they wouldn’t necessarily be optimal in sports cars.

Recycling

Most materials in Lithium Ion batteries are recyclable. Right now the Tesla battery recycles 60% of battery and reuses 10%. Additional recycablity can be achieved with greater market volume. Recycling batteries can reduce CO2 emissions by 70% according to Umicore. Battery mineral resources are limited and create a reliance on certain markets, so recycling relieves this need to rely on outside sources. Finally, it is necessary to create some sort of government regulation like WEEE in the EU that demands by law the proper recycling of these batteries.

 

Share/BookmarkLithium Ion Batteries Overview

Lithium Ion rechargeable batteries has completely transformed the battery industry in terms of quality, ecological effects, and safety. Not until 1996 had the technology developed to a point where these type of batteries could start to be considered for use in electric automobiles due to discoveries that increased safety, stability, performance and decreased cost of the batteries. Since that time, this technology continues to be leveraged as being far superior to its lead acid and NiMH counterparts. Advantages of lithium include lighter weight, longer lifespan, and higher efficiency. The materials used in lithium batteries are highly recyclable as well.

Interest

Electric cars are becoming an increasingly viable alternative form of transportation. There has been a resurgence in the interest for electric cars since the “death of the electric car” (See film “Who Killed the Electric Car”. The key component to performance of EVs is their battery. The efficiency and performance of the ESS(Energy Stroage System) determines cost of the vehicle and therefore has a large impact on the market.

Innovation

Lithium batteries are currently a very popular field of innovation since this type of research is beneficial to many intrustries including laptop and other mobile device production. Most experimentation takes places through testing the use of different types of elements for the anodes and cathodes of these batteries. Other innovations occur through using different form factors and configurations of these cells. It was recently discovered that the best performance comes through configuring a large number of small cells connected in series and parallel as opposed to using a fewer number of larger cells.

Regulatory

In the US

Safety is regulated by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Regulations run by the Department of Transportation. These regulations determine the standards for safety testing, that including thermal and impact testing of the battery. These standards only address driver and passenger safety and do not environmental concerns

International Standards

These standards were created by the EU do not apply to batteries produced in the US.

  • Safety
    • Altitude simulation: simulating air transport.
    • Thermal cycling: assessing cell and battery seal integrity.
    • Vibration: simulating vibration during transport.
    • Shock: simulating possible impacts during transport.
    • External short circuit: simulating an external short circuit.
    • Overcharge: evaluating ability of a rechargeable battery to withstand overcharging.
  • RoHS – batteries that meet this standard do not include
    • Lead
    • Mercury
    • Cadmium
    • Hexavalent chromium (chromium xxx or Cr6+)
    • Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB)
    • Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE)

WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) sates that, from 13 August 2005 onwards, manufacturers are required to finance the collection, treatment, recycling and recovery of all WEEE sold under their brand.

Activists/NGOs

The first time electric car advocacy hit the mainstream was with the release of “Who Killed the Electric Car” in 2006. They supported other organizations such as Plug in America who advocates for zero-emission vehicles. There are also federal bills such as E-Drive which funds the development of EV (Electric Vehicles) for use in organizations including the USPS. Call2Recycle is the largest rechargeable battery recycling organization and is funded by product manufactures around the world. They provide services for recycling batteries, advocate environmental protection, and respond to government regulations.

Consumer Motivation

The major drivers for consumer in electric vehicles is reducing fuel costs and emissions. Through buying an electric car, fuel cost decrease significantly and even become zero when using a sustainable energy source. Consumers are also given a tax break by the government on energy efficient vehicles. Consumers still often don’t have the foresight to weigh long term benefits of products against the higher cost of electric and hybrid vehicles in relation to their gas fueled counterparts. This cost factor is tied to the battery technology, meaning with the development of cheaper more efficient batteries, the cost of electric vehicles will decrease. Consumers are also becoming more conscious about reducing emissions and therefore have incentive to buy electric vehicles in order to offset their carbon footprint.

 

Share/BookmarkInteractive Concierge Table

Collaboration between Igal Nassima and Michael Zick Doherty

Concept
Hotel lobbies are shared spaces for hotel residents and visitors that integrate social spaces such as bars, restaurants, and waiting areas. The hotel provides concierge services for the visitors for variety of information about the area including activities, resources, attractions, etc. Many people gather around tables in the lobby as a form of interaction, as well as for other activities such as playing games, waiting, and getting information from newspapers and other guides.

Concierge table lives on the hotel lobby floor, creating a vehicle for social interaction as well as providing and storing information for each guest. Guests connect to the table through their unique ID embedded in their hotel key card. The guest can put their cards on the table and the table draws the data onto the screen. The table allows multiple users to interact. A user can decide if they want to use the whole table and share their content or use just a section of it. After creating and editing maps and data, users can send this info to their mobile device via SMS or other mobile application.

User story
A Hotel guest approaches the table and on screen text asks the guest to place their key card on the surface. Once card is placed on surface, the guest is shown a menu with options to browse events or view recommended events based on a previous interaction with the hotel concierge. If user choose “browse events”, they are given a sub menu allowing them to choose what types of events they’d like to browse. Venues are aggregated both on the map and as a new menu listing. The guest  is also presented with a time range selector that allows further filtering of results. After selecting an event from the listing, details are displayed with the time, location, cost and description of event. From there, guests can order ticket that are charged to their hotel account as well as send event information via email or SMS associated with their account.

Technical
Fiducial markers are printed on the hotel key card to give each one a unique ID. Rooms with multiple guests can also have multiple keys so each guest has their own profile. When key cards are set on the table, it loads the data for that guest from a secure server.Users interact with the table using multitouch technology that tracks finger movement using blob detection.

Implementation
Our final product for the spacial media midterm was a prototype of this table with a subset of features. We were able to implement both the finger and fiducial maker tracking, though had some issues with precise spatial calibration between the camera and projector. We discovered that our infrared bulbs create a light source that was too concentrate and decided future prototypes would need a more distributed lighting solution such as LED strips. We used the Reactivision tracking application which sent tracking data via OSC to our GUI application in openFrameworks. In our next version we plan to use Flash as it integrates well with open source map APIs and has well supported event listening and GUI creation. The events were loaded into the map via XML. We also save data to keycards using XML as well. We were able to enable movement across the map, but the senstivity need to be adjusted to create a more fluid interaction with the user.

We plan to continue with this prototype in the coming two weeks and present our concept to hotels in New York.

 
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