Volkswagen Shows Off Advanced Fuels Vehicles

Volkswagen of America is showing off advanced fuels models of some VW cars at the Designing Sustainable Mobility Summit, being held at Art Center College of Design in Southern California.

Summit attendees and Art Center students are being provided the experience of driving VW models running on biodiesel, ultra low sulfur diesel, hydrogen, and highly efficient gasoline engines on public roads.

"It's important to demonstrate that raising the bar in such important areas as fuel efficiency and emissions reduction isn't just accomplished with exotic or future-oriented technologies," says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal, which is hosting the summit's ride-and-drive. "Volkswagen's demonstration of its clean diesel and twincharger engines provides real-world examples of environmentally positive technologies that are operating on highways today."

At the event's Green Cars/Pasadena ride-and-drive, VW is fielding a Touareg V-10 TDI running on B5 biodiesel, a mixture of conventional ultralow sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel and renewable biodiesel. Diesel fuel that includes a mix of biodiesel burns cleaner and also helps displace fossil fuel use, contributing to energy diversity. VW has extended warranty protection to its models operating on B5 biodiesel as a way to encourage use of this cleaner fuel.

An advance look is also being offered of a highly efficient, twincharger gasoline engine Jetta in development. This Jetta's TSI engine provides higher power output from a smaller displacement engine while also achieving greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions. The TSI is popular in Europe and now is being considered for use in the U.S. It uses asupercharger to provide engine boost at lower rpms and an exhaust-driven turbocharger at mid-range rpms and higher.

At the summit, VW's Touran HyMotion hydrogen fuel cell vehicle not only shows Volkswagen's interest in this zero-emission fuel, but also showcases the company's breakthrough high-temperature fuel cell.

A decade of VW hydrogen vehicle development has led to a high-temperature fuel cell that provides a more compact, lighter, and more durable fuel cell system. This technology holds great promise to make fuel cell powertrains more economical, key to future mass production, the automaker says.


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Tiny Sensors Could Aid Environmental Protection, Pharmaceuticals

By Emil Venere

Researchers at Purdue University have shown how to create a new class of tiny sensors for applications ranging from environmental protection to pharmaceutical preservation.

Although similar "gas-flow sensors" are currently being used for a variety of industries, the new sensor is the first that works on the scale of micrometers and nanometers, or millionths and billionths of a meter, respectively, said Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Gas-flow sensors currently used, including those in residential gas meters to determine how much to charge customers, operate on a principle known for at least 100 years. According to that principle, as gas flows over a surface, such as the wall of a pipe or an object flying through the air, molecules of gas nearest the surface remain stationary. The molecules farther away from the surface move progressively faster.

"That model works really well in many situations, including aerodynamics and applications where the scale of the flow is large compared to the size of the molecules," Wereley says.

This principle, however, does not apply to gas flowing through channels on the scale of micrometers or nanometers, meaning ordinary designs will not work for sensors needed for applications on those scales. In such applications, gas molecules immediately adjacent to the wall of a tube do flow and are said to "slip."

"This exception to the model carries important design implications," Wereley said.

Findings will be detailed in a research paper to be published in the February issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering. The paper describes how the sensor is designed.

Gas-flow sensors that operate on the scale of micrometers and nanometers could have applications in environmental protection, particularly to measure the leakage of hydrocarbon fumes from fuel tanks in new cars on the manufacturing line. Federal environmental guidelines specify how much leakage is allowable.

Automakers currently test empty fuel tanks by pressurizing them with a gas, such as helium, and then measuring whether the pressure drops, indicating leakage. The test is limited because, while it can determine whether a tank is leaking, it cannot reveal how severe the leak is. Using a sensor capable of measuring gas flow on small scales would make it possible to yield more accurate data.

An accurate test also could be applied to the pharmaceutical industry, which preserves drugs in packages filled with a gas free of the molds and impurities of ambient air. Pharmaceuticals are shipped and stored in the packaging, and the industry tests packages for leakage, but gas-flow sensors could be used to test them more accurately.

The Purdue researchers worked with industry to develop the sensors, which currently are too costly to be manufactured profitably. The research is associated with the Microfluidics Laboratory at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue's Discovery Park.


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