Experienced Electrical Engineer

WASHINGTON (AP) 02/03/09 — Ford Motor Co. said Johnson Controls-Saft will supply the battery system for the automaker’s first production plug-in hybrid electric vehicle beginning in 2012.

The lithium-ion battery system being designed by Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls will include cells along with mechanical, electrical, electronic and thermal components.

Ford is also expanding its test program to include several utilities around the nation to speed up the commercialization of plug-in hybrid vehicles. The partnerships, being announced today at the Washington Auto Show, are part of Ford’s strategy to bring a battery-electric vehicle van to market in 2010 for commercial use, a small battery-electric sedan by 2011 and a plug-in electric vehicle by 2012.

In the tests, Ford said the utilities were joining its partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute to conduct tests on a fleet of Ford Escape plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The utilities include the New York Power Authority, Consolidated Edison of New York and the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority.

By John Seewer - ASSOCIATED PRESS -Updated: 06/24/09 07:31 AM

PERRYSBURG, Ohio — A new government council will help auto industry workers transition to new manufacturing opportunities, including jobs in alternative energy, Vice President Biden said Tuesday.

Biden toured the northwestern Ohio headquarters of the Willard & Kelsey Solar Group, which plans to begin large-scale production of solar panels this year. The Toledo area has been hit hard by job losses in the auto industry and is banking on more green factory jobs.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Manufacturing is facing one of its toughest periods, in at least my lifetime,” Biden said. But, he said, U. S. manufacturing can be successful again if, for example, auto workers are trained to work in the solar, wind or biotech industries.

There are close to 10 companies that are turning Toledo into a research hub for converting sunlight into energy.

President Barack Obama was expected to sign an executive order this week that establishes the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers. The council will be chaired by one of the president’s top economic advisers, Lawrence Summers, and his labor secretary, Hilda Solis.

The executive director will be Obama’s director of recovery for auto communities and workers, Ed Montgomery.

The recession has been particularly hard on the auto industry, which has lost more than 400,000 jobs in the last decade.

Ohio has taken hits from both the big automakers who have announced two plant closings in recent months and the small auto suppliers who have been forced to slow production. The state ranks first in the country in the number of suppliers.

The Obama administration is expanding its program to help link auto suppliers with companies that are making wind turbines, solar panels and robotics, Biden said.

The auto suppliers, he said, already have the technology and skilled workers that can help them transition into making alternative energy products. “This program is going to put them on a self-sustaining path,” he continued.

Biden noted that the solar company he toured Tuesday is using technology developed in Ohio to produce and ship a product overseas. “That’s the America I grew up in,” he said.

Willard & Kelsey hopes to hire about 400 employees this year to increase production, said Gary Faykosh, the company’s head of research and development. But everything is on hold because of the tight credit market, he said. “We’re ready to go,” Faykosh said.

The solar technology startups in the Toledo area have become a popular backdrop for politicians promoting alternative energy.

As the Republican Party vice-presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made a campaign stop in October at a company that is developing flexible solar panels. Earlier this month, Solis and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland toured a factory that produces machines that make glass for the auto and solar industries.

By Jennifer Liu -  Fox News - May 18, 2009

Scientists at the Mascoma Corporation — a Lebanon, N.H. company founded by two Dartmouth professors — have successfully demonstrated a new and more cost-effective way to produce biofuel from plant matter by reprogramming bacteria and yeast cells to digest the organic material, the company announced earlier this month.

“Mascoma was formed to develop this technology,” Jim Flatt, executive vice president of research, development and operations at the company, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

The advances make biofuel production more commercially viable, he said.

Mascoma has developed the technique of consolidated bioprocessing, which integrates a multi-step process for producing ethanol into a single step.

The company’s hallmark technology utilizes the metabolic capabilities of microorganisms to convert plant matter into renewable fuel.

A 2005 U.S. Department of Energy research agenda stated that “[Consolidated bioprocessing] is widely considered to be the ultimate low-cost configuration for cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation.”

The Mascoma research team’s next step is to scale up its technology for practical use, Flatt said. Engineers and operators at the company’s plant in Rome, N.Y., will adapt the methods developed in the Lebanon laboratory for use on larger equipment.

Mascoma plans to launch a commercial venture using its technology by the end of next year, Flatt said. Company officials are in the process of identifying a location for a commercial office and securing funding for the project, he said.

“Our principal goal, both technology- and business-wise, is to make renewable second-generation cellulosic feedstocks available for production of transportation fuels and eventually chemical fuels,” he said, referring to the use of non-food plants like switchgrass and wood products to produce alternatives to fossil fuels.

One of the announced advancements involves the bacterium Clostridium thermocellum, which is naturally found in compost, Flatt said.

Unmodified, the bacterium efficiently degrades cellulose to produce a mixture of ethanol and other organic waste products. Scientists at Mascoma have genetically altered the bacteria to produce predominantly ethanol, significantly reducing unwanted waste products and increasing the amount of ethanol that can be produced, Flatt said.

The genetically modified bacteria now produce almost 6-percent weight by volume ethanol from cellulose, an increase of 60 percent in what Mascoma scientists reported last year, according to a Mascoma press release.

Mascoma was also able to genetically alter brewing yeast, enabling it to convert cellulose into ethanol, according to the release.

Mascoma scientists achieved this by introducing genes that code for cellulase — an enzyme that breaks down cellulose — into the yeast genome, Flatt said.

Previous methods for producing biofuels have relied on complex chemical processes that require expensive equipment and produce unusable by-products, Flatt said.

“By integrating those activities in one sort of microbial operating system, we’re able to, in principal, significantly reduce the complexity of the process and of operating and capital costs, which are the current barriers,” he said.

The technology reflects work conducted at Mascoma’s laboratory at the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center in Lebanon as well as at partner research facilities, including VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland and Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Mascoma collaborates with Thayer School of Engineering professor Lee Lynd, whose research team contributed to the results announced earlier this month, Flatt said. Lynd, one of Mascoma’s co-founders, currently serves as chief scientific officer of the company.

Other biofuel companies use different techniques to produce ethanol that may currently be more commercially viable, Flatt said, though he added he believes Mascoma is still a leader in the field.

“There are only a handful of companies that both have the critical mass and are sufficiently advanced and that have built facilities to prove that,” he said. “Mascoma is in that group.”

This story was filed by UWIRE, which offers reporting from more than 800 colleges and universities worldwide. Read more at www.uwire.com.