By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
For Israel, a country with no fossil fuel sources of its own and strained relationships with its oil-producing neighbors— if any exist at all — the quest for alternative energy may soon take center stage.
Leading the charge in the quest for energy independence is the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, which opened its Technion Energy Program, aimed at developing a variety of new energy projects, a year and a half ago.
Gideon Grader, professor of chemical engineering at Technion, spoke at a local law firm on the evening of Jan. 15 about the importance of this program to both his country, as well as other nations interested in sustainable energies.
“The kind of development we hope will come out of our program will of course be relevant everywhere,” Grader told JTNews prior to the event. “The global community is a small one. If you have a good idea one place, it immediately propagates to other places.”
According to Grader, the program is focused on four different facets of alternative energy: Renewable resources, energy storage and conversion, alternative fuels, and what in the U.S. is typically referred to as “green building.”
Grader noted that many of the technologies Technion is exploring are already in use in varying capacities. For example, the renewable resources program focuses heavily on solar technology.
“We have a few projects that are generating a lot of interest in the [solar] industry,” Grader said. “A neat one that we have is a solar air conditioner. Imagine that you would use the sun’s heat to cool your home. This kind of technology is called heat pump technology and it’s not new, but I think we are applying it in a new way. “
With the need to decrease Israel’s dependence on oil in sight, Grader said he’s particularly excited about a project to create a nitrogen-based fuel, which would, ideally, be both environmentally friendly and less costly than gasoline.
“Rather than store hydrogen on carbon, we want to store it on nitrogen,” Grader explained. “There are various compounds that we are now exploring. The dream is to utilize them where the effluent would be nitrogen and water,” he said.
Seattle was the fourth stop of a five-city U.S. speaking tour for Grader. In hopes of drumming up both American cash and support for the university’s new program, the professor addressed member’s of the American Technion Society in Florida, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.
The university has budgeted $55 million for the new energy program.
“This is a major statement from an Israeli university,” Grader said.
He was quick to add that although the program has been up and running since 2007, it still has a long way to go before it is as wide-reaching as faculty and students would like,
“To take projects like this the whole 100 yards, you need infrastructure,” he said, “which we don’t have yet.”
For the Technion, infrastructure means not only financial support, but also support from other corporations and institutions working in alternative energy.
Researchers working at different departments at the Technion are also encouraged to partner with one another through the energy project.
For Chuck Broches, a member of the North Pacific board for the American Technion Society, this is part of what leads him to lend his support to a university halfway around the world.
“What makes Technion fascinating to me, and I think, a unique place — and the energy program illustrates this,” Broches said, “they’ve found a way to encourage facility to members to think about problems outside of their disciplinary boundaries. So you’ll get the chemist and the physicist and the computer science person together and they will work on solving a problem. Which, in many universities doesn’t happen.”
Gardner noted that Technion, with its roots in civil engineering and water management, has kept pace with the changing needs of the country and today its graduates can be found throughout the country’s high-tech community.
“When you look at the makeup of both the chemical industry and the high-tech industry in Israel, you will find about 75 to 80 percent are Technion graduates. So it has had a tremendous impact on the economy of the nation,” Grader said.
Broches added that here in the Pacific Northwest, a large number of Technion grads have found places for themselves with Microsoft, Boeing and other technology and engineering companies.