The Kynix Blog

SummaryIron-air batteries promise a considerably higher energy density than present-day lithium-ion batteries. In addition, their main constituent -- iron -- is an abundant and therefore cheap material. Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich are among the driving forces in the renewed research into this concept, which was discovered in the 1970s. Together with American Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), they successfully observed with nanometre precision how deposits form at the iron electrode during operation. A deeper understanding of the charging and discharging reactions is viewed as the key for the further development of this type of battery rechargeable to market maturity. The results were published in the journal Nano Energy--Charging and discharging reactions during operation shown with nanometer precision.  BodyFor reasons including insurmoutable technical difficulties,research into metal-air batteries was abandoned in the 1980s for a long time.The past few years, however, have seen a rapid increase in research interest. Iron-air batteries draw their energy from a reaction of iron with oxygen. In this process, the iron oxidizes almost exactly as it would during the rusting process. The oxygen required for the reaction can be drawn from the surrounding air so that it does not need to be stored in the battery. These material savings are the reason for the high energy densities achieved by metal-air batteries. Iron-air batteries are predicted to have theoretical energy densities of more than 1,200 Wh/kg. By comparison, present-day lithium-ion batteries come in at about 600 Wh/kg, and even less (350 Wh/kg) if the weight of the cell casing is taken into account. Lithium-air batteries, which are technically considerably more difficult and complicated to realize, can have energy densities of up to 11,400 Wh/kg. When it comes to volumetric energy density, iron-air batteries perform even better: at 9,700 Wh/l, it is almost five times as high as that of today's lithium-ion batteries (2,000 Wh/l). Even lithium-air batteries have "only" 6,000 Wh/l. Iron-air batteries are thus particularly interesting for a multitude of mobile applications in which space requirements play a large role. "We consciously concentrate on research into battery types made of materials that are abundant in the Earth's crust and produced in large quantities," explains institute head Prof. Rüdiger-A. Eichel. "Supply shortages are thus not to be expected. The concept is also associated with a cost advantage, which can be directly applied to the battery, particularly for large-scale applications such as stationary devices for the stabilization of the electricity grid or electromobility." What Cause These Difficulties?The insights obtained by the Jülich researchers create a new basis for improving the properties of the battery in a targeted manner. Using in situ electrochemical atomic force microscopes at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they were able to observe how deposits of iron hydroxide particles (Fe(OH)2) form at the iron electrode under conditions similar to those prevalent during charging and discharging. "The high pH of 13.7 alone represents a borderline condition for the instrument," explains Henning Weinrich from Jülich's Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-9). "We were the first at Oak Ridge to successfully conduct such an experiment under realistic conditions," says Weinrich, who stayed in the USA for three months especially for the measurements. Capacity IncreasingWe should notice that deposits do not decrease the power of the battery.On the contrary, since the nanoporous layer increases the active surface area of the electrode, it contributes to a small increase in capacity after each charging and discharging cycle. Thanks to the investigations, the researchers have for the first time obtained a complete picture of this layer growth. "It was previously assumed that the deposition is reversed during charging. But this is obviously not the case," explains Dr. Hermann Tempel from Jülich's Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-9). Furthermore, a direct link was verified for the first time between the layer formation at the electrode surface and the electrochemical reactions. There is, however, still a long way to go until market maturity. Although isolated electrodes made of iron can be operated without major power losses for several thousand cycles in laboratory experiments, complete iron-air batteries, which use an air electrode as the opposite pole, have only lasted 20 to 30 cycles so far. 

Summary As we all know,in case of macro photography or close-up portraits,the availability of a proper lightning source can dramatically improve the final result.  For this a soft light, possibly white, not a flash is essential.  The LED ring project we are presenting is not only useful for still photography but can be used for video and stop-motion animations.     Project Goals Some years ago I started a similar design of a non-portable, white ring light based on a small round neon tube, but soon I abandoned the project due to the difficulty to use it in real, outdoor applications.  Really it did not work well outside a photography studio.  This idea came back to life when I found a very cheap, PCB LED ring on sale at a local Chinese store.  It is a simple, circular design with 24 LEDs powered by either 6 or 12 VCC.Even though this little LED ring was designed for car lighting effects, its diameter and size are perfect for the photographic application I had in mind.  Component is very affordable indeed. Portable battery operated Lightweight and easy to carry Variable light intensity Compact battery pack Working in almost every condition, but not underwater   Circuit Schematics     As shown in the schematics, the LED ring output VCC is triggered by a 4.7K potentiometer to control the intensity.  An inline switch (not included in the schematics) is placed between the battery and the rest of the circuitry to turn the LED ring On/Off.  The power cable connects to the battery pack through a power jack for better portability. The resulting PCB layout has been designed to fit inside the battery pack cover box fixed with some hot glue.     Parts   Model Design First of all, I designed the LED ring container; the back support is 3D-printed, while the clear front cover is cut with a CNC router from a sheet of Perspex 1,8 mm thin. Also the battery container is built in two 3D-printed parts: the battery container and the box cover hosting the control circuit.     The LED ring is holding the camera through a support fixed to the external flash socket, cut with a CNC router from 3mm Perspex laminate.   Power   The LED ring is powered by 12 rechargeable 2100 mA/h AA batteries.  The batteries, connected in series, are inside two, 6 AA battery holders.  Because the LED ring needs to remain powered during the entire photo shoot, testing has been conducted to see how long the batteries will last.  This testing showed they provide sufficient power for hours of continuous usage.   Dimmer Circuit Design The easiest way to control the dimming intensity is via PWM control.  For this project I decided not to use a microcontroller to control the light intensity.  Instead I used a simple NE555 IC in an astable configuration.  To calculate the component values needed, a few simple inputs were used to determine the proper ratings. Our max rating VCC power is 12V (the nominal battery power is about 14 V when fully charged) The NE555 operates at a maximum rating of 15V For the output current level we will use a NPN P2222A transistor supporting up to 800 mA The LED ring works at a max power rating of about 500 mA   Final Design The complete design consists of three main parts: The battery pack The ring camera support The LED ring     Everything easily fits into the camera bag when not in use.  When you want to use it the LED ring, simply attach it to the camera and then use the long power cord (120 cm) to connect it to the battery in the camera bag.  This length of cable has been more than suffieient for all the work that I have done to date.  

SummaryResearchers at Caltech have developed a prototype miniature medical device that could ultimately be used in “smart pills” to diagnose and treat diseases. This is critical for the function of biosensors and smart pills. A key to the new technology—and what makes it unique among other microscale medical devices—is that its location can be precisely identified within the body, something that proved challenging before. The picture is about an ATOMS microchip localized within the gastrointestinal tract. bodyCalled ATOMS, which is short for addressable transmitters operated as magnetic spins, the new silicon-chip devices borrow from the principles of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in which the location of atoms in a patient's body is determined using magnetic fields. The microdevices would also be located in the body using magnetic fields—but rather than relying on the body's atoms, the chips contain a set of integrated sensors, resonators, and wireless transmission technology that would allow them to mimic the magnetic resonance properties of atoms. The ATOMS device seen next to a penny. The device has a surface area of 1.4 square millimeters, 250 times smaller than a penny. A key principle of MRI is that a magnetic field gradient causes atoms at two different locations to resonate at two different frequencies, making it easy to tell where they are. The researchers wanted to embody this elegant principle in a compact integrated circuit. ATOMS devices also resonate at different frequencies depending on where they are in a magnetic field. The scientists wanted to make this chip very small with low power consumption, and that comes with a lot of engineering challenges. They had to carefully balance the size of the device with how much power it consumes and how well its location can be pinpointed.The devices are still preliminary but could one day serve as miniature robotic wardens of our bodies, monitoring a patient's gastrointestinal tract, blood, or brain. They could measure factors that indicate the health of a patient—such as pH, temperature, pressure, sugar concentrations—and relay that information to doctors. Or, the devices could even be instructed to release drugs. Microscale and Biosensors You could have dozens of microscale devices and biosensors -traveling around the body taking measurements or intervening in disease. These devices can all be identical, but the ATOMS devices would allow you to know where they all are and talk to all of them at once. The researchers compare it to the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage, in which a submarine and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a patient to heal him from the inside—but, instead of sending a single submarine, you could send a flotilla. The researchers say the devices are still preliminary but could one day serve as miniature robotic wardens of our bodies, monitoring a patient's gastrointestinal tract, blood, or brain. The devices could measure factors that indicate the health of a patient—such as pH, temperature, pressure, sugar concentrations—and relay that information to doctors. Or, the devices could even be instructed to release drugs. This chip is totally unique: there are no other chips that operate on these principles. Integrating all of the components together in a very small device while keeping the power low was a big task. The final prototype chip, which was tested and proven to work in mice, has a surface area of 1.4 square millimeters, 250 times smaller than a penny. It contains a magnetic field sensor, integrated antennas, a wireless powering device, and a circuit that adjusts its radio frequency signal based on the magnetic field strength to wirelessly relay the chip’s location. In conventional MRI, all of these features are intrinsically found in atoms. Ther researchers still had to create an architecture that functionally mimics them for our chip. Article from CaltechArticle edit by kynix

SummaryThe invention of electril trucks has bring a lot of benefit for human being. An electric truck is a truck powered by electricity. For information on trucks using a combination of internal combustion engines and electric propulsion, see Hybrid electric truck. Now they are having a moment in the spotlight,however,they still have a long haul cause the costs and other limitations.  Tesla Inc. plans to unveil a semi tractor-trailer this week, its first foray into trucking after more than a decade of making cars and SUVs. German automaker Daimler AG showed off its own electric semi last month and says it could be on sale in a few years. Truck rental company Ryder just added 125 all-electric vans made by California startup Chanje to its fleet. "It's kind of like the checkered flag is being waved," said Glen Kedzie, energy and environmental counsel with the American Trucking Associations. "We've seen different fuels come and go, and electric has gotten to the front of the line." According to the data of Navigant Research, global sales of pure electric trucks are expected to grow exponentially from 4,100 in 2016 to 70,600 in 2026 as battery costs fall and more options enter the market.elivery companies, mail services and utilities will be among the biggest purchasers, and most of the growth will come from Europe, China and the U.S. Most electric trucks on the road will be medium-duty vehicles like delivery vans or garbage trucks. They're quiet and emission-free, and they can be plugged in and charged at the end of a shift. They're ideal for predictable urban routes of 100 miles or less; a longer range than that requires more batteries, which are heavy and expensive. Battery Costs IssueHowever,it's cost that cause a big issue. A medium-duty electric truck costs about $70,000 more than equivalent diesel trucks, according to the consulting firm Deloitte. Buyers considering electrics have to weigh what they can save on fuel and maintenance costs, since electrics have fewer parts.Heavy-duty trucks like electric semis have even further to go before they can be competitive with diesels. Some of those trucks are used for shorter routes, but to achieve a longer range of 300 miles, they require more batteries.  Expensive EletrificationDeloitte estimates electrification adds around $150,000 to the cost of a heavy-duty vehicle, or more than double the cost of some diesel tractor-trailers. Electric semi trucks will have the added problem of long charging times and little highway charging infrastructure."I see it being relevant but not ready for prime time," Chanje CEO Bryan Hansel said of long-haul electric trucks. He thinks it will be five years or more before the battery technology and infrastructure can support cross-country electric trucking. "It's a big prize, but the physics haven't caught up yet," he said. Different ThinkingOther analysts,however,believe that this situation will change. Battery costs are expected to fall significantly over the next decade as technology improves. Deloitte expects battery costs for trucks to fall from $260 per kilowatt-hour in 2016 to $122 in 2026. That would cut the cost of a 300 kWh battery pack—like the one in Daimler's prototype semi —from $78,000 to $36,600. At the same time,regulations will drive interest in electric trucks. In the U.S., trucks must meet stricter emissions standards through 2027 under rules that went into effect last year. China is also tightening emissions standards. And several major cities, including Paris and Mexico City, have called for a ban on diesels by 2025 to improve air quality. Incentives are also enticing companies to add electric trucks to their fleets. Companies that buy or lease vans from Chanje are eligible for an $80,000 voucher per vehicle from the state of California, for example. France pays out 10,000 euros ($11,669) to buyers who replace diesel vehicles with electric ones.  Companies' GoalsCompanies are also experimenting with electrics—and other alternatives, like natural gas—because they want to meet their own sustainability goals and figure out the optimal mix for their fleets. United Parcel Service, for example, has 300 electric trucks in its global fleet of 100,000 vehicles, mostly in the U.S. and Europe, said Scott Phillippi, UPS's Senior Director of Maintenance and Engineering for international operations. Many of UPS's delivery routes require trucks to travel less than 100 miles per day, a range easily met by an electric truck, Phillippi said. He said electric trucks also help the company take advantage of incentives. UPS has set a goal of having 25 percent of its fleet be made up of alternative fuel vehicles by 2020, in part to encourage manufacturers to keep building and improving such trucks. "The proof of concept time is over," he said. "Everybody is starting to agree it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when." 

SummaryIncreasing demand for energy and power encourages companies operating in energy and power industry to adopt solutions that can help them enhance production output with minimum errors and reduced down-time on a global scale. The products are offered specifically for the energy sector to enhance operations in the energy data management area. Industry 4.0 solutions help power plant owners, operators, and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the power industry make improved business decisions based on performance and operational readiness of their plant equipment.According to the MarketsandMarkets forecast, the Industry 4.0 market in energy and power was valued at $1.30m in 2016 and is expected to reach $3.22bn by 2022, at a CAGR of 16.33% between 2017 and 2022. IoT and Power IndustryIndustry 4.0 is being led by IoT and it plays an important role in condition monitoring and predictive and proscriptive maintenance of assets.Plant operators need to monitor and control the plant more efficiently, and for doing so, the adoption of advanced technologies such as HMI is increasing significantly in the energy and power industry. IoT provides flexibility to accommodate new energy sources, better management of assets and operations, greater reliability and enhanced security.  Big Data to Transform Power IndustryThe energy and power industry has recognised the benefits of big data as it plays a vital role in solving business problems in utility companies.In this vertical, the big data solutions are gaining traction in various processes such as seismic data analysis, smart grid analytics, and data analysis related to production, testing, logging, and many other operations. Each year, smart grids and smart meters generate hundreds of terabytes of data, which include unstructured and semi-structured data. Companies in the energy and power industry have analysed this huge amount of data to get real time access to the situation. Being largely customer-centric, the energy companies are also making a shift toward providing more personalised products and services to their customers. Big data plays an important role in providing trends and patterns by analysing the data, which in turn are useful for product and service upgradation and enhancement. Real Time Monitoring in Battery ManagementReal-time monitoring is a technique that allows you to determine the current state of queues and channels within a queue manager. The information returned is accurate at the moment the command was issued.It can provide frequent information on batteries which can help protect the batteries.Real time monitoring in battery management can help replace manual checks by information available at monitoring systems. Sensor modules collect the voltage and temperature data from the batteries and data is transferred in real time can help supervisors identify issues if any and which will lead to operational efficiency.   Predictive MaintenancePredictive maintenance (PdM) techniques are designed to help determine the condition of in-service equipment in order to predict when maintenance should be performed. This approach promises cost savings over routine or time-based preventive maintenance, because tasks are performed only when warranted.It helps in lowering operating and capital costs by facilitating proactive servicing and repair of assets while allowing more efficient use of maintenance personnel and replacement components.It enables companies to accurately diagnose and prevent failures in real time, which is vital in critical infrastructure applications.  Battery failures can prove to be highly expensive in terms of repair costs, in addition to the delay in transporting goods from the resulting downtime. Predictive battery analytics can also help predict battery failures which allows the supervisors to reduce reliability risk and improve uptime.The need for longer battery life, reduced energy consumption, and lower costs will lead companies to provide intelligent solutions. Cognitive Power Electronics SystemsPower electronics systems equipped with intelligence unit can monitor data from sensors and the data can be used to detect faults in the electronic system for real time optimisation of an application.A power converter with monitoring capabilities would be able to detect impedance changes of a battery,enter into a safe state and send information to external systems for further evaluation. Article from MarketsandMarkets Research Private Ltd.Edit by Kynix

TroublesAs the deployment of Industrial IoT systems continues to proliferate,the streams of data transferred to the cloud skyrockets, drastically increasing the cost for cloud computing.  SolutionIn order to meet this trouble, many systems designers are adopting edge computing,in which data processing is done close to the source like sensors in a bid to reduce data transfer,storage and processing costs,plus address a few other concerns over Cloud Computing,in particular security. What is Big DataBig Data is a broad label for the growing amount of data generated by IoT devices and smart systems. For instance, some aircraft engines have more than 5,000 elements that are monitored at relatively high sample rates. Most of the data is transferred to a ground station for the real-time monitoring of the engine and for future R&D work. But this is only part of a growing trend. Most ‘smart’ systems produce vast amounts of data which needs to be processed immediately or be stored for subsequent processing. Huge datacentres are required if you want to store Big Data.Big Data is a broad label for the growing amount of data generated by IoT devices and smart systems. For instance, some aircraft engines have more than 5,000 elements that are monitored at relatively high sample rates. Most of the data is transferred to a ground station for the real-time monitoring of the engine and for future R&D work. But this is only part of a growing trend. Most ‘smart’ systems produce vast amounts of data which needs to be processed immediately or be stored for subsequent processing. Cloud Computing's advantages and disadvantagesCloud Computing has a lot of advantages including cost efficiency (i.e. no need to invest in and maintain your own hardware), scalability, resource availability (for all your users irrespective of their geographic locations), lower latency (as you can specify servers that are closest to the relevant users/customers) and peace of mind in terms of back-ups. There are,however,some disadvantages also. The biggest of which is that no provider can guarantee 100% availability. Data security and privacy are also causes for concern, both on the cloud and for data in transit. Latency can be an issue for Big Data, and doing computationally intensive tasks on the cloud will increase the cost. Of these concerns the last two, in particular, can be negated through edge processing; i.e. performing much of the computationally intensive work near the source data. Benefits here include real-time or near-real-time data processing and reduced network traffic, as you need only transfer the product of the edge processing, thus resulting in lower Cloud Computing costs. Security and privacy can be improved by keeping the sensitive data (a.k.a. Hot Data) within the edge processing environment and only sending less sensitive (Cold) data to the cloud. FPGAs have the edgeThere are technologies that can be used for edge processing applications. These include the use of traditional CPUs (scoring high in terms of flexibility), application-specific processors (e.g. GPUs) and ASICs/SoCs (scoring high on performance). However, it is FPGAs that are slotting into most edge processing applications. Why is this so? Well, let’s consider the requirements. Edge processing needs to be high-performance and in this respect an FPGA can perform several different tasks in parallel. For example, consider executing many non-dependent computations (such as A=B+C, D=E+F and G=H+I). On a CPU, these would have to be performed sequentially, with each sum requiring a few clock cycles. In an FPGA, an array of adders could do the computations in parallel, possibly requiring only a single clock cycle. Power efficiency is essential too, as the end product may well be battery-powered. With an FPGA the function (design) need be the only circuit present, whereas the architecture of a CPU or GPU may not be fully utilized. Also, with an FPGA comes the benefit of reprogrammability. Higher security is afforded too because the edge processing functions are hard wired into the FPGA. It is also possible to encrypt the transaction bus and to even go as far as designing your own processor. ConnectingA prime example of where edge processing is extremely useful, and in which FPGAs can play a significant role, is within an embedded system in which data derived from images needs to be transferred. For example, in the automotive sector Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are under development to make driving safer, easier and more comfortable, and ADAS is regarded as a significant step towards fully autonomous cars. The data processed by an ADAS can be used to notify the driver of problems or to automatically trigger responses such as deceleration, braking and/or the execution of a manoeuvre. The data can also be useful outside the vehicle. Let's discuss the embedded vision system first though by considering an ADAS demo unit that was built for this year's Embedded Vision show in Santa Clara, California. The demo comprised a TySOM-2-7Z100 prototyping board (see figure 1) which includes a Xilinx Zynq XC7Z100 device and a TySOM-FMC-ADAS daughter board to interface with four 960 x 540 pixel cameras. The processing was shared between a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and FPGA logic (both of which reside within the Zynq device) and began with frame grabbing images from the cameras and applying an edge detection algorithm (‘edge’ here in the sense of physical edges, such as objects, lane markings etc.). This is a computational-intensive task because of the pixel-level computations being applied (i.e. more than 2 million pixels). To perform this task on the ARM CPU a frame rate of only 3 per second could have been realised, whereas in the FPGA 27.5 fps was achieved.This picture is a TySOM-2-7Z100 prototyping board. Mixed technology (like CPU and FPGA) boards are proving very popular for edge processing applications and for connecting with the cloud.  The ARM CPU was mainly used for superimposing detected edges over the initial camera images, colour-space conversions, the formation of a composite image (see main image) and outputting it to an HD buffer. The FPGA and CPU could also work together to recognise and distinguish between obstacles and pedestrians close to the car and to provide lane departure warnings. What goes upSending the processed data to the cloud for further processing and/or storage is then a relatively simple task. Firstly, an AWS account would be created along with an AWS IoT environment. Next, we would configure a Thing (seeing as it is the IoT) and download the public and private keys needed for secure communications with the cloud.The embedded C MQTT standard would be the ideal Software Development Kit (SDK), because it is secure and requires minimal bandwidth. An application would then be prepared to run on the ARM CPU to publish the data onto the cloud. Imagine a scenario,howevber,under which we have data from thousands of vehicles going to the cloud.Analysis of the data could be performed on the cloud and made available for traffic systems or highway maintenance organisations, for example. There may also be instances where data from the cloud feeds into an edge-processing application, in which case applications are also available from AWS. All in all,there are both advantages and disadvantages associated with cloud computing. And many of the disadvantages will be overcome though edge-processing that FPGAs are a particularly suitable activity.  Article provided by Farhad Fallah,an Application Engineer with EDA company AldecArticle edited by Kynix