$1 Million New AFS Trinity Flywheel Alternative Energy Program Aims to Reduce Lung Damage from Buses and Trucks
SEATTLE & WASHINGTON--Feb. 5, 2004--| Sen. Murray announces appropriation for flywheel hybrid vehicle system with potential to reduce diesel emissions by 90% and diesel fuel consumption by 50% |
AFS Trinity Power Corporation's hybrid bus and truck program to cut particulate emissions by 90% has received an additional $1 million government award and has become more urgent as evidence mounts that diesel emission particulates may be the number one cause of lung damage in urban areas, the company announced today.
The new, flywheel-based hybrid vehicle system is also expected to cut fuel consumption in half, the company said.
Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) sponsored the $1 million earmark for the flywheel hybrid program. "AFS Trinity is developing a technology with the potential to eliminate the black smoke that trucks and buses emit when they accelerate," she said. "Add this to the reduced fuel consumption we can expect from flywheel hybrid vehicles, and this program could produce major health and energy benefits for Washington state and the nation."
Edward W. Furia, Chairman & CEO of Seattle-based AFS Trinity, agreed. "Findings that diesel particulates may be the number one cause of lung damage in urban America adds great urgency to our work. We believe the DOT flywheel hybrid program is playing a key role in making flywheel hybrid buses and trucks commercially feasible."
Sen. Murray initiated the original $1 million appropriation for the AFS Trinity flywheel hybrid project in 2002 and sponsored an additional $1.375 million earmark to continue its development last year. This latest appropriation, which will be provided through the advanced transportation consortium WestStart CALSTART, continues that project.
"Hybrid vehicles will use their flywheels instead of their internal combustion engines during periods of acceleration and passing, the times in the driving cycle during which heavy vehicles such as trucks and buses emit heavy, noxious black smoke," said Furia. "This is particularly true in transit buses and multi-stop delivery vehicles, such as postal and other freight delivery fleets, as well as in school buses, garbage trucks, and similar vehicles."
Furia said evidence continues to mount that fine particulate diesel emissions from trucks and buses are a major cause of lung disease. Several recent studies have linked exposure to these emissions with a high incidence of asthma in children and to heart and respiratory disease in adults.
The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, for example, released a study linking diesel emissions with up to 70% of the cancer risk in Puget Sound. Children are especially at risk with particulate matter levels that are two-to-five times greater inside a school bus than outside, according to the California Air Resources Board. California is tied with Washington State for the worst polluting school buses. In New Jersey, the Department of Environmental Protection estimates that exposure to the microscopic particles emitted by diesel-fired engines on buses, trains and off-road construction equipment causes between 350 and 1,200 deaths there each year from asthma attacks and other heart and lung problems. Perhaps most troubling is a 2003 study by UCLA and USC scientists, which details how minute particulates, like those in diesel smoke, travel beyond the lungs and bloodstream, and, like asbestos, can enter the cellular mitochondria, the component in a cell that powers and maintains cell function, triggering a wide range of diseases. "The mitochondria of a cell is like the cell's battery," according to Melanie Marty, head of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "Once you damage the mitochondria, you're going to kill the cell." http://www.webcom.com/~bi/celldamagelat.htm
Although trucks and buses are out-numbered by cars, they spend 6 to 10 times more hours on the road every day than passenger cars and are a disproportionate source of cancer-related particulate pollution. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently adopted more stringent regulations for diesel particulate emissions that will require a 50 per cent reduction in on-road diesel particulate emissions by 2007 and a 90 per cent reduction by 2010. Off-road vehicles, which produce 44% of mobile diesel particulate emissions, are covered in new proposed EPA regulations, that mandate phased reductions in such emissions beginning in 2008 and achieving 90% reductions by 2014. The American Lung Association is urging more rapid phase in of these rules.
AFS Trinity's flywheel is a high-speed rotating mass suspended by magnetic bearings in a vacuum. This creates a very low friction environment that allows the flywheel to spin at the more than 40,000 rpm required to store sufficient kinetic energy to power a hybrid vehicle during acceleration and passing. Moreover, a process called regenerative braking makes it possible to recover in the flywheel energy that would otherwise be lost in braking. As a result, hybrid vehicles require smaller engines and less fuel, thereby reducing operating costs and emissions. Flywheel power systems are also expected to be used with constant output fuel cells to "follow the load" and, assuming that hydrogen management issues can be successfully addressed and fuel cell cars can become a reality a decade from now, smaller passenger car-sized flywheels might be developed that could be used in fuel cell cars for acceleration and passing.
The other major applications for AFS Trinity's technologies include UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Systems that provide reliable power for microprocessor-based operations and other mission critical applications, industrial power smoothing and power management, trackside power management, peak shaving for distributed generation such as fuel cells and micro turbines, and combined flywheel energy storage and momentum control systems for spacecraft and satellites. http://www.afstrinity.com/apps.html).
During a recent telephone interview in Seattle with a national publication covering the Omnibus Appropriations Bill, Furia said, "We are grateful for this additional funding and especially for Senator Murray's continued support and leadership. I continue to be amazed, however, at how comparatively little is being spent across the board by the federal government or by Detroit to reduce vehicular emissions from cars, trucks and buses and also to develop alternative energy systems that will reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. Why are CAFE standards (for auto fuel efficiency) more lax now than they have been in 15 years? Why will a Detroit auto company spend $900 million in one year just to change the body design on an existing car, but only a tiny fraction of that on cleaner alternative drive train technologies? Frankly, funding for our flywheel hybrid program deserves to be a hundred times larger, and development of other companies' equally promising alternative energy technologies deserve to be well funded too. America spends an enormous amount every year to protect its foreign oil supplies by projecting its military power abroad. Even if we spent only 5% of that amount on alternative energy, it would be likely to lead to major technological breakthroughs or acceleration in the deployment of systems such as ours, in which much has already been invested. In my opinion, if this were to occur, it would result in a dramatic reduction of the need for so large a military budget."
Furia co-founded American Flywheel Systems, Inc. (AFS) in 1991, which received the first flywheel battery patent in 1992. He was also one of the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970 and was President of Earth Day 20, one of the two groups which organized an international twentieth Earth Day in 1990. He was the first head of the US EPA's Middle-Atlantic Office, which initiated the first case under the Clean Air Act in 1972. American Flywheel Systems acquired control of and then merged with Trinity Flywheel Power to create AFS Trinity Power Corporation in 2000.
President Bush, who delivered his FY 2005 budget to Congress this week and is expected to request deep cuts in federal spending for energy, environmental and agriculture programs, signed the FY 2004 Omnibus Appropriations Bill containing the earmark for the AFS Trinity flywheel hybrid program into law on January 23rd. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4093-2004Feb1.html
AFS Trinity Power Corporation www.afstrinity.com
Senator Patty Murray http://murray.senate.gov/
American Lung Association http://www.lungusa.org/ See also http://www.lungusa.org/bin/search/searchit.pl?query=diesel&ichoice= index.swish-e&ixname=.swish&results=0 (Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste this hyperlink into your Internet browser's URL address field.)
WestStart CALSTART http://www.calstart.org
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/
AFST DOE testimony on national energy policy encouraging alternative energy http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.062201/211730074
NOTE TO EDITORS: In the World Wide Web address noted in the eight paragraph, there is a tilde between http://www.webcom.com/ and bi/celldamagelat.htm. This symbol may not appear properly in some systems.