Technology Trending: utility drones, AI edge computing, hydrogen blending, carbon capture materials

Military-inspired drone technology for utility critical infrastructure maintenance, novel AI edge computing chip, theoretical modelling of hydrogen blending in gas pipelines and new materials for carbon capture are on this week’s technology radar.

Drones for utility maintenance

Florida drone solution provider Duke Robotics has reported developing a drone system, the IC Drone, for cleaning the insulators on HV electricity transmission infrastructure.

And the first user will be Israel Electric Corporation in a pilot of the technology, which draws on Duke Robotics’ Tikad platform with advanced stabilisation technology that was developed for military use to carry lightweight firearms.

The IC (insulator cleaning) Drone is the company’s first drone system for civilian applications, with others including delivery solutions set to follow.

“We believe that our high performance, mission critical drone technology and know-how has untapped potential in the civilian market,” says Yossef Balucka CEO of UAS Drone Corp, of which Duke Robotics is a subsidiary.

The commercial launch of the IC Drone is scheduled for the second half of 2023 with the expectation it can offer an alternative to the use of helicopters and/or crane trucks for the routine cleaning of HV insulators.

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AI edge computing chip

AI powered edge computing is increasingly pervasive in IoT and other devices but improvements in energy efficiency are necessary to enhance the AI functionalities.

In today’s AI chips, data processing and data storage happen at separate locations – a compute unit and a memory unit, with the frequent data movement between them consuming most of the energy during AI processing.

Stanford University engineers believe they have come up with a potential solution – a novel resistive random-access memory (RRAM) chip that does the AI processing within the memory itself, thereby eliminating the separation between the compute and memory units. The ‘compute-in-memory’ chip, called NeuRRAM, is about the size of a fingertip and does more work with limited battery power than what current chips can do.

“Having those calculations done on the chip instead of sending information to and from the cloud could enable faster, more secure, cheaper, and more scalable AI going into the future,” said H.-S Philip Wong, professor at the University’s School of Engineering.

At this stage, NeuRRAM is a physical proof-of-concept and more development is needed before it can be translated into actual edge devices.

Hydrogen blending caution

Hydrogen blending makes obvious sense in terms of gaining experience with its handling and use and starting its delivery into the energy system, even though the carbon emission benefits – often cited as a reason against – are minimal.

The question is the impact of the hydrogen on the gas infrastructure and while traditional wisdom suggests up to 20% blends are possible – and while ultimately experimental testing will demonstrate – evidence is emerging this may not be the case.

In a new theoretical study published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, University of London researchers model hydrogen injection at a T-junction into a horizontal pipe carrying gas – the most likely option – to find that there is poor mixing in the vicinity of the injection point with high concentrations of hydrogen on the pipe walls, particularly on the upper pipe surface, due to the lower molecular mass and thus buoyancy of hydrogen.

This in turn could lead to embrittlement of steel pipes, and the more so if in the vicinity of welds. And the possibility is likely to be further exacerbated by the need to increase the pressure or the gas flow rate to maintain the energy flux delivered to customers with the introduction of hydrogen.

Carbon capture – new materials

Carbon capture is taking on ever greater importance as countries seek to reduce or at least stabilise the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Direct air capture materials already exist, but they are either too costly or energy intensive to be deployed at scale, which has led scientists at the US NIST to simulate hypothetical materials that might have the right physical properties to make the technology scalable.

While the ideal material(s) still has to be found, porous crystalline materials made up of atoms arranged in a repeating three-dimensional pattern that leaves voids between them are showing particular promise.

The uneven distribution of electrons within the crystal structure creates an electric field that is attractive in some places and repulsive in others, with the contours depending on the types of atoms and their geometrical arrangement. If all the forces line up just right, the CO2 molecules will be drawn into the voids of the crystal by electrostatic attraction.

“We haven’t hit on the ideal materials yet,” says NIST chemical engineer Daniel Siderius.

“But there are a lot of potential materials out there, and new simulation methods can help us find them more quickly.”