Welcome to Pharogen

Welcome to Pharogen!

New Energy

3D H2 Interaction Potential - Photo Pharogen

With increasing globalization, developing economies are experiencing a great boost to their purchasing power. This is especially true of China and India. Not surprisingly, along with their greater purchasing power comes a desire and ability to improve their standard of living. These large developing economies now compete with currently entrenched major market players as the United States, Canada, and countries in Western Europe for world energy reserves.

Competition for constrained, depleting carbon-based resources is not likely to diminish in the near future. In fact, we are currently witnessing first-hand the dynamics of an oil economy that will certainly not improve on its own unless deliberate action is taken to curb such dependency.

Hydrogen: Energy Carrier

As transportation accounts for 67% of the 20 million barrels of oil our nation uses per day, it would make sense to seek an alternative to the traditional internal combustion engine (ICE). To this end, the Department of Energy (DOE) has set some lofty goals for the introduction of a cost competitive fuel-cell vehicle (FCV). While continuous advances are being made on fuel-cells in terms of costs and materials, hydrogen storage remains a major problem that needs to be addressed adequately. Indeed, "Hydrogen storage is one of the key hurdles in creating a hydrogen-based transportation system," according to James Spearot, director of GM's chemical and environmental sciences laboratory.

STERLING-THERMOELECTRIC POWER GENERATIONSterling engine technology has been around for some time. Several companies manufacturing and selling commercial Sterling engines currently exist. Commercial thermoelectric devices have also been around since the early 1950s, the thermocouple being a most popular example. In fact, an internet survey of companies currently manufacturing TE devices on a commercial scale yields a total of 27. Out of the 27 companies, 24 of them have products that primarily exploit the Peltier cooling/heating effect, rather than the Seebeck power generation effect.

THERMOELECTRIC POWER GENERATION A thermoelectric waste heat recovery (WHR) system can be of use for applications ranging from highway and off-road vehicles to shipboard engine propulsion systems. Waste heat would be recovered from engine exhaust and fuel efficiency improved through the use of a Thermoelectric Generator that generates electricity via a temperature gradient.

ELECTRICALLY CHARGED METAL-DOPED CARBON AEROGELS Hydrogen - Nanotechnology Metal-Doped Carbon Aerogels (MDCA) capable of meeting the Department of Energy gravimetric and volumetric goals for hydrogen storage to be used onboard fuel-cells vehicles are the primary materials in this work.
By using a MDCA in combination with an electric charge process our concept exploits the physical properties of MDCAs and metal nanoclusters.
Within the MDCA matrix, we induce dipole moments in hydrogen molecules using electric charge fields that aid in the electrosorption and formation of several hydrogen monolayers, which increase the hydrogen storage capacity of the base material.

Energy Technologies