Peering Into The Future Of Energy
Jan 30 - Seattle Post - Intelligencer
Lewis Fraas did not know where to start.
So this 60-year-old Ph.D. from Cal Tech took the simpler route and rattled a
box of matches. Scratching one into fire, the former Boeing engineer took the
first step in a demonstration that one day could spark a revolution in the way
we heat and light our homes.
Fraas and his wife, China-born Jany Xiang, run a small alternative-energy
hardware company called JX Crystals three blocks south of Gilman Boulevard in
downtown Issaquah.
As scientists in business since 1992 (she is the J and the X in JX Crystals),
they have generated a series of products aimed at reducing our craving for oil,
a craving Fraas says has us "behaving like an addict in denial."
Fraas has been chasing the sun's energy for 30 years, first as a student,
then as a scientist for Hughes, Chevron and, last, for Boeing.
"My problem now," he said, "is that I have watched our energy
policy over the last 20 years and, independent of political party, (it) has
simply been to guarantee the oil supply from the Middle East - with our military
as necessary. It is time for a shift in policy."
Now, burning match in hand, he was pressing on.
Before him sat a tiny kerosene lamp wired to a pocket-sized radio.
Touching fire to the wick, he made music fill the room.
What magic was this?
As oil lamps go, this one seemed ordinary.
Its shade was not.
It was made from wafer-thin slices of a specially crafted crystal containing
gallium and antimony, metallic elements that respond in peculiar fashion to the
unseen waves of electromagnetic radiation found in fire - infrared light.
Imagine the possibilities, as Fraas and Xiang tried to demonstrate between
1998 and 2000. In those years, their company developed a prototype space heater
- the Midnight Sun - that advanced the oil lamp-radio idea only in size. As a
stove, it was big enough to warm a cabin and could crank out enough electricity
to fire up a TV.
While only 20 test models were built and the stove was never in production,
it showed what a gallium-antimonide device might do for a world trying to
conserve its oil reserves.
Imagine a home furnace able to generate power enough to run its own
forced-air blower, and at the same time generate enough juice to power your
entire house.
Imagine what that might mean on a cold and windy night when the power lines
go down. Imagine whole communities where stoves generate power at night and in
winter, while rooftop solar panels do the job when the sun comes out.
Fraas got his start on this as part of a Boeing team searching for ways to
produce a bigger bang from solar radiation.
Eventually, they settled on the potential found in crystals of a compound
containing gallium and antimony. But in 1992, Boeing quit the program, and Fraas
found himself with a license from the company to continue on his own.
With Xiang as his partner, he has. They have long been a matched pair.
They met in 1985 in San Francisco, where he worked for Chevron and she was a
student.
At home in Shanghai, Xiang had been an employee of an outfit known as
Semiconductor Component Factory No. 5, a manufacturing hub for China's emerging
electronics industry. She arrived in America as part of a wave of Chinese
scholars taking advantage of improved relations with the United States. In San
Francisco, she studied business.
But science was the couple's common denominator.
"On our first date, we found ourselves making engineering sketches on
napkins and drawing little wiggles that are the symbols for photons," Fraas
said.
There were sparks.
Eighteen years later as a married couple, and 12 years later as business
partners, Fraas and Xiang continue to survive, if largely on grants that, for
non-military purposes, are fewer and further between.
Their first job was an Army contract. But from this couple's point of view,
the emphasis on military hardware has cast a pall over research and development
for products with civilian value.
On their list of products is a solar panel that uses a sandwich of various
crystals to capture a wider range of the sun's radiation.
Is it the breakthrough technology solar advocates have long sought to compete
with present-day electric rates?
Fraas guesses yes.
"This is no longer rocket science anymore," he said.
What the fledgling industry needs now, he said, is funding for further
development and testing in the real world.
Fraas spells out his plan in a just-published book he titled "Path to
Affordable Solar Electric Power & the 35% Efficient Solar Cell," which
is as challenging to read as its title.
But its message is clear.
"It is generally believed that solar energy today is intrinsically too
expensive to compete with traditional forms of electric power generation,"
he says in the book. "Those perceptions are wrong."
The couple's scramble for funding has produced an interesting twist. The
money behind their new solar panels is coming not from America's Department of
Defense or Energy, but from the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee.
That's right. From the People's Republic of China.
P-I reporter Gordy Holt can be reached at 425-646-7900 r gordyholt@seattlepi.com
TO LEARN MORE
See the JX Crystals Inc. Web site at www.jxcrystals.com