Three energy research centres to open in Singapore

Feng Zengkun Straits Times 15 Jun 11;

THREE new research centres will be set up here to look into energy and power usage, said the National Research Foundation (NRF).

The centres will study solar energy, ways to convert carbon dioxide into electricity and fuel, and how to create consumer and household products that use less power. They will be housed at a complex at the NUS University Town, which will be completed by the end of the year.

Funding will come from the NRF's Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (Create) programme, which pairs up local and foreign institutions.

NRF chairman Tony Tan, 71, said on Monday that the projects are important for Singapore as it lacks natural resources and has a highly industrialised economy. 'Each of these initiatives will tackle the energy problem from a different perspective,' he said.

The first centre is a 'low-energy electronic systems' project by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), under the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Smart) centre. The scientists intend to find new ways to make household items such as lights and television screens use less electricity.

Traditionally, this was done by making the semiconductors in them smaller and more dense to minimise loss of energy. But the scientists said new techniques may yield more energy savings.

The project brings together experts from MIT, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). They will be from different fields, such as materials, devices and circuits.

Lead principal investigator Professor Eugene Fitzgerald of MIT said the diversity is more likely to lead to a breakthrough. 'This collaboration could define innovative paths for the industry,' he said.

The second research centre will look at ways to make solar power cheaper and to convert sunlight into liquid fuels. It is a collaboration between NTU, NUS and the University of California, Berkeley.

The researchers noted that solar energy is good for the environment but is not widely used because it is too expensive. The Energy Market Authority here has estimated that the cost of solar power is double the cost of electricity from fossil fuels. Part of this is due to the inefficiency of current solar panels, which the scientists said can convert at most 25 per cent of sunlight received into usable energy.

'We want to double the conversion to at least 50 per cent,' said University of California, Berkeley's Professor Ramamoorthy Ramesh, the project's lead principal investigator. This would make solar panels more worthwhile and solar power cheaper to produce on average. The scientists are also looking at ways to use the same amount of sunlight to split more water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be used to make methanol, a liquid fuel that can replace fossil fuels.

In the third centre, China's Peking University will work with Singapore universities for the first time to recycle the carbon dioxide in industrial waste gases into energy and fuel.

Lead co-principal investigator Zhang Dongxiao of Peking University said this would give the manufacturing and chemical industries a greener image. 'This can also make products from both our countries more competitive,' added Professor Zhang.

The new centres bring the Create programme to eight overseas collaborating universities and 12 research groups. Previous collaborations under the programme have resulted in projects like the Future Cities Lab, which looks at ways to develop sustainable buildings and keep a city's water supply clean.

NRF has set aside a total of $1 billion for the Create programme.