The high power density, ease of transportation and storage and many years of development of internal combustion engine technologies have put liquid hydrocarbon fuels at a privileged position in our energy mix. Therefore processes that use renewable energy sources to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels from H2O and CO2 are of crucial importance. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) can be employed as the only energy source for the renewable production of hydrogen from water either indirectly, e.g. by supplying the electricity for electrolysis, or directly by supplying the necessary heat for thermochemically producing hydrogen. Among the various thermochemical cycles tested so far for CSP-driven hydrogen production via water splitting (WS), those based on redox-pair oxide systems, are directly adaptable to carbon dioxide splitting (CDS) and/or combined CO2/H2O splitting for the production of CO or syngas, respectively. The acknowledgement of this fact has recently revived the interest of the scientific community on such technologies. The current article presents the development, evolution and current status of CSP-aided syngas production via such redox-pair-based thermochemical cycles. At first the various redox oxide material compositions tested for water/carbon dioxide splitting are presented and their redox chemistries are discussed. Then the selection of suitable solar reactors is addressed in conjunction with the boundary conditions imposed by the redox systems as well as the heat demands, technical peculiarities and requirements of the cycle steps. The various solar reactor concepts proposed and employed for such reactions and their current status of development are presented. Finally, topics where further work is needed for commercialization of the technology are identified and discussed.

A review on solar thermal syngas production via redox pair-based water/carbon dioxide splitting thermochemical cycles

Current status and recent research achievements in SiC/SiC composites

IntroductionThis article explains how the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale became, through various mutations, an official innovation policy tool of the European Union (EU). TRL originated at the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where it began as a means of measuring how far a technology was from being deployed in space. Later, since 1999, as an outcome of a US Government investigation, the US Department of Defense (DoD) was required to use TRL in weapons technology acquisition (Schinasi, et al., 1999). Similarly, the Commonwealth of Australia conducted the Kinnaird Defense Procurement Review (Kinnaird, et al., 2003) and started using TRL in its own DoD. Around that time, the usage of TRL spread among other governmental and military organizations in English-speaking countries and was also adopted by the European Space Agency. A glossary of terms is provided in Appendix I.From the very beginning, TRL was used to define boundaries between different organizational and financial modes of technological development. Perhaps this is why it made sense to the High-Level Expert Group on Key Enabling Technologies (HLG-KET) of the European Union to build TRL into the foundation of its new public innovation policy. The universal usage of TRL in EU policy was proposed in the final report of the first HLG-KET (HLG-KET, 2011), and it was indeed implemented in the subsequent EU framework program, called H2020, running from 2013 to 2020. This means not only space and weapons programs, but everything from nanotechnology to informatics and communication technology.Central ArgumentThis article argues that it has never been established whether the originally space and weapons technology-specific TRL scale can be used fruitfully in all areas of innovation. Because of this, the EU-wide mandate to use TRL across all publicly funded programs is a risky innovation of the innovation policy itself. This article argues that the subtle mutations happened to the TRL concept in the last three decades. Many aspects of the TRL scale were lost, forgotten or abstracted away during its journey to the EU, while in the meantime; new meanings and associations were formed. In the absence of discipline-specific guides, TRLs will predictably become a source of confusion and a subject of abuse in efforts to obtain EU funding.Article Organization and MethodologyThe article first covers the evolution of TRL from its beginning at NASA to 2013 when it became both an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard and a de facto standard within space and weapons industry. The aim of this first section is to see through the often one-sided laudation of TRL and find the actual, rather hidden factors and conditions that made it widely accepted. The method of this part is the historical analysis of policy documents, program descriptions and other sources.The hidden factors uncovered in the first section facilitate the evaluation of the TRL usage in EU public sector innovation context. This section covers the developments from the first HLG-KET report (HLG-KET, 2011), presents how the H2020 program attempts to implement the TRL scale and ends in 2015 when the final report of the second EU HLG-KET report was written (HLG-KET, 2015). The focus of this description is on the mutations of the practices of using TRL for decision making.These first two sections provide the necessary background to the discussion of the opportunities and risks of TRL bring to the EU in the third section.LimitationsThis article is based on publicly available sources only. There might have been various reasons behind the adoption of the TRL scale in the EU in addition to those revealed in these public documents. Therefore, some issues presented herein may have been caused by the simple lack of communication and not necessarily a lack of clear strategy making. Then again, the majority of those who will have to adopt the TRL scale in order to participate in EU programs have no choice but to rely on public documents. …

From NASA to EU: the evolution of the TRL scale in Public Sector Innovation

Managing and improving organizational capabilities is a significant and complex issue for many companies. To support management and enable improvement, performance assessments are commonly used. One way of assessing organizational capabilities is by means of maturity grids. While maturity grids may share a common structure, their content differs and very often they are developed anew. This paper presents both a reference point and guidance for developing maturity grids. This is achieved by reviewing 24 existing maturity grids and by suggesting a roadmap for their development. The review places particular emphasis on embedded assumptions about organizational change in the formulation of the maturity ratings. The suggested roadmap encompasses four phases: planning, development, evaluation, and maintenance. Each phase discusses a number of decision points for development, such as the selection of process areas, maturity levels, and the delivery mechanism. An example demonstrating the roadmap's utility in industrial practice is provided. The roadmap can also be used to evaluate existing approaches. In concluding the paper, implications for management practice and research are presented.

Assessing Organizational Capabilities: Reviewing and Guiding the Development of Maturity Grids

History of Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Materials: Prehistory, Art, Science, and Advanced Applications

Technology readiness assessments: A retrospective

Technology readiness and risk assessments: A new approach

SPS-ALPHA: The first practical Solar Power Satellite via arbitrarily large phased array (A 2011-2012 NASA NIAC project)

http://www3.nd.edu/~cneal/CRN_Papers/Ehrenfreund12_ASR_GlobalExpProg.pdf

Toward a Global Space Exploration Program: A Stepping Stone Approach

The vision of delivering solar power to Earth from platforms in space has been known for decades. However, early architectures to accomplish this vision were technically complex and unlikely to prove economically viable. Some of the issues with these earlier solar power satellite (SPS) concepts – particularly involving technical feasibility – were addressed by NASA’s space solar power (SSP) studies and technology research in the mid-to-late 1990s. Despite that progress, ten years ago a number of key technical and economic uncertainties remained. A new SPS concept has been proposed that resolves many, if not all, of those uncertainties: “SPSALPHA” (Solar Power Satellite by means of Arbitrarily Large Phased Array). During 2011-2012 the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program supported a Phase 1 “SPS-ALPHA” project, the goal of which was to establish the technical and economic viability of the SPS-ALPHA concept to an early TRL 3 – analytical proof-of-concept – and provide a framework for further study and technology development. The objectives of this project were to: (1) conduct an initial end-to-end systems analysis of the SPS-ALPHA concept in order to determine its technical feasibility; (2) identify and assess in greater detail the key technology challenges inherent in the architecture (including figures of merit for each critical technology area); (3) conduct an initial evaluation of the economic viability of the concept (as a function of key performance parameters); and, (4) define a preliminary roadmap for the further development of the SPS-ALPHA concept.

/pdf/sps-alpha-the-first-practical-solar-power-satellite-via-2x0nphr3he.pdf

John C. Mankins

Papers

Technology readiness assessments: A retrospective

Technology readiness and risk assessments: A new approach

SPS-ALPHA: The first practical Solar Power Satellite via arbitrarily large phased array (A 2011-2012 NASA NIAC project)

Toward a Global Space Exploration Program: A Stepping Stone Approach

SPS-ALPHA: The First Practical Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large Phased Array