Saving Energy By Fighting Friction is becoming big business, with estimates that resistance may burn one-third of the world’s power:
Chemical giants such as DuPont and BASF, leaders in the $40 billion lubrication market, are developing new polymers and low-friction plastics for car engines and airplanes. And design shops, like Rumsey Engineers of Oakland, Calif., are installing — you guessed it — fat pipes. The company recently used them to double the efficiency of the air-conditioning system at the Oakland Museum. “We cut friction in half,” says company President Peter H. Rumsey.Designers in the battle against friction draw lessons from the streamlined forms of plants and animals. One team at Mercedes-Benz, for example, has modeled a concept car on the smooth-swimming form of a boxfish. The “Bionic” car slices neatly through strong winds on the open highway. Better aerodynamics leads to cars that get 70 miles per gallon of gas, according to Mercedes, 30% more than a standard design. The opportunities for savings are even greater in trucks. When they’re rolling at highway speeds, they burn two-thirds of their fuel just to overcome the drag of wind. Researchers at Georgia Tech report that streamlining truck design could reduce this drag by 12%, saving 1.2 billion gallons of fuel per year in the U.S.
The nanotech players focus mostly on new substances. ApNano Materials makes chemical spheres called fullerenes, each one so small that several billion scarcely fill a single teaspoon. When blended into traditional motor oils, these balls leave a smooth film several atoms thick on the metal they touch. Tests by Israel’s technical institute Technion show that they can reduce friction by as much as 50%. ApNano founder Menachem Genut says his fullerenes will be available as an additive in name-brand fuel oil within a year.