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The charge for the future

Since last fall, Jacob Folz and five other mechanical engineering students have been working on the design, construction and testing of a tidal turbine propeller, a critical component of renewable energy technology that many people believe could one day help reduce our crippling dependence on imported oil.

Folz, a fifth-year senior from West Paris, Maine, and a starting guard and tackle for the UMaine football team the past two seasons, happens to be one of those believers.

With completion of the senior capstone project and graduation this semester, Folz is preparing to move to Texas, where he'll begin his new job as a field engineer with a company that makes high-temperature sensors for... oil drilling operations.

"Oh, yeah, I certainly can see the irony in that," Folz says with a grin after a long afternoon of tidal turbine engineering work in Crosby Laboratory.

Having read about harmful greenhouse gases and the various renewable energy sources that could help curb them one day, Folz is practical enough to realize that a transition to cleaner power will be a long and challenging process.

"There is no one silver bullet," he says. "Wind power is fine, but it clutters up the skyline. The efficiency of solar panels is low. So there has to be a combination of lots of small things, and it will be a long time before we can rely on them enough to significantly reduce our dependence on oil."

A 2006 energy study that determined Maine to be a "world-class tidal resource" has generated excitement among would-be developers and hopeful state energy officials eager to explore its potential. Yet the technology necessary to harness the power of the tides is still in its infancy, which adds significance to the tidal turbine research of the UMaine engineering students.

Scott Lessard and Russell Dunn made up the turbine construction team, while the testing and application of the device fell to Folz, Eric Martin, Richard Peale and Patrick Bates. The turbine propeller was tested in the university's tow tank using a dynamometer to measure drag force. Folz wrote the data acquisition system that will take raw voltage data and convert it into force, or rpms, to determine how much power can be extracted from a given flow of water.

Building a device durable enough to withstand the storms of the Fundy region and the debris that might be sluicing through its tidal currents is an important element of the students' work.

The project required them also to consider several factors that are not directly related to the mechanics of designing the components themselves. There are critical environmental issues, such as the turbine blades' possible effect on marine life, and questions about whether the device would interfere with shipping lanes or commercial fishing and recreational boats.

"One of the main obstacles is that there's so little data available," says Folz, who has also studied internal combustion engines and thermodynamics while at UMaine. "The power is in the water, we know that. The problem is how do we harness it without harming the ecosystem or the fishing industry. A lot of questions remain."