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Posts tagged Energy
It’s nice to know poop’s good for something
Sep 24th
In one dog park in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dog owners can recycle the poop to light up the park at night.
The “Park Spark” poop converter is actually two steel, 500-gallon oil tanks painted a golden yellow, connected by diagonal black piping and attached to an old gaslight-style street lantern at the Pacific Street Park. Boston artist Matthew Mazzotta, who is not a dog owner, got the idea after he visited the park with a friend in 2009. Mazzotta had recently traveled to India and saw people there using poop in so-called “methane digesters” to cook food. As he watched the park’s trash can fill with bags of poop, he remarked to his friend, “In other countries, they use that.”
The “Park Spark” poop converter is actually two steel, 500-gallon oil tanks painted a golden yellow, connected by diagonal black piping and attached to an old gaslight-style street lantern at the Pacific Street Park. Boston artist Matthew Mazzotta, who is not a dog owner, got the idea after he visited the park with a friend in 2009. Mazzotta had recently traveled to India and saw people there using poop in so-called “methane digesters” to cook food. As he watched the park’s trash can fill with bags of poop, he remarked to his friend, “In other countries, they use that.”
Instead of putting bags of poop in the trash bin, signs on the tanks instruct owners to use biodegradable bags supplied on site to pick up the poop and deposit it into the left tank. People then turn a wheel to stir its insides, which contain waste and water. Microbes in the waste give off methane, an odorless gas that is fed through the tanks to the lamp and burned off. The park is small but has proven busy enough to ensure a steady supply of fuel.
Burning the methane, which is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, helps the environment. With dogs dropping tons of poop in cities everywhere, Mazzotta thinks the idea of using its untapped power has broad appeal.The project was funded by a $4,000 grant from Council of the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Mazzotta earned a master’s degree in visual studies last year.
It Doesn’t Always Have to be about Subsistence Farming and Growing Locally
Sep 22nd
Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market will open its second GreenChill certified store at Oceanside Blvd. & College Blvd. in Oceanside, California on Wednesday. Two weeks ago, Fresh & Easy opened its first GreenChill store in Rosemead, California, which was also the first grocery store in Southern California to utilize a CO2 refrigeration unit.
EPA’s GreenChill Partnership works with food retailers to reduce refrigerant emissions and decrease their impact on the ozone layer and climate change. Under the agreement with the EPA, Fresh & Easy works to achieve to the following:
- Transition to refrigerants that have a lower environmental impact;
- Lower refrigerant charge sizes and eliminate leaks; and
- Adopt green refrigeration technologies, strategies, and practices.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, GreenChill’s food retail partners have refrigerant emissions rates 50% lower than the EPA-estimated industry average. If every supermarket in the nation reduced refrigerant emissions down to GreenChill’s average, they could prevent the equivalent of 22,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere every year. That is equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 4.2 million passenger vehicles. In addition, these stores would save over $100 million every year, which would help customers save money too.
Fresh & Easy worked closely with partners Kysor/Warren and Southwest Refrigeration on the Oceanside store, which earned its silver certification award from the EPA GreenChill Partnership by meeting tough benchmarks for cutting emissions that harm the earth’s protective ozone layer and contribute to global warming. Fewer than 40 of the nation’s 35,000 grocery stores have received GreenChill Store Certification awards.
On average, Fresh & Easy stores use 30% less energy than a typical supermarket – helping save customers money while helping the environment. Fresh & Easy uses LED lighting in external signs and freezer cases, offers customer recycling in every store, and uses advanced refrigeration and freezer units to cut back on energy usage.
Steve Hagen, Fresh & Easy’s Director of Procurement presenting at the FMI Energy & Store Development Conference said today, “In addition to our efforts to reduce refrigerant emissions, we also are working on innovative ways to save energy, such as utilizing skylights, LED lighting and technological advancements like EnviroTower, which saves a significant amount of water in our stores.
The Rats Will Power The Matrix
Sep 19th
French researchers have created just that, and it’s smaller and more powerful than current batteries meant to function inside a living being. And the battery has the survival readiness as rat’s themselves, as it’s the first batter to work inside a living rat. The battery worked for 11 days in its first trial. During the trial, the device produced 2 microwaves of power over several hours with a peak energy density of 24.4 microwaves per milliliter (or .73 microwaves per inch). A standard pacemaker battery requires a sustained power of 10 microwaves. A larger version of the biocell could easily power a pacemaker and would be significantly smaller that batteries currently in use.
Don’t worry, the rat was not harmed during the experiment and survived without complications. Upon removing the device, the researchers found that the rat’s body had ‘accepted’ it by coating the device with tissue containing newly grown blood vessels. This proves the body would facilitate oxygen and glucose movement to the implant.
“In the future we are expecting to develop, for instance, implantable biosensors able to monitor the level of glucose to control the insulin pump,” an implant used to treat diabetes, said study co-author Serge Cosnier of the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France.
Don’t worry, the rat was not harmed during the experiment and survived without complications. Upon removing the device, the researchers found that the rat’s body had ‘accepted’ it by coating the device with tissue containing newly grown blood vessels. This proves the body would facilitate oxygen and glucose movement to the implant.
“In the future we are expecting to develop, for instance, implantable biosensors able to monitor the level of glucose to control the insulin pump,” an implant used to treat diabetes, said study co-author Serge Cosnier of the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France.
It’s Flying, with Style
Sep 15th
Efforts are underway to harness the wind in the upper layers of the atmosphere, which could contain as much as 870 terawatts of power — that’s 870 trillion watts! Being able to harness this energy has one significant advantage: it would take less raw material per watt of power, translating to a lower cost per watt.
One design, from Joby Energy, hopes to launch a 500-kilowatt winged turbine next year,. The company claims to be able to use just 20 tons of material per megawatt, compared to the conventional wind power industry average of 96 tons. In order to keep such a turbine from floating off into space, Joby plans to attach tether propellers with a cord. Makani Power’s idea is an airborne wind turbine, which launches when wind speeds reach 3.5 m/s. The turbine does not have any fuel or batteries and fliest crosswind in a circular pattern in order to generate power.
One design, from Joby Energy, hopes to launch a 500-kilowatt winged turbine next year,. The company claims to be able to use just 20 tons of material per megawatt, compared to the conventional wind power industry average of 96 tons. In order to keep such a turbine from floating off into space, Joby plans to attach tether propellers with a cord. Makani Power’s idea is an airborne wind turbine, which launches when wind speeds reach 3.5 m/s. The turbine does not have any fuel or batteries and fliest crosswind in a circular pattern in order to generate power.
Photosynthesis strictly for plants? no longer
Aug 23rd
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have developed an artificial photosynthetic material, which uses sunlight, carbon dioxide and plant/algae enzymes to produce sugars, later converting into ethanol and other biofuels. The design for this material is based of the foam nests of the Tungara frog. This foam has energy efficient advantages over typical photosynthetic materials, where the plant uses some of the energy for its own livelihood. About 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide are converted to biomass every year, so imagine the energy possibilities.
Use what you have. Rwanda has an exploding lake
Aug 21st
Rwanda’s Lake Kivu is on the doorstep of Nyurangongo volcano, making the lake’s waters the secret hiding place for thousands of years worth of volcanic gases. The Rwandan government recently built a power plant on the lake’s shore, producing 3.6 megawatts of electricity. This is enough to power more than 4 percent of the country. Doesn’t seem like much, but plans are to utilize more of the Lake Kivu’s dynamite power to provide one-third of the country’s energy needs. There are worries that as global warming increases, the warmer surface temperatures of the water could release the toxic gases. But if the plant keeps using and providing an outlet for the toxic gases, this will prevent a dangerous build up of the gases underneath the lake’s surface.
It’s not just solar power, it’s solar fuel
Aug 18th
Since 2008, a European organization led by Athanasios Konstandopoulos at the Centre for Research and Technology in Hellas, Thessaloníki, Greece, has been operating a 100-kilowatt pilot plant that generates hydrogen from a combination of sunlight and steam. It’s now found that the same technology for this pilot plant can also be used to split carbon dioxide molecules. The resulting carbon monoxide can then be combined with the hydrogen to form a hydrocarbon fuel. The creation of hydrocarbon fuel will mean few changes to cars and other energy infrastructure, a break for those hesitant on moving toward alternative energy sources. This new process would make better use of the carbon dioxide that’s already being produced by this pilot plant and could lead to the development of a hydrogen economy.
Stop zombies and go green! A two-for-one deal
Aug 14th
Less carbon-intensive that cremation and less susceptible to the living dead than burial, Belgium is considering the process of resomation to dispose of human remains. Resomation is a water and alkali-based process that turns bodies into a mix of liquid and minerals. It uses less energy than cremation and emits significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The process leaves behind soft bones and some liquid, which can be put into urns for family members.
The environmental issues surrounding burial methods are outlined in a recent article in Chemical and Engineering News. Bodies prepared for burial are often injected with formaldehyde and other chemicals that could get into the ground and water. Cremation requires a large amount of fuel to sustain the high temperatures needed for the process, generating an average of 573 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per body.
The environmental issues surrounding burial methods are outlined in a recent article in Chemical and Engineering News. Bodies prepared for burial are often injected with formaldehyde and other chemicals that could get into the ground and water. Cremation requires a large amount of fuel to sustain the high temperatures needed for the process, generating an average of 573 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per body.
To Recharge Battery, Just Blow Air
Aug 12th
Scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have developed the world’s first battery fueled by air. This battery has 10 times the storage capacity of conventional batteries and could pave the way for changes and innovations in things like mobile phones, laptops and electric cars. It’s much lighter than current batteries as the main chemical in traditional batteries, lithium cobalt oxide, is replaced with carbon and oxygen. This also helps to recharge the battery as it’s used, perhaps signifying the death of the phrase, “my battery’s dead”. Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, said in the Telegraph: “The benefits are it’s much smaller and lighter so better for transporting small applications… Storage is also important in the development of green power. You need to store electricity because wind and solar power is intermittent.”
