All In One Boat

“A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

The system, conceived by scientists at the University of Michigan, is called Vivace, or “vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy”.

Michael Bernitsas, a professor of naval architecture at the university, said it was based on the changes in water speed that are caused when a current flows past an obstruction. Eddies or vortices, formed in the water flow, can move objects up and down or left and right.

The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.

As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.”

Vivace: Telegraph.co.uk

The move towards green roofs is picking up momentum, finding favor even in New York City.

…tiny absorbent leaves and modest but hardy roots of the sedum — typically found in desert climates — are at the center of a growing effort to reduce greenhouse gases, rainwater runoff and electricity demand in New York.

Green Roofs in NYC

Damn! If this can be done on a large scale, with renewable energy to power it, without CO2 emmissions, or other toxic side-effects, it would be phenomenol!

“Plastic water bottles. Plastic toys. Plastic clamshell food packages. Plastic bags. Plastic furniture. Plastic cassettes.

Right now, most of it goes into landfills, much of it on pace to degrade in, oh, 400 years or so.

PolyFlow has a different solution, one that gets around the hassle of recycling. Its patented technology breaks down all manner of plastics into their base chemicals, which can then be processed back into plastic.

A demonstration plant has been erected on a weedy section of asphalt on the site of the former Brown-Graves Lumber Co. mill in Akron. PolyFlow executives have been showing off the technology to plastics industry officials and venture capitalists.

The mobile processor sits atop a flat-bed trailer. At one end is a large vessel, sheathed in shiny silver insulation. Inside go all types of plastic, even carpet samples and shredded tires. The oxygen is removed and the burners turned on, initiating a process called pyrolysis.

The plastic is essentially vaporized, after which it passes through a pipe to a condenser that converts it into a liquid the color of brown mustard. The noncondensable gas is flared off, but eventually will be used to fuel the plant.

The liquid can then be distilled into its raw components - chemicals like tolulene, benzene and styrene, the building blocks of plastics that would normally come from a barrel of crude oil. ”

Reprocessing Plastics

An eccentric inventor in the parched plains of Australia has come up with this idea for a water windmill. Based on the behavior of an African beetle which extracts water vapor in the desert from the wind moving through its carapace this is beyond ingenious. Would it really work to provide any substantial amounts of water? Tests will tell. But check it out.

If that weren’t enough Max Whisson, the inventor, has another idea to water the deserts. He calls it a Water Road: Seawater brought inland in black covered surface pipes, allowing the sun to heat the water and at certain points near delivery going to full vapor condensation, leaving the salt behind and being collected to water crops and gullets.

Source: CleanTechBlog

More about Whisson, here.

This could be very promising indeed.

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases.[which can be stored] Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

More at Wired.

The ship may be finally starting to turn, or at least the officers — those in control — are starting to talk about turning it. Yep, looks like a serious situation out there. Better nudge the helm a half a point to port…

Intel Capital is boosting its investments in clean technology startups as a way to develop new sources of power for Intel processors.

The chipmaker’s corporate venture arm, one of Silicon Valley’s largest, said this week it put 24 million euros in a German company, Sulfurcell, which converts sunlight into electricity by using modules coated with a thin metallic film.

Intel Raising Stake in Clean Tech

“A new type of solar energy collector concentrates the sun into a beam that could melt steel. Researchers say the device could revolutionize global energy production.

The prototype is a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish was made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror. It concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000 to produce steam.

“This is actually the most efficient solar collector in existence,” said Doug Wood, an inventor based in Washington state who patented key parts of the dish’s design — the rights to which he has signed over to a team of students at MIT. ”

Solar Fire

Get this into China now!

You are likely to know that CFSs (Compact Flourescent Lamps) while using much less energy per lumen than incandescent bulbs do, have a wee problem: mercury. Broken or tossed in land-fill they are a hazard to human and microbe. LED (light emitting diodes) have been said to be the light to wait for. As recently as a few years ago, however, all you could get were small pin-point lights. Things look like they’re changing now, with bulbs you can screw into your standard holder.

See the interesting CleanTechBlog for more.

While adoption of solar energy steps up around the world, two key challenges remain: how to store the energy created during the day so it can be used through the night and how to dispatch the energy to where it is needed. Both of these problems may be solved by coupling molten salt with concentrating solar power (CSP), according to a June 26 article in Renewable Energy World.

CleanTechnica.Com

Project Better Place, a Silicon Valley alternative fuels initiative is moving out into the big world. Shai Agassi, an Israel born high-tech entrepreneur left the software field several years ago to do what he wanted to do: create electric driven cars and the new infrastructure needed to make them real alternatives to internal combustion. He’s just got Israel to sign on to helping create the network, and Denmark, with wind produced electricity, may soon follow suite.

Agassi said that because most rides are less than 100 miles, drivers can recharge batteries at home, at work or at thousands of charging points throughout Israel. On longer trips, they can exchange batteries in a five-minute operation at about 200 “swap stations.”

“We have a second battery for every driver in the swap stations. It’s waiting for you in case you need it. You don’t need to carry it with you in the trunk,” Agassi said.

Moreover, Nissan’s global product planning chief, Tom Lane, has said his firm will soon announce a battery breakthrough, one that could increase driving range to around 200 miles per charge while recharging in as little as 20 minutes.

Electric Cars for Israel

Project Better Place has its own web site with photos of the cars as well as technical and business talk about the project.

On Monday, Honda Motor celebrated the start of production of its FCX Clarity, the world’s first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle intended for mass production. In a ceremony at a factory an hour north of Tokyo, the first assembly-line FCX Clarity rolled out to the applause of hundreds of Honda employees wearing white jump suits.

Honda will make just 200 of the futuristic vehicles over the next three years, but said it eventually planned to increase production volumes, especially as hydrogen filling stations became more common. On Monday, Honda announced its first five customers, who included the actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Hydrogen Car

Now if I could just get a date with Jamie Lee Curtis I’d get to ride in one!

There’s not much good to report on these days and truth be told this story isn’t all that good, but then again, it’s not bad.

Contrary to expectations, a microscopic plant that lives in oceans around the world may thrive in the changing ocean conditions of the coming decades, a team of scientists reported Thursday.

The main threat to many marine organisms is not global warming but ocean acidification, as carbon dioxide from the air dissolves into the water and turns into carbonic acid. Acid dissolves calcium carbonate in the skeletons of corals, for example; many scientists fear that acidification of the oceans will kill many, if not most, coral reefs by the end of the century.

Similar concerns have been raised about coccolithophores, single-cell, carbonate-encased algae that are a major link in the ocean food chain. Earlier experiments with a species of coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, had found that lower pH levels (more acidic) hindered the algae’s ability to build the disks of carbonate that form its shell.

In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, however, scientists … report that they found the exact opposite. The algae grew bigger in the more acidic water.

The bad news is at the end of the article. Though this anchor in the food chain might thrive, “The hopeful news for coccolithophores, however, does not overturn the gloomy predictions for corals or negate ocean acidification as an impending ecological disruption…

Important Algae Might Thrive

The Solar Impulse is an adrenaline driven project to circumnavigate the globe in a wide-winged aircraft, powered only by the sun.

In a world depending on fossil energies, the Solar Impulse project is a paradox, almost a provocation: it aims to have an airplane take off and fly autonomously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy, right round the world without fuel or pollution. An unachievable goal without pushing back the current technological limits in all fields…

The Challenge

Watch the flash animation at the bottom of A Crazy Gamble.

Commentary at The Weather Chanel.

The venerable Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA is a cool place to visit, in person or on-line. They also offer classes around the Bay Area on everything from Solar Sales and Marketing to Solar Water Heating. Check them out!

Interesting article this weekend by Holly Reich, appearing in newspapers around the country, about new motor technology that involves electrical motors on each wheel, meaning that no drive train is necessary and the vehicle, scooter or small car, can be made to collapse into very small places — while re-charging.

Design work for these mobility devices is taking place at MIT. [click on Mobility and then on the words that appear.] And there is implementation already.

The “clean, green, silent electric scooter” for urban mobility houses the motors inside each wheel, eliminating the need for a powertrain. Thus, the scooter can be folded in half and wheeled behind one another like a rolling suitcase, or stacked up in a rack.

This is where the shared-use urban mobility concept comes in. The idea is that the scooters can be stored in racks at convenient city locations like subway stops, stores or banks as one-way rentals.

Users could swipe a credit card to remove a scooter from the rack (which charges up the batteries) unfold and take it for a short trip. Once they reach their final destination they could fold it up and rack it. This type of program was implemented in Paris last July with 10,000 bikes. It has been so successful that they are currently doubling the number of bikes and stacks.

I want one!

Fuel-less Vehicles

Climate Prediction Net Wants You! Or more precisely, it wants your computer’s cycles when you aren’t using them. If you’re a good boy or girl you naturally turn off your energy sipping devices when you are away from them, but if you’re like most of us, you’re not so good. You walk away, have dinner, go to the movies, even go to sleep, and your computer stays on, gathering your e-mail, defragging your hard drive, sending out spam for someone else (I hope not!). So why not give back a little?

Climate Prediction is a massive experiment in using distributed computing. Instead of owning one multi-million dollar Cray super computer to crunch numbers, thousands of personal computers are enlisted, each to run some small segment of the problem, receiving and sending data over the internet.

The aim of climateprediction.net is to investigate the approximations that have to be made in state-of-the-art climate models (read more about this). By running the model thousands of times (a ‘large ensemble’) we hope to find out how the model responds to slight tweaks to these approximations - slight enough to not make the approximations any less realistic. This will allow us to improve our understanding of how sensitive our models are to small changes and also to things like changes in carbon dioxide and the sulphur cycle. This will allow us to explore how climate may change in the next century under a wide range of different scenarios. In the past estimates of climate change have had to be made using one or, at best, a very small ensemble (tens rather than thousands!) of model runs. By using your computers, we will be able to improve our understanding of, and confidence in, climate change predictions more than would ever be possible using the supercomputers currently available to scientists.

It’s pretty easy. Follow the link, download the appropriate program and set it up. There are many questions you can answer to be more involved, but to get started all you’ll need is an account (login name and password.) You’ll get a cool screen saver with the turning globe showing rain and snow, temperature, clouds… as you choose.

Requirements Download

We could have used some of this in Marin in recent weeks.

Scientists from CEA/Leti-Minatec, an R&D institute in Grenoble, France, specializing in microelectronics, have recently developed a system that recovers the vibration energy from a piezoelectric structure impacted by a falling raindrop. The system works with raindrops ranging in diameter from 1 to 5 mm, and simulations show that it’s possible to recover up to 12 milliwatts from one of the larger “downpour” drops.

Rain Power

I’ve long wanted a year to ruminate and write about my notion that the bottom line for human behavior, to which almost every action can be traced, is power. As soon as a three year old wails “she doesn’t want to be my friend” we are acting out the cellular knowledge that without friends we are alone in the world, and in great danger. Sexual jealousy, high-school cliques, road-rage, consummerism, on and on, are related at not too many degrees of separation to the need to be part of groups and within the groups to attain high status — to have power. Now Natalie Angier has a short, totally interesting article, in the NY Times Tuesday Science Section about animal behavior and just such behavior built on the same basic drive.

Wherever animals must pool their talents and numbers into cohesive social groups, scientists said, the better to protect against predators, defend or enlarge choice real estate or acquire mates, the stage will be set for the appearance of political skills — the ability to please and placate, manipulate and intimidate, trade favors and scratch backs or, better yet, pluck those backs free of botflies and ticks.

Over time, the demands of a social animal’s social life may come to swamp all other selective pressures in the environment, possibly serving as the dominant spur for the evolution of ever-bigger vote-tracking brains. And though we humans may vaguely disapprove of our political impulses and harbor “Fountainhead” fantasies of pulling free in full glory from the nattering tribe, in fact for us and other highly social species there is no turning back. A lone wolf is a weak wolf, a failure, with no chance it will thrive.

Read On

In the January 2008 issue of Scientific American the cover story is “A Grand Plan for Solar Energy.” The authors, with all the numbers in place, project 2050 as the goal posts for a massive conversion drive.

* A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
* A vast area of photovoltaic cells would have to be erected in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours.
* Large solar concentrator power plants would be built as well.
* A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country.
* But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive.

Well worth reading

and the discussion online that follows.

When I saw the headline AirCar I imagined at first it meant walking, perhaps with a lean on the corners and some sort of idle motion while waiting for street lights. But no. There is actually such a car, or better, such an engine. Using compressed air, released to drive pistons, along with a fuel module as in the now familiar hybrid models, the Midi is said to have achieved a driving range of 200 km before needing a “fill up” of more air.

Aircar

There remains the problem of compressing the air, of course. Using dirty coal to do it, won’t do.