Energy

Britain Loves the Sun

- Adam Clare

Soon in Britain people will be able to operate their own solar power generators and wind farms. This is a great way to lower one’s carbon footprint while saving money!

From April 6, all homeowners in Britain will be free to install microgeneration equipment like solar panels without getting planning permission for them, as the government tries to cut climate warming gases emitted from coal and gas fired power plants in order to supply electricity.
“We want to make it easier to help people reduce their carbon footprint. Technology like solar panels can make a real difference, but homeowners can be put off by the time and expense of getting planning permission,” planning minister Caroline Flint said.

Solar Leafs for Homes

- Adam Clare

Solar leafsThis is a neat idea that may or may not go with your aesthetic tastes, but should go with your green tastes. Inhabitat says that solar leafs can hang off your house while providing you power. Like leaves on trees, these leafs use the sun to make energy, and unlike trees, these solar shingles also get power from the wind.

Using a series of flexible solar cells as leaves, GROW takes the shape of ivy growing on a building- the leaves are solar cells while the wind that causes them to flutter is harvested as viable energy. Teresita hopes that the modular system would be readily available via the Moma store or Design Within Reach, rather than a commercially out-of-reach system like many traditional solar components. GROW also integrates an energy monitoring system for users to visualize their consumption. The leaves are made of 100% recyclable polyethylene, and are available in a variety of colors and opacities.

Heat Transfer Science for your Clothes Dryer

- Cam Proctor 3 Comments

Although the allures of heat transfer science might be remote for some, and frankly boring for others, would you want to know more if they could dry your clothes with less energy? Michael Brown, not of GE or any drying machine manufacturer, has come up with a way to make clothes drying less energy intensive. Instead of using a traditional air-in-contact-with-heating-coils heater, Michael’s uses an oil as the heat-transfer medium. The oil needs less energy to heat, and, once heated, holds onto the heat better. That oil is then used to heat the air that gets blown into the drying drum.

The device is so much more efficient that it can be plugged into a regular 110 V plug (instead of 220s now required by dryers.) Additionally, the heating unit only ever reaches about 150 F, since the heat-transfer is so much more efficient. Traditional dryers have to heat their elements up to 1000 F in order to reach optimal efficiency, resulting in about 15,000 household fires each year.

The device can be installed by a technician in 30 minutes at a total cost of around $300, which would be recouped in less then four years. It might also be the first dryer to ever receive an Energy Star rating.

Power Walking

- Adam Clare

Thanks to a newish invention your walking can now power all sorts of portable devices. There’s been similar devices that have been created but I haven’t mentioned them here in a while. It’s always good to see people turning what we do in something even more productive.

For the past 10 years Dr Max Donelan, from the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has been working on ways to harness people power —- how to capture the energy generated when you’re out for a stroll.

He succeeded and his Biomechanical Energy Harvester is featured in today’s edition of the academic journal Science.

True bionic power.

Coskata process

- Cam Proctor 1 Comment

Remember that name because it may become a household name soon. The Coskata process is a relatively cheap method to create ethanol using a variety of feedstocks. Materials like agricultural waste, purposefully grown crops, switchgrass and waste materials like old tires and municipal waste call all be used.

The Coskata process is fundamentally a biological reaction that takes place inside a specialized reactor (which is simply a vessel to contain the microbes and keep them in an environment where they are happy to live and produce ethanol). Anaerobic bacteria are fed carbon monoxide and hydrogen (known as syngas), which are produced by gasification, which can be done a number of different ways, depending on the feedstock material. Scientists can even produce carbon monixide from CO2 and sunlight.

The reactor for this process is a sealed plastic tube filled with millions of filaments on which the bacteria live. Having bacteria living on the filaments provides an enormous amount of surface area for them to live on in a very concentrated volume. The syngas is passed through the reactor, and bacteria feed on the carbon monoxide and hydrogen and produce ethanol.

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