Technology

A Solar Powered Combustion Engine May Be in Your Future

- Adam Clare

This may sound counter-intutitive, but researches have begun a project to build an internal combustion engine (a common car engine) that runs off of solar power. Instead of using gas to ignite everything they want to heat water, add a dash of oil, to create a replacement to the overused pollution producing machine that is one of the leading causes of global warming.

To begin, mirrored parabolic solar collectors would be used to heat oil to a temperature of at least 400 to 700ºF (204 to 371ºC). This hot oil would then be injected into the cylinder chamber of the engine, just like gasoline ordinarily is. A few microdroplets of water would then also be introduced, which would turn to steam immediately upon contact with the hot oil.

The rapidly-expanding steam would serve the same purpose as exploding gas, driving the piston downward and turning the driveshaft. As the piston reached the bottom of its stroke, the spent steam and oil would exit the cylinder and be run through an oil/steam separator. They could then each be returned to their respective reservoirs, for re-use within the closed-loop system.

Read more at gizmag.

ForestWatchers Wants You to Look at Forests

- Adam Clare

Forests around the world are in danger and a new group, ForestWatchers, is looking to the average person to save all the trees. It’s a very simple idea: use people to scan tree lines from images to help scientists focus their efforts. Citizen science for the win!

We propose a new paradigm in conservationism based on the convergence of volunteer computing with free (or donated) catalogues of high-resolution Earth imagery.

This citizen science project aims at making possible to anyone (locals, volunteers, NGOs, governments, etc), anywhere in the world, to monitor selected patches of forest across the globe, almost in real-time, using a notebook, a tablet or a smart phone connected to the Internet.

Check out the ForestWatchers

Robots That Ride Waves for Science and Understanding

- Adam Clare

New surfboard sized robots are riding the waves and doing science! They’re autonomous robots called Wave Gliders and they are being used to monitor shipping and more importantly they are tracking information on the oceans that have traditionally been too costly to gather.

Researchers are warming up to the technology too. NOAA is testing a Wave Glider named Alex in the ocean north of Puerto Rico this fall, hoping to gather crucial hurricane data to improve forecasting. Meanwhile, the Ocean Tracking Network is using gliders to track fish—a difficult task. Unlike aquatic animals that breathe, fish don’t surface often (maybe never) to ping tracking satellites.

Read more here.

A New Stove Project Looks to Crowdsource Healthier Heating

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Regular readers of this site may know that we are fans of efficient stoves. The Kenya Stove is a new project to get efficient stoves in the hands of Kenyans. Erin, from Kenya Stove writes:

First some bad news: More than 3 billion people rely on traditional cookstoves for cooking in the developing world. Exposure to smoke from inefficient cookstoves and open-fire cooking practices contributes to the burden of pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases and results in an estimated two million deaths worldwide per year.

Now the good news: We plan to pilot a novel gasifying wood stove and fuel project in Kenya in the coming months. The stove emits little smoke, is durable and can be made at low cost with materials locally available in Kenya by Kenyan artisans thus creating jobs. Additionally we have selected mesquite, an invasive species in Kenya, to be used as the fuel source and therefore not impact indigenous forests through deforestation for wood fuel or charcoal-making. We anticipate our project will improve the health of families by reducing exposure to smoke, provide a lower cost fuel for cooking, and reduce the environmental impact caused by charcoal-making and the emissions from inefficient stoves.

Help fund their initiative here.

A Stove That Uses Fire to Charge Electronics

- Adam Clare

BioLite is a company that focuses on creating clean-burning stoves. We’ve looked at stoves before and why it’s important to create efficient stoves for a better planet and healthier people.

Recently, an employee of BioLite gave a presentation at TEDx Montreal about the importance of clean stoves.

The company has tied their business model of selling camping stoves to improving home stoves in a smart way, here’s an advertisement about their camping stove:

BioLite CampStove Demo & Story from BioLite on Vimeo.

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