Leave it to the "primitives."

Colombians got it.

Smartly making over the Electrical Grid

According to Discover magazine, "the basic technology that transports electricity around the United State is more than a century old."

This is pathetic. In a century, everything from information technology to medicine has advanced exponentially and so has our power usage, so why should the backbone be so antiquated?

Obama has announce $3.4 billion in economic stimulus and private holdings are investing another $5 billion in bringing the infrastructure up to date, a necessity when the country hopes to produce at least 20 percent of its power from alternative sources like energy and wind.

Basically, the hope is to establish a two-way power structure where currently only one way exists.

In other words, electrical customers would be able to determine peak usage and pay as it comes. It there is excess, it would be sent back to the power company for discounts. No power would be lost and only be applied when needed. Customers would have control over their meters and be able to "budget" accordingly.

Grids will soon be able to store and redirect power.

Ford has even announced that its hybrids would have smart capability, charging during off-peak hours and sending back excess as needed.

Great website: Build it solar

"The renewable energy site for do-it-yourselfers," Build it Solar, has hundreds of projects for those wishing to become greener.

They don't sell anything, but they do have everything from helpful hints to full-blown plans to give you a blueprint to a greener future.

Check it out, enjoy and get those synapses firing.

Bio-engineered plastics

Their neighbors to the north may be under the crushing grip of a megalomaniac with a severe personality disorder, but South Korea is kicking some serious scientific booty.

See story here.

Power brokers, pt. 5: Daniel Nocera, chemist, MIT

Again, from Discover

Nocera's "bright idea": Split water to generate hydrogen energy - but do it in a cheap way.

Since he puts it so well himself, this is verbatim:

"Nature is the best solar fuel enerhy storage machine known, so let;s figure out how it works. Light comes in four photons, and then it hits the leaf, and it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. A leaf makes twice as much hydrogen as it does oxygen, and then it stores the result as a solid fuel. So you've stored the sunlight in a fuel,and the energy is in the chemical bonds. Then you eat that fuel, and you get all the sunlight back out in a time-released way. So you are literally chewing the sun.

"Our lab at MIT invented a process that splits water and performs photosynthesis cheaply, outside the leaf. Lately we've found out we can use the Charles River as a water source. We can use waste streams as water sources. We can use the ocean as a water source. So you can generate hydrogen through artificial photosynthesis whenever you need it. I'm very interested in the nonlegacy world, especially Africa and India. Giving a little kid in Africa 500 watts of energy will change his life. And that's not much energy.

Al Gore has been walking around saying: "Just use the technologies. They're on the shelf. Take them off." But he's gone a bit over the deep end. Yes, we do have the technologies. I have photovoltaics. I can store hydrogen in a fuel cell and get all the energy out. I can build any number of systems for you right now, but guess what? They're too expensive. The reason you need scientists like me to discover my little cobalt phosphate catalyst - the material that can drive photosynthesis outside the leaf and in the lab - is because I'm going to do it cheaply.

"To take care of the average house in a day, you need 20 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to only 5.5 liters of water. To drive that point home, I'm holding the amount of water in my hands that you need to power a very big house on the California coast. That amount of water takes care of that house as well as powering a fuel cell car around town. So that's the future. There's no way to stop it. Nature already did this 2-billion-year experiment and decided on this process, and it's coming soon."

There ya go!

Power brokers, pt. 4: Vivian Loftness, Carnegie Mellon architect

Still from Discover.

Slap an "i" between the two syllables of her last name, and her surname would be synonymous with arrogance and possible hubris, but what Vivian Loftness proposes is more aptly called idealistic - even Utopian perhaps - but infinitely doable and realistic.

Her "bright idea": Use natural light, better airflow and smart design to make buildings more efficient.

It worked for the Mycanaean's. In the 1000s BC, the proto-Greek civilization had developed a form of air conditioning uses nothing more than a crafty series of vents and air holes. Most builders forgot this in the last few hundred years, making AC a must-have, especially in the warmer climes. But universities and colleges and even the House and Senate Buildings in DC were originally designed to let nature provide cooling breezes.

And for lighting in workspaces: the sun, duh. Most work, especially in offices occurs during daylight hours. Using larger ventilating windows would cut down on both the need for an artificial climate and unnatural, soul-killing fluorescent lighting.

Close the ventilation for sun-provided warmth in the winter.

Worker morale would increase as well - studies show that natural lighting is more soothing to the psyche. Plant trees around work spots for shade.

Instead of sending waste heat from furnaces out a chimney, re-route it and use it to provide warmth, cutting back on the amount of heat that needs to be generated. It is self-sustaining and relies on nature.

As she puts it: "If you use daylight as your dominant source of lighting, your work environments are so much more beautiful."

It worked for the ancient Greeks. Now, if we just started exercising a little more, maybe we could run around in the same state of undress without inducing nausea in those around to witness it.

:-b

Green Scenics

From Eva Radke of Film Biz Recycling, an organization that reuses set pieces, costumes and everything else in new productions, sells to collectors or gives to charity rather than needlessly using landfills for things that are often near new.

"I just caught up with Marshall Carbee - he has developed some amazing techniques and products - check out his soy gesso and low VOC paints.....made for scenics by a scenic.

Go here to see the products

And here to see his beautiful low-impact art

Here's how he paints these days in his studio in New Hampshire.

1. Wood stretcher bars for stretching the canvas are milled locally with locally grown wood.Our NH forests were cut down 100 years ago, local wood is sustainable.

I have stopped using stretchers for all the Flatbread type paintings.

2. I am using wood scraps from a local lumber yard for small painting panels. There are also composite wood panels that are green. (not made with formaldehyde!)

3. Canvas? I'm using an 18.5 oz. 100% hemp canvas and a certified organic cotton/hemp blend that is 12.5oz.

4. Acrylic or oil based gesso? I've replaced gesso with a soy based product.

5. Commercial paint? Now I make my own paints with low impact earth pigments. No cadmiums, flake white, or other toxic pigments or additives. No petroleum products. Earth pigments rock!

6. Binders? Now using cold-pressed linseed oil, organic linseed oil, walnut oil and a little beeswax.
.
7. Mineral spirits, turpentine? Don't use them anymore, using an eco-friendly citrus oil thinner with food grade terpenes.

8. No Frames (Unless you want them!) Now, we hang the paintings like banner she studio like we do at all the Flatbreads on harvested saplings, driftwood, or train stricken saplings from behind the studio. Charles is our a framer right here in the factory. Charles is the best framer around and he's right downstairs!

9. Hanging wire Don't use wire anymore, we use hemp chord now.

10. Carbon Footprint? I'm paying down our carbon footprint at Native Energy. Our goal is to get an accurate measurement of the studio footprint and neutralize it with investment in wind energy.

11. I'm making these paintings to help connect us to nature through natural color, nature images, organic forms, patterns and textures.

12. My 100% cotton rags (I use a lot of rags) are refuse from a local custom dying facility. The rags are given to me, they are the company's reject color tests.

And there you go...way to go Marshall - what an inspiration."

Copper Indium Gallium Selenide - not just for solar cells anymore

The heat conversion properties of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS for short) have long been one of the primary elements of photovoltaic cells.

But according to Discover magazine, the alloy is being put to different uses. They can also be used for, say, converting the heat from factories into the electricity used to run the factories. This doesn't mean that said factories will suddenly become the industrial equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, but it could cut down on outside fuel costs and reduce dependence on ubiquitous and dirty coal-powered electrical plants.

Research is also going into vehicles. CIGS can be used to convert heat from car engines into the electricity needed for radio, AC and other non-locomotive functions of a vehicle, seriously reducing the draw on batteries and saving consumers money and the hassle of needing a jump if the heat-generated power can be stored efficiently.

It isn't quite comic book science fiction Halo technology, but it's step toward fuel efficiency and keeping dirty car batteries out of landfills.

Director of New Energy Institute Named At The University of Texas at Austin

Maybe this will get the ball truly rolling on alternative energy research and ways to reduce Texas' carbon footprint.

From the University of Texas website:

July 14, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas — Dr. Raymond Lee Orbach, the U.S. Department of Energy's first undersecretary for science, has been appointed director of The University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute, a multi-disciplinary institute that combines the strengths of the university's schools and colleges to advance solutions to today's energy-related challenges.

Dr. Raymond Lee Orbach

The Energy Institute is developing multi-disciplinary research programs and educational materials to overcome the scientific and technological barriers to a secure and sustainable energy future, while helping policy leaders make the informed decisions required to reach this goal.

Orbach, whose appointment begins Aug. 1, also will have joint appointments as a professor with tenure in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering; the Department of Physics, the College of Natural Sciences; and the Jackson School of Geosciences.

The Energy Institute will integrate the most advanced expertise from across the university's schools and colleges, including the Cockrell School of Engineering, Jackson School of Geosciences, College of Natural Sciences, McCombs School of Business, School of Law, LBJ School of Public Affairs, School of Architecture and the College of Liberal Arts, as well as expertise from the private sector.

"I am delighted that Ray Orbach has agreed to serve as the director of our Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin," said Steven Leslie, provost of the university. "He is a world leader of energy research and policy and he will be instrumental in organizing research efforts of our faculty in areas of critical importance to our state's and nation's energy needs."

"It is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to becoming a part of The University of Texas at Austin," said Orbach. "The superb quality of the faculty and students, its supportive relationship with the State of Texas, and its national and international renown make this an opportunity of enormous promise. I am delighted to be a part of the university's faculty, and I look forward to working with the campus, the city of Austin, the Texas legislature and our nation's leaders to solve the technical and policy issues facing our planet's energy future."

Orbach said he sees the Energy Institute as a unifying collaborator to help The University of Texas at Austin mobilize its faculty and academic resources, as well as talent from other universities in The University of Texas System, to make "transformational changes in energy production and usage" of fossil fuel, renewable and nuclear energy resources. He said these changes would address threats to the economic future of Texas, the nation and the world.

Orbach said the energy resource issues to be addressed initially would include:

• Fossil fuel production and use operating in a carbon-constrained environment. The lack of economical technology, combined with an absence of a legal and policy framework, could put Texas' energy resources at risk.
• New concepts and technologies in wind and solar energy for the development of electrical energy storage for these resources.
• Recycling spent fuel from carbon-free nuclear energy. The university has the opportunity to recreate a robust radio-chemistry program to extract the energy contained in spent fuel and to substantially reduce its toxicity and heat load for subsequent storage.

"These three areas combine to form the nexus of the future of energy production and use in the State of Texas requiring game-changing transformational research and development," said Orbach. "With success in this endeavor, our state will enjoy an economy and quality of life in the future comparable to that which it has enjoyed in the past."

Orbach was sworn in as the Department of Energy's first undersecretary for science in June 2006. He was the chief scientist of the Department of Energy, and adviser to Secretary Samuel W. Bodman on science policy as well as all scientific aspects of the Department of Energy, including basic and applied research ranging from nuclear energy, to environmental cleanup of Cold War legacy sites, to defense programs. Orbach was responsible for planning, coordinating and overseeing the Energy Department's research and development programs and its 17 national laboratories, as well as the department's scientific and engineering education activities.

Orbach also was responsible for the department's implementation of the president's American Competitiveness Initiative, designed to help drive continued U.S. economic growth. He led the department's efforts to transfer technologies from Department of Energy national laboratories and facilities to the global marketplace.

From the time of his Senate confirmation in 2002, Orbach also was the 14th director of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy. He managed an organization that was the third largest federal sponsor of basic research in the United States, the primary supporter of the physical sciences in the country and one of the premier science organizations in the world.

From 1982 to 1992, Orbach was the provost of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and from 1992 to 2002, he was chancellor of the University of California (UC), Riverside. Under his leadership, UC Riverside doubled in size, achieved national and international recognition in research and led the University of California in diversity and educational opportunity. In addition to his administrative duties at UC Riverside, Orbach sustained a research program, worked with postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students in his laboratory and taught the freshman physics course each year.

Orbach received his bachelor of science degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1956. He received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He began his academic career as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University in 1960 and became an assistant professor of applied physics at Harvard University in 1961. He joined the faculty of UCLA two years later as an associate professor and became a professor in 1966.

Orbach's research in theoretical and experimental physics has resulted in the publication of more than 240 scientific articles. He has received numerous honors as a scholar, including two Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowships, a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford University, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship at Tel Aviv University, the Joliot Curie Professorship at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle de la Ville de Paris, the Lorentz Professorship at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the 1991-1992 Andrew Lawson Memorial Lecturer at University of California, Riverside, the 2004 Arnold O. Beckman Lecturer in Science and Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Outstanding Alumni Award from the California Institute of Technology in 2005.

Orbach is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has held numerous visiting professorships at universities around the world and is a member of 20 scientific, professional and civic boards.

For more information, contact: Robert D. Meckel, Office of Public Affairs, 512-475-7847.

Onion Power: Tops, Tails and Skins Become Electricity

An onion processor in Oxnard, Ca has turned the waste from the onions he sells into energy:

From Reuters:

By Matthew Wheeland

Tops and tails are becoming much more than garbage at Gills Onions, an onion processor in Oxnard, Calif. Today marks the unveiling of the company's onion-powered electrical system, a first-of-its-kind initiative to turn onion waste into energy.

"This whole project is about eliminating our onion waste," explained Steven Gill, an owner/partner of Gills Onions. "This has been a long-term project for us for the last 10 years."

The anaerobic digester.

Every day, Gills Onions -- which sells diced, sliced, slivered and puréed onions to wholesale and retail customers -- generates about 300,000 pounds of onion waste -- the company loses about 35 percent of the onion to "tops, tails and skins," Gill said.

In the past, the company has dealt with the waste by sending it out to fields, spreading it out to decompose and return to the soil naturally. But that method eventually became too much of a problem: The cost and effort involved in finding enough fields to spread the onion discards on, and the insect life that was attracted to the waste, became more hassle than it was worth.

Enter "the AERS." Gills' Advanced Energy Recovery System takes all that waste and turns it into two kinds of energy: electricity and calories (in the form of cattle feed. Depending on how thinly you slice it, the project, which was unveiled today at Gills facility in Oxnard, Calif., is likely the first such project in the world (although if you know of any other onion-waste-to-energy projects, I'd love to hear about them).

How Gills Onions' waste-to-power process works.

Here's how AERS works: the onion waste goes in, it's shredded and pressed to squeeze all the juice out of the onions, which reduces the solid waste by 75 percent. The juice goes into the anaerobic digester, where microbes turn the juice into methane gas. The gas then goes to fuel cells, which is converted into electricity.

And 300,000 pounds of onions makes a lot of electricity: 600 kilowatts per day, enough to run 35 to 40 percent of the electricity used by Gills' facility.

The remaining 25 percent of the onion waste after the juice is squeezed is pulp, which is used as cattle feed. Steven Gill said the daily diet of cattle feed sells on the market for about enough to cover the cost of delivery.

But the juice-to-energy system saves much more; Gills expects to save $700,000 worth of electricity a year, and $400,000 a year in waste disposal costs.

In all, the project cost $9.5 million to implement, but Gills received $2.7 million in incentives for the project from Southern California Gas Company, as part of California's Self-Generation Incentive Program. As a result, the project will pay for itself in an estimated six years, although Gill himself said he expects it will pay for itself in less time.

Although the initiative was led by Gills, SoCal Gas has been involved from the beginning, and has worked with Gills on other projects dating back 12 years. Raul Gordillo, a SoCal Gas spokesman, said that part of the utility's role in the onion-power project include helping Gills receive the incentive money for the project.

"We were also called upon to assist in obtaining Research & Development to help develop and design a biogas conditioning system that can remove the high levels of sulfur that are present in onion generated biogas," Gordillo said in an email.

Once this project is underway -- and Gill said it hasn't been much of a challenge to learn how to turn onion juice into energy -- the company has more plans. The next step is to explore ways that the water can be recycled after the onion juice has gone through the anaerobic digester, instead of being discharged into city sewers.

And Gill said some of his neighbors have also expressed interest in this kind of project; a carrot producer and a winery were two examples he offered.

Grassoline

Now this is pretty @#*!ing cool.

In the July 2009 issue of Scientific American, the cover story explores the already-tested practice of using second generation bio-fuels (ethanol would be considered first generation) made from the inedible parts of plants like corn stalks, scrap wood (including sawdust) and plants like switchgrass (which grows in sandy, low water areas that are not suited to agriculture) to create viable bio-fuels.

By using heat or chemical processes to break down cellulose, the plant waste can be converted into fuels such as bio-diesel, reducing our dependence on foreign (and declining domestic) oil without reducing the amount of biomass for food (a problem with ethanol, which is primarily made from corn).

This "scrap" biomass has the potential to produce more than 100 billion gallons of grassoline per annum - "about half the current annual consumption of gasoline and diesel in the U.S."

In addition this biomass can be converted into a vast array of fuel - "ethanol, ordinary gasoline, diesel, even jet fuel."

As a bonus, some plants "such as the short-rotation willow coppice, will decontaminate soil that has been polluted with wastewater or heavy meatals as it grows." This means that not only will carbon emissions be reduced (bio-fuels burn cleaner than petroleum based propellents), but damaged land can eventually be restored to an agriculturally sound state.

And while one of the by-products of the rendering process is CO2, the emissions are negligible in comparison to the burning of fossil fuels. Plus, agriculture jobs could be created in areas of the country where they did not exist before.

Win, win, win, win and WIN again.

Tomorrow's energy today Pt. 3: The vanadium redox flow battery

Despite it's name, vanadium is not a product of Stark Industries, nor does it fuel any piece of Iron Man's ragingly cool and seemingly low-emission suit. I didn't notice much of a vapor trail, so I'm assuming the metallic muscle man has a relatively low carbon footprint.

[If anyone knows the fuel specs of Iron Man's suit, I would appreciate a head's up. Not finding anything on the web except how much he can lift, how much damage he does in equivalence to pounds of TNT and how fast he flies. No fuel specs.]

While we're in the Zen mode of exploring what things are not, the vanadium redox flow battery is not an invention of Jack Marlowe's Halo Industries, nor will never be used in a cell phone, lap top or even an electric vehicle.

In fact, the vanadium redox flow battery is even more unwieldy than its name.

The battery is enormous, with two tanks of electrolytic liquids that create a charge in a central chamber then flow back to their tank. The energy can be stored and reused almost indefinitely. The problem was that the membrane separating the two liquids would eventually weaken and when the two mix, they were rendered unusable.

The answer was to use vanadium, a soft whitish metal found abundantly and has four state of oxidation. Each state of oxidation has a different energy capacity diluted in liquid. Even when the two states mix, there is no loss because the vanadium can easily flow from one state to another.

The sun goes down at night and wind is as capricious as the mythical wind gods once believed behind it.

With a vanadium redox flow battery, a power plant will not have to rely on natures whims. With this battery at its core, a plant can run almost indefinitely.

Gas prices and our motivation

According to the US Energy Information Administration, the national average price of gas was around $3.85 as of September 15th. While that may be slightly higher (about 15 cents) than two weeks ago, it is down by 50-70 cents in some places. The $130/barrel summer we just experienced took its toll on many a motorist.

Everyday the news contained a shocked motorist complaining about the prices and how they have to pay them anyway because, after all, they got kids ta feed. As a result, more stories surfaced about alternate transportation and fuel sources.

Perhaps it is the pending election and Ike certainly garnered much media attention, but the stories about hopeful technology for the future seem to have gone the way of stories about high gas prices. They are still there in print media; The Daily Texan ran a front page piece about a new library at Loyola University with sustainable climate control on Tuesday. Blinds automatically bock out heat-causing UV rays while an automated system maintains precise temperature control, thus minimizing waste and environmental impact.

But are these stories featured on on ADD stricken broadcast media?

And are people as willing to look for different means of transportation now that the price of gas is more "managable"? Well, if a certain professor is any indication, the answer is no.

Ahhh, how quickly they forget.

Welcome to A Cooler World

The world is hot. And not in a good way.

Ecologically fragile species are dying out, glaciers are shrinking and experts predict that there is the possibility that within a decade arctic ice may be non-existent during the summer.

This blog will explore the implications of climate change and new technologies designed to minimize it.

But this is not a blog for the doom and gloom crowd out there. There will be some humorous asides to take the seriousness out of the preaching that invariably comes with such subject matter.

As an introduction, here is a link to a column I wrote last year.

Yes, it's "An Ode to Molly Ivins" but the content addresses the current administration's blatant and purposeful ignorance of man's effects on the planet.