Friends of mine like roller coasters. Screw that. I wanna ride the Falkirk Wheel:
I've long been fascinated by locks and canals (I walked over the Erie Canal twice a day my first year of grad school), and this is one of the cooler mechanisms I've seen. It's even quite energy efficient: because the two caissons (the 'chairs' of this two-chair merry-go-round) always weigh the same, it takes very little energy to run the thing.
If I'm ever in Scotland, I'm totally checking this out.
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
05 April 2008
03 November 2007
Power Generation with Solar Towers
The Energy Blog has an interesting post about solar towers, a method of solar power generation. The tower is surrounded by mirrors which reflect sunlight onto a receiver at the top of the tower (the mirrors move to track the sun). Fluids are pumped through pipes in the receiver for heat exchange, and the fluids are then used in steam generators.
The post contains a link to a previous post with more details about the types of fluids used for heat exchange: it's a salt mixture which is able to retain heat for power generation at night or in cloudy weather.
The process is said to be over 40% effective in converting thermal energy into electricity.
The post contains a link to a previous post with more details about the types of fluids used for heat exchange: it's a salt mixture which is able to retain heat for power generation at night or in cloudy weather.
The process is said to be over 40% effective in converting thermal energy into electricity.
04 August 2007
Light bulb comparison
Yesterday Neutral Existence published an interesting comparison of incandescent, compact florescent (CFL), and LED light bulbs. Looks like CFLs come out on top, with incandescent in last place. The blog post also points out that LED bulbs have less mercury in them than CFLs, and that LED bulbs may get cheaper over time.
I've never tried LED light bulbs (and only recently bought my first CFLs), but I have an LED flashlight, and I like it. It doesn't seem to focus light as well as a traditional (incandescent) flashlight, but it's pretty bright, and I never have to worry about replacing the bulb. And the batteries seem to last a long time.
I've never tried LED light bulbs (and only recently bought my first CFLs), but I have an LED flashlight, and I like it. It doesn't seem to focus light as well as a traditional (incandescent) flashlight, but it's pretty bright, and I never have to worry about replacing the bulb. And the batteries seem to last a long time.
17 July 2007
No more oil: try jatropha and miscanthus
A recent post on the Neutral Existence blog reports that the International Energy Agency says we'll run into serious oil supply problems in only five years. The post says that there will be a significantly increased demand from the booming industrialization of India and China, and that it's becoming increasingly critical to find alternatives to oil.
Along those lines, the Energy Blog had posts for a couple of exotic-sounding alternative fuel possibilities that I hadn't read about before. One is a cellulosic ethanol energy crop called miscanthus, whose output exceeds that of switchgrass:
Along those lines, the Energy Blog had posts for a couple of exotic-sounding alternative fuel possibilities that I hadn't read about before. One is a cellulosic ethanol energy crop called miscanthus, whose output exceeds that of switchgrass:
In the 2004 trials, miscanthus out-performed switchgrass by more than double and in the 2005 trials more than triple.(Don't know if that means the amount of crop produced, or the amount of energy produced.) And the other is jatropha, a biodiesel crop which grows well in undeveloped land:
Although not suitable for temperate climates, jatropha promises to be less expensive and less competitive for land than food based oil seeds that are used as feedstock for biodiesel.
29 June 2007
Recent energy-related developments
The San Francisco Chronicle has an article about how the idiots we elected to Congress are bickering about energy standards. Sometimes I'm amazed Congress ever gets anything done at all.
In happier news, the Energy Blog has a post about a new CO2 sequestration technique developed by Global Research Technologies (GRT). CO2 sequestration is the process of putting CO2 into storage (typically underground), instead of releasing it into the atmosphere: for example, future coal-burning power plants would point their smokestacks down, rather than up (that is a gross oversimplification).
But this GRT technique is a little different: instead of grabbing CO2 as it is produced (which I suppose can only level off greenhouse gas emissions), this method would be able to pull CO2 out of thin air (which could potentially reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases).
There is mention of the GRT technique on the wikipedia page for the Virgin Earth Challenge, Richard Branson's $25 million prize for atmospheric scrubbing of greenhouse gases.
In happier news, the Energy Blog has a post about a new CO2 sequestration technique developed by Global Research Technologies (GRT). CO2 sequestration is the process of putting CO2 into storage (typically underground), instead of releasing it into the atmosphere: for example, future coal-burning power plants would point their smokestacks down, rather than up (that is a gross oversimplification).
But this GRT technique is a little different: instead of grabbing CO2 as it is produced (which I suppose can only level off greenhouse gas emissions), this method would be able to pull CO2 out of thin air (which could potentially reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases).
There is mention of the GRT technique on the wikipedia page for the Virgin Earth Challenge, Richard Branson's $25 million prize for atmospheric scrubbing of greenhouse gases.
11 June 2007
Wireless transfer of electricity
The Energy Blog has an interesting post about transferring power without cables. This technology (being developed by MIT researchers) works sort of like magnetic induction, in which two physically-separated coils transfer power using magnetic fields. But the technique described in the Energy Blog post uses resonant coupling, which works over greater distances with little or no interaction with the surroundings (furniture, people, etc.). So someday this might allow us to run our laptops and cell phones without power cables or batteries.
07 April 2007
Alternative Energy Sources
In the past few weeks, I've started reading about the environment and alternative energy sources. I'm starting to see that this is a very complicated issue with potentially far-reaching consequences.
An article came out yesterday which gives a very interesting summary of the current state biofuel production. It's a pretty long article, but I would recommend it to anyone who is interested. It paints a rather grim picture.
According to the article, a significant portion of US government funding into alternative energy is directed at the production of ethanol from corn. Although I'm pleased to see the US government taking an interest in alternative energy, corn-based ethanol is arguably not the best solution. There's probably not enough cropland on Earth to grow enough corn to rival the energy produced by burning fossil fuels. More importantly, using so much corn to generate ethanol takes away (and drives up the price of) an important source of food: this may begin to deprive many people in poor nations of a staple of their diet. I was especially appalled to read this in the article: "...filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV
with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year."
There is also evidence that using corn-based ethanol has only a small benefit over fossil fuels in the creation of greenhouse gases: "The full cycle of the production and use of corn-based ethanol releases less greenhouse gases than does that of gasoline, but only by 12 to 26 percent."
But the US government seems somewhat fixated on corn-based ethanol, due in part to the lobbying efforts of companies like the Archer Daniels Midland Company (adm). I don't like criticizing adm, because they're a big supporter of public television. But they make a lot of money turning corn into ethanol, and they carry a lot of clout in Washington.
The environment has gotten a lot of press lately, and I'm glad that awareness of these issues is increasing. But I'm starting to think that it's just not happening fast enough. I think we should all try to find ways to conserve resources and to help our governments find ways to better prepare for the future. I think the US and Chinese governments should start pouring money into researching and developing solar power, wind energy, and cellulosic biofuels (which is made from wood chips, trash, and other stuff no one wants).
This has turned into more of a rant than I intended, so I'll end with the addresses of a few interesting Web sites I've recently discovered (they all have RSS feeds):
An article came out yesterday which gives a very interesting summary of the current state biofuel production. It's a pretty long article, but I would recommend it to anyone who is interested. It paints a rather grim picture.
According to the article, a significant portion of US government funding into alternative energy is directed at the production of ethanol from corn. Although I'm pleased to see the US government taking an interest in alternative energy, corn-based ethanol is arguably not the best solution. There's probably not enough cropland on Earth to grow enough corn to rival the energy produced by burning fossil fuels. More importantly, using so much corn to generate ethanol takes away (and drives up the price of) an important source of food: this may begin to deprive many people in poor nations of a staple of their diet. I was especially appalled to read this in the article: "...filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV
with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year."
There is also evidence that using corn-based ethanol has only a small benefit over fossil fuels in the creation of greenhouse gases: "The full cycle of the production and use of corn-based ethanol releases less greenhouse gases than does that of gasoline, but only by 12 to 26 percent."
But the US government seems somewhat fixated on corn-based ethanol, due in part to the lobbying efforts of companies like the Archer Daniels Midland Company (adm). I don't like criticizing adm, because they're a big supporter of public television. But they make a lot of money turning corn into ethanol, and they carry a lot of clout in Washington.
The environment has gotten a lot of press lately, and I'm glad that awareness of these issues is increasing. But I'm starting to think that it's just not happening fast enough. I think we should all try to find ways to conserve resources and to help our governments find ways to better prepare for the future. I think the US and Chinese governments should start pouring money into researching and developing solar power, wind energy, and cellulosic biofuels (which is made from wood chips, trash, and other stuff no one wants).
This has turned into more of a rant than I intended, so I'll end with the addresses of a few interesting Web sites I've recently discovered (they all have RSS feeds):
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