Archive for August, 2008

Cancer Scares Devils Too

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

There is one animal on the island state of Tasmania with the traits of a monster. It is aptly named the ‘Tasmanian Devil’ (or Tassie). Devils are typically heard before they are seen, emitting obnoxious screeches while feeding which can be heard several kilometers away. The spine chilling cries are hard to describe but can be heard here. As if their disturbing wails aren’t enough, devils emit an incredibly offensive odor when stressed and are believed to be extraordinarily aggressive animals. (Even though this is mostly bluff as they tend to avoid confrontation with humans if possible.)

Sarcophilus harrisii

Devils are the largest marsupial in Australia and have an array of fascinating biological traits and behaviors: Unlike most other animals, fat is stored in the tail and a healthy devil will have a nice thick tail to go along with the squat black body. Their heads are disproportionally large for their bodies. This makes sense, since attached, are their huge jaws which have more crushing power than any other mammal on earth. In fact, devils can reduce a carcass to nothing, devouring everything from the skin and organs and chewing the bones, as well.

Unfortunately, half of the wild population of Tasmanian Devils has succumbed to a strange cancer that has run rampant within the species. Ecologists speculate that wild animals will be extinct in 20 years if the disease continues to spread like it has been. The species has made some adaptions, such as breeding at an earlier age before the inevitable cancer kills them. This is one of the reasons the population hasn’t declined even faster.

The cancer is even more aggressive than the Tasmanian Devil: Once tumors begin to appear on the face, the affected animal only has about three months left before either dying of starvation or its body completely shutting down. The cancer is spread by bites and is seen most often around the face. Being such an aggressive animal, devils are prone to being bitten at one point or another. The only current solution is to breed healthy animals in captivity to avoid exposure to the “Devil Facial Tumor Disease”.  It is unknown how the infection started, but it is comparable to a sci-fi movie in its gruesome severity and rapid spread. “Save the Tasmanian Devil” is an extremely informative site dedicated to providing information about the disease.

Research is currently underway to find a cure and a way to test animals that may have been exposed to the disease, since tumors are not immediately visible after exposure. Tasmanian Devils have a terrible reputation, but there isn’t anyone who would not miss the creatures and the wonderfully unique behaviors that make them so fascinating.

For more information about the disease and potential solutions click here.

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Greener Gasification

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Industrial chemical manufacturers will be happy to know that a major venture is underway to produce cheap natural gas alternatives. In September, 2007 Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.(SES), a company that builds and operates gasification plants, teamed up with the largest producer of bituminous coal in the U.S; CONSOL Energy. As stated in their first news release, the companies joined forces to “investigate the development of coal-based gasification facilities to produce feedstock for various industrial chemical manufacturers whose plants have been shut down due to high costs of natural gas.”

How clean will coal get?
(Photo: Synthesis Energy Systems)

“Under the agreement, SES and CONSOL Energy will perform engineering, environmental and marketing activities to analyze the feasibility of projects that would use coal gasification technology to convert coal from preparation plant tailings provided by CONSOL Energy’s coal mining complexes located in the eastern United States into higher-value products including: methanol, ethanol, mixed alcohols, ammonia and SNG.”

SES uses their patented “U-Gas” technology to covert low-rank waste coal to synthesis gas, or syngas. Syngas is a carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen mixture that is created by heating a carbon fuel and turning it into a gas. Syngas has half the energy density of natural gas, however, the low-rank coal used to produce syngas would typically end up in a landfill if not converted into this feedstock. High ash and high moisture coals are also used rather than the more expensive coals. Another benefit is that gasification occurs without many of the harmful emissions typically associated with the process. 

Creating this technology wasn’t the easiest undertaking: The Gas Technology Institute spent three decades perfecting the process. It was well worth it, though. For example, the “U-Gas” technology will be used to convert some of the massive 20 million tons of waste coal produced by CONSOL  per year into alternative fuels.

Tim Vail, President and CEO of SES goes on to state in an earlier 2008 press release that “Reaching the milestones necessary to proceed with this project marks SES’ entry into the United States gasification market, and we are proud to be working with CONSOL to jointly be the first domestic gasification provider serving the industrial consumer segment. Our U-GAS technology will not only economically and cleanly produce high-value chemical feedstocks and traditional fuels from CONSOL’s raw and waste coal feedstocks, but also reduce the region’s dependence on imported industrial chemical feedstocks and other petroleum-based fuels. We have made significant progress in just eight short months and are excited to move forward with the next steps of this project.”

SES operates primarily in Virginia and China, but is still expanding. In fact, SES was approved for expansion of their Hai Hua project in China this month which will increase production of syngas to 45,000 cubic meters per hour in the facility.  All of SES’s current projects can be viewed here.

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Streets for Solar

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Steam rises from the never-ending stretch of road ahead. What looks like water rolling over the street, is just heat escaping. Walking on the blacktop barefoot would leave anyone but a fire-walker grunting in pain.

Our planet is covered with a web of streets and this cement absorbs and stores an abundance of the sun’s energy. Researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), are looking into ways of using this heat as yet another renewable energy source. They have already developed solar collectors that would transfer the energy into electricity.

The ball started rolling with the president of Novotech Inc., Michael Hulen, who funded the research project meant to prove the efficiency of Novotech’s patented heat absorbing design. Based in Acton, Massachusetts, Novotech is one of the biggest suppliers of infrared optical and semiconductor materials.

WPI’s research was presented at the Annual Symposium of the International Society for Asphalt Pavements August 18-20, in Zurich, but like most things in life, the presentations are not accessible for free so I have no information about WPI’s results as of yet. (In addition to the topic of ‘roads for energy production’, other areas of interest such as noise reduction, recycling, drainage and environmentally friendly maintinence on pavements were also discussed at the event.)

The idea of using already existing streets as solar panels is a promising one; Roads are reworked every few years and the technology can be incorporated when repaving is necessary. Not only that, but the unfortunate truth is that roads, parking lots and sidewalks are more common than anything else in many areas. With Novotech’s design, at least these concrete landmasses can be retrofitted as solar power generators.

The heat collectors would be located a few centimeters underneath the pavement, not changing the outward appearance. Cars will roll along on the roads, as usual, but now power will be generated right underneath the tires.

For more information, check out an in depth article at Science Daily.

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Burn Calories for Electricity

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

With the 2008 Olympics going on, we are bombarded with images of rippling muscles pushed to their limit by men and women in peak physical condition. Most of these champions spend hours a day at the gym, burning up to 5000 calories during a workout. Most people have had a gym membership at one time or another, in the hopes of staying fit by exercising at least three times a day. This idea, isn’t a novel one; but why waste all this energy, just sweating it out, rather than using it to generate electricity?

A California Fitness health club in Hong Kong, has already developed a gym with 13 machines that generate 300 watts when they are all in use. That’s enough to run three of the massive 30 inch TV screens looming above the machines. This project started when Doug Woodring, environmental entrepreneur, decided it was time to take advantage of all the potential energy that walked through the gym doors on a daily basis. Steve Clinefelter, president of California Fitness, jumped on the idea.

According to Clinefelter (quoted by inhabitat), “One person has the ability of producing 50watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate pace… If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he/she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year.” To link to original article with video click here.

Parasitic generators are the newest line of devices meant to inadvertently capture human energy. The most ambitious of these projects involves a nightclub with a dance floor that generates an electric current when masses of people bounce around on top of it. The crystals inside the floor generate a current when compressed and power the lights that flash up at the happy dancers doing all the work.

A smaller scale generator in backpack form is currently being developed by Larry Rome, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. These backpacks generate power from the vibrations of the wearer’s footsteps, and may eventually power a small fridge, or relieve soldiers from needing to carry so many batteries in their already, cumbersome packs.

Many parents would love the idea of tv powered by an elliptical machine or stationary bike. You would have to work out to watch your favorite shows and that’s definitely better than sitting on the couch with a craning neck to watch the tv over the ever expanding belly. Just try not to compare yourself to a hamster in a wheel.

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TecEco - CO2 Absorbing Cement

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Cement is good for hiding whatever lies underneath. Old mob movies bring to mind laughing goons pouring the wet grey slurry over an unlucky victim, while rotting garbage is buried underground and sometimes paved over. Cement is not seen in a positive light, especially not when it comes to the environment.

The innovative mind of John Harrison thought up the idea of using waste (typically industrial and carbon) in cement, rather than simply producing cement to pave around it. Harrison, managing director at Australia’s TecEco, founded a company with the goal of producing a building material with a positive environmental impact.

Now a brand name, eco-cement is a limestone base (like all cements) mixed with magnesium oxide which is heated in a kiln and turned to powder. This powder will eventually be added to gravel and water to form cement. The magnesium oxide in eco-cement lowers the kiln temperature to about half of that required by the most common cement used in the world: Portland cement. This substantially lowers the amount of energy needed to make eco-cement. Not only that, but eco-cement is more porous than other cements and the unique magnesium oxide/cement mix actually absorbs carbon dioxide from the environment (only for about a year, though)!

In TecEco’s question and answers forum, the company was asked how they came about the idea of “eco-cement”. The answer was that “the idea of using carbon and wastes in building materials came from nature. During earth’s geological history large tonnages of carbon were put away as limestone and coal by the activity of plants and animals building homes such as the shells of shellfish and wood in trees. These same plants and animals wasted nothing as food and nutrients moved around and the waste from one was the food or home of another. John concluded that the answer to greenhouse gas and waste was to use them both in building materials.”

True to this ideal, eco-cement can be completely recycled when a structure is no longer required and reformed again.

As the founder and current chair of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainable Materials in Construction (AASMIC), Harrison is obviously devoted to green building materials. Online he writes; “I believe that our approach to sustainability must be holistic. i.e. a bit like dieting. The pain of either dieting or exercise is less if one does both. So it is with progress towards sustainability - reductions in energy usage as well as massive sequestration, less rubbish (e.g. packaging) as well as new uses for it are required. Improvements in energy use efficiency have been relatively popular as they save money. The harder task I am addressing is how to get the CO2 out of the air.”

The ideas presented by TecEco are catching on and other companies like Zeobond, scheduled to start operations in February, are adopting similar philosophies.

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