Archive for July, 2008
PolyFuel Methanol Fuel Cell T40 Laptop Prototype
PolyFuel Methanol Fuel Cell T40 Laptop Prototype
Jul 17, 2008 By Matt
PolyFuel announced yesterday that they have a working prototype of their methanol fuel cell laptop which they will demonstrating across the consumer electronics industry. The prototype is a Lenovo T40 that uses a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). This technology converts methanol to electricity to run the computer.
As consumers are becoming more an more conscious of their impact on the world around us, they are demanding cleaner and greener technology. Fuel Cell technology will be a welcome alternative in the consumer electronics market helping replace those relics with their planned obsolescence and toxic materials.
The benefit of the of the DMFC is that it uses a renewable fuel, Methanol (aka wood or methyl alcohol) that can be refilled. The fuel cell can be made from biodegradable or recyclable material and when it has reached it’s end of life does not have to end up in a land fill or a costly hazardous waste processing facility.
A single cartridge can provide 10 hours of battery life and that is most likely not running at full capacity. Researcher’s theorize that if they can get the cell operating at 100% capacity they will be able to get 10 times the power of a similarly size Lithium Ion battery.
PolyFuel’s prototype battery is slightly larger than the OEM battery for the Lenovo, however it is considerably lighter and currently offers 3x the battery life. There is still no word when they expect these to be to market but they do say that fuel cell powered consumer electronics are feasible within 2-3 years. It is just nice to know that there is a working prototype and that this long anticipated technology is not merely vaporware.
Tags: computer, fuel cell, methanol, recyclable
Add comment July 19, 2008
sun whisper solar lawnmower : The Alternative Consumer
sun whisper solar lawnmower by rd
A little company called Free Power Systems makes this solar-powered lawnmower. The Sun Whisper mower will save on gas, harmful emissions (lawnmowers are among the worst contributors to air pollution) and noise pollution. The 24V mower has a 19 inch cutting radius suitable for use on a 1/3 acre yard. Just add sun.$695 @ freepowersys.com
sun whisper solar lawnmower : The Alternative Consumer
Add comment July 19, 2008
MIT researchers develop new solar power windows
MIT researchers develop new solar power windows
By MB-BigB
In a press release, MIT researchers have reported that they have developed solar power
concentrators that can be used to turn windows into solar panels.
Their new technique paints the window glass with a mixture of two or
more tranparent organic dyes that absorbs and transports the light to
solar cells that are positioned around the edges of the glass. By
using the dyes, the amount of electricity that could be produced by
each of the solar cells is increased by about 10 times, with much lower
amounts of solar cells and silicon needed
Organic solar concentrators collect and focus different colors of sunlight
The head of the team, Professor Marc Baldo, says that it’s simple to
manufacture and could be implemented within three years. While this
technique has been around since the 70’s, the earlier versions lost too
much of the sunlight while transporting it to the edges. The MIT
technique used some of the same processes used in lasers and
light-emitting diodes so that the light can travel of much longer
distances. They also believe that this process can be used with
existing solar cell systems to increase the efficiency of current
systems 20-30%. Participants in the research are starting a company,
Covalent Solar, to commercialize and improve the technology.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: solar, windows, energy, electricity
Add comment July 19, 2008
Sun Chairs are So Solar
Sun Chairs are So Solar
by Bonnie Alter, London
Science & Technology (solar)
You wouldn’t want to waste your time just lying in the sun. Now you can make the sun work for you whilst you are soaking up the rays.
This chaise lounge has a panel over the head made of solar panel fabric that acts as a sunshade and moves to protect you from the sun. At the same time it collects solar energy. This is converted into electricity that can be used to charge all those essential gadgets needed for the beach such as a dock to download your digital camera pictures and load up MP3 players and even a GPS in case you get lost. It has a sliding laptop table so that you can read TreeHugger at the same time. Of course there are speakers and long-range WiFi antennae. Called the “Tech Chair”, the humble sun lounger has been transformed into an “advanced technological hub of summer entertainment”. Just pull on that solar bikini and you are ready to roll. :: PC World Via :: Hippyshopper
Tags: solarenergy
Add comment July 17, 2008
Home-Based Hydrogen Refueling Station
The ‘Hydrogen Fridge’: A Home-Based Hydrogen Refueling Station
by Matthew McDermott, Science & Technology
Hydrogen home concept drawing by ITM Power.
We reported on an Australian version of the home hydrogen refueling concept over a year ago. This time, a British company is pushing the same sort of idea forward: Enter the Hydrogen Fridge.
Hydrogen in Your Garage
The BBC is reporting that ITM Power of Sheffield, England has unveiled a hydrogen home refueling station which has been installed in showcase “hydrogen home”. The device works via and electrolyzer to produce hydrogen from water and electricity—so, still, if you’re using non-green energy your hydrogen really isn’t a clean source of energy.
Based on the fact that the device only makes enough hydrogen in a night to power a vehicle for 25 miles, the hydrogen fridge concept is still in a work in progress for practical use.
And as a version which could offer up enough hydrogen to go 100 miles on would cost £20,000, economies of scale afforded by mass manufacturing will have to be realized before the devices begin appearing in anyone’s home. ITM chief executive Jim Heathcote believes that if the units were mass produced they could be sold for as little as £2000.
Even at that price and even if integrated into ITM’s hydrogen home concept—why use solar energy for electricity to generate hydrogen, when the electricity could be used directly?— I’m not really sure that having a home hydrogen station is a better option than adapting the traditional petrol station to support hydrogen fueling.
Tags: hydrogen
Add comment July 17, 2008
BMW’s Cloth-Skinned Car Makes a Splash
BMW’s Cloth-Skinned Car Makes a Splash
Written by Hank Green
Thursday, 17 July 2008
BMW’s cloth car known by its concept name GINA is an amazing piece of design. The GINA philosophy is Geometry and Functions In “N” Adaptions; the “N” stands for infinite possibilities. I admit, I got so bedazzled by the video of the cloth car (after the jump), it took me a second to step back and think about why GINA is worth mentioning on ecogeek. The GINA model features a virtually seamless outer skin made of a textile fabric that stretches across a movable substructure. Functions are only offered if and when they are actually required. While BMW touts that reducing the car to its “essentials and adapting it to the driver’s requirements enhances the car’s emotional impact,” the reality is that the cloth car at its most basic is reducing the hard structure of the car to only what is necessary.
This brings into question all the current realities of what is set in stone in today’s car market. For example, does a car roof really need to rest on pillars and be bordered by pillars and are there any possible alternatives to the rigid body shell of steel or plastic?
By re-evaluating the hard body of the car, BMW figures that the lightweight design will require far less energy to produce than traditional BMW models. The overall car weight is significantly reduced, which in turns makes the vehicle far more fuel efficient.
A car of cloth is far off into the future, but BMW hopes that the philosophy behind its concept: of exploring new possibilities and focusing on actual function rather than relying on the tried-and-true model, that eventually cars can be made to suit individuals.
In an interview with Wallpaper magazine, Chris Bangle, head of design for BMW says GINA forces BMW designers to look at things differently.
“If we free our minds, then we can perhaps start to look at methods that use less energy, require less chemicals, cause less waste and are more flexible in getting products that customers want,” he says.
Via: Inhabitat and Wallpaper.com and
Add comment July 17, 2008
Home Solar, Minus the Cost, Effort, Worry
Home Solar, Minus the Cost, Effort, Worry
It seems these days you can’t throw a rock without hitting a story relating to solar power. So why haven’t you got it for your home yet? I bet you’ve already come up with a list of three reasons, without even thinking. My guess is they fall into these areas: Cost, efficiency (or lack of it) and aesthetics. Oh and let’s throw this one in for good measure: Who lives in their home for 15-30 years these days? Not you, and what good will those panels do you on your next home?
I found a solution to all of these concerns, and more: Sun Run. What they do is unique, and does quite a thorough job in allaying people’s fears. Rather than have you buy, lease, or take out a loan for the solar system, Sun Run retains ownership of the equipment. and guarantees a certain amount of power generation. Come again?
Yes. In conversation with Nat Kreamer, COO of Sun Run, I learned about a unique “solar as a service” model that had even I, chest deep in the latest green energy innovations, am considering using their service when I buy a home. Why?
On a basic level, it costs less, up front and in the long term. You pay an agreed upon amount up front, typically less then you would on an equipment purchase. Then it gets better: All you’re paying from there is a monthly utility bill, at a rate that’s fixed for, for example, 18 years. A rate which is already lower than what the utilities in California, where SunRun is based, charge.
It gets better. Built in to your agreement is service and maintenance. No additional charge. As Kreamer said to me, your average solar consumer doesn’t know the signs of a faulty system the way that you might be with something more familiar, like your car. SunRun, being the owner of the system, has it in their interest to make sure the equipment runs at optimum. Especially with a power generation agreement, for which they will reimburse you, plus interest, if your system doesn’t meet the amount they promise.
I’m having a hard time seeing a down side to this.
Being able to choose which panels you get, (ie the green built Evergreen, or the aesthetically minimal Sharp SRS) how much you pay up front, and know how much you’ll be spending, you can then get exactly the system you want. As in enough for 100% of your energy needs. Or more. As Kreamer said, electric cars are increasingly materializing these days, and with some coming from major car makers like GM’sVolt car and Nissan planning to create a broad fleet, starting in 2010.
Imagine being able to meet all your energy needs – automotive and household, with zero nonrenewable resources used to generate it. You’d sidestep the common argument of shifting energy/pollution to power plants and, according to Kreamer, run your car for 10 cents a mile, plugging in to your system. Even at today’s gas costs, bound to keep increasing, this saves you money, today, as compared to most gas powered cars.
And for those of you wondering about what happens to excess electricity generated? It’s yours. If your utility does net metering, you can sell it back to the grid.
Squashing another big concern is the fact that Sun Run takes care of the insurance for the system, effectively eliminating risk/cost to you as a home owner. Speaking of, what about if you decide to move before your agreement is done? You can either pass on the agreement to the next owner, or buy the system outright, building in this home value increasing option into your sale.
Readers: What’s your take on this? Seen any better/different arrangements to getting renewable energy for your home? Have any suggestions other than/in addition to solar for economically meeting your energy needs, locally and sustainably?
Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. His overarching talent is “bottom lining” complex ideas, in a way that is understandable and accessible to a variety of audiences, internal and external to a company.
Tags: solar, green energy,
Add comment July 17, 2008
XH-150MPG Extreme Hybrid
XH-150MPG Extreme Hybrid
AFS Trinity Corporation showcases the 150 Mile Per Gallon – Plug-in hybrid vehicle.
AFS TRINITY Power Corporation
Add comment July 17, 2008
Here’s the Scoop: San Francisco to Turn Dog Poop Into Biofuel
Here’s the Scoop: San Francisco to Turn Dog Poop Into Biofuel |
| Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News |
Your house powered by pooch poop?The idea may sound far-fetched, but officials in dog-friendly San Francisco, California, hope to harness the power of methane in doggie doo so it can be used for heating homes and generating electricity.The technology of turning animal waste into energy was introduced in Europe some 20 years ago. It’s practiced by hundreds of farms there, as well as by 16 U.S. dairy farms.But San Francisco is believed to be the first U.S. city to explore the energy potential of pet waste.In a pilot program to start this year, Norcal Waste, a garbage company that collects the city’s trash, plans to use biodegradable bags and dog-waste carts to pick up the poop in one of San Francisco’s most popular dog parks.The waste will be run through a methane digester, a tank in which bacteria break down the feces to create methane. This biofuel can then be piped directly to a gas stove, heater, or anything else powered by natural gas.“Scraping dog poop off your shoe, now that’s something most people have been frustrated with for a long time,” said Robert Reed, a Norcal spokesperson.“Now we have an opportunity to turn this nuisance into something positive.”From Food Scraps to Dog DooKnown for its green credentials, San Francisco already uses several recycling programs to divert almost two-thirds of its household garbage away from landfills. The city aims to divert all of its waste from landfills by 2020.The poop-to-methane project is an extension of another bio-recycling program the city initiated ten years ago, when it began collecting food scraps from houses and restaurants and turning them into fertilizer for vineyards and organic farms.Today 300 tons (272 metric tons) of food scraps are collected every day from more than 2,000 restaurants and tens of thousands of homes.Norcal’s Reed says that some of the more than a hundred farms in the area that have used the compost produced from food scraps have seen record yields.“We have the most forward-thinking recycling program in the United States,” he said.The plan to recycle pet waste followed a recent study, which found that animal feces make up 3.8 percent of the garbage from residential collections in San Francisco.“The city saw this percentage and said to us, We need to get down to zero [waste to landfills], so we want you to start thinking about how to collect the dog waste and what can be done with it,’” Reed said.The high percentage is not surprising considering that San Francisco is home to an estimated 120,000 dogs, far more than there are children.San Franciscans may be responsible about cleaning up after their dogs. But most of the droppings are wrapped in plastic bags and end up in landfills, where the waste may sit for generations.If it’s not picked up, animal waste may dissolve into the soil and flow into the groundwater.Breaking It DownAlmost 10 million tons (9 million metric tons) of dog and cat waste is generated annually in the U.S., according to William Brinton, president of Woods End Laboratories in Mount Vernon, Maine. The lab specializes in analyzing compost and other waste.“The amount of energy potential in dog and cat litter is higher than anything else because of the rich diet that we feed [pets],” said Brinton, who was consulted by Norcal to test the energy content of pet waste.He estimates that 1 ton (0.9 metric ton) of animal waste could produce 50 gallons (190 liters) of diesel-equivalent fuel, enough to heat a house in New England for two weeks.“Once you start multiplying it the numbers get pretty enormous, and all of a sudden it looks very appreciable,” Brinton said. (Read Geographic magazine’s “Powering the Future.”)The pet waste must be collected in special biodegradable bags before being placed into a methane digester, which works much like a compost bin.Dog feces naturally contain bacteria called methanogens, which use hydrogen to break down carbon dioxide into microbial food. Methane gas is made as a byproduct of this process.“It does not consume any energy to produce this energy, because you don’t have to provide any energy to run the system,” Brinton said.The resulting biofuel can be piped into stoves, turbines, and other machines that run on natural gas.“I see this effort as a logical next step of going after another portion of the organic waste stream that’s currently going to disposal facilities,” said John Majercak, a recycling expert at the Center for Ecological Technology in Northampton, Massachusetts.“I think it’s great that it’s getting so much attention, and [I] hope that, after everyone has a chuckle over it, we are all that much more aware of the opportunity to rethink the way we handle our waste,” he added.The reaction from dog owners in San Francisco has been overwhelmingly positive, says Norcal’s Reed. He expects to have special collection bins put up in Duboce Park, a popular San Francisco dog park, within a few months.“Every day we get 20 to 30 people calling and asking about [the program] and how they can volunteer to make sure it’s a success,” he said. |
Add comment July 17, 2008
tip for dog/pet owners
Cut the top of plastic soda, milk or juice bottles diagonally so you can use the cap as a handle and the side of the bottle as a scoop to clean up after the dog while walking it.
I use the bottom to store plastic vegetable or grocery bags to carry waste. Save used paper towels that have been rinsed and dried in the bottom of another plastic bottle to use for pet pick up or drying paws after walk.
Scoops can be washed and reused and eventually recycled with the rest of the plastics when edges get too roughed up.
Check you local area for pet poo biofuel programs
Add comment July 17, 2008
