CleanTechnica

A team of students at Columbia University has made it to the next round of Walmart’ s Better Living Business Plan Challenge.  They achieved their spot in the sustainability-focused competition by yes, reinventing the wheel.  The team has proposed a business venture that would make energy efficient, lightweight composite wheels for buses, trucks and other large vehicles.  Advancing in the competition means a chance to pitch the plan to top Walmart execs and earn seed money to get started.

Lightweight composite wheels are familiar to bicyclists and ATV enthusiasts, but their use in wheels for heavier vehicles has been limited so far.  That could be about to change.  Three of the four members of the team are Boeing employees involved in the distance learning program of the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, so a likely inspiration for the project is the growing use of durable, lightweight composite materials in aircraft.

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In a simple step, using basic social-psychology, utilities could create a nearly immediate cut in electricity usage. And I think it could be a big one.

British conservative, David Cameron, explains the idea quickly speaking at a TED conference recently (10:53 into the speech). With a backround in sociology, I am immediately inclined to to dig into the idea a little further.

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British Airways has announced plans to source a part of its fuel supplies from waste municipal waste to fuel plant. The company plans to procure 16 million gallons of green jet fuel annually from the Solena plant that would come up in London.

The plant which is expected to come online in 2014 would convert 50,000 tonnes of municipal waste into jet-grade fuel. The volume of fuel supplied initially would be 2 percent of the total fuel consumption of British Airways. This would cut down on the carbon emissions that is generated due to the conventional jet fuel, kerosene.

British Airways aims to obtain 10 percent of its jet fuel waste-to-energy processes.

Waste to energy process provides a three pronged advantage. One, it helps in the management of the ever increasing waste in the cities, two, it converts the methane (an efficient fuel and a greenhouse gas) which is produce from the decomposition of municipal waste and, third, its use results in reduction in carbon emissions. Read the rest of this entry »

Joule Biotechnologies, Inc. has just announced that a lease agreement has been signed for a new facility in Leander, Texas, which will serve as a pilot plant to develop the company’s solar powered system for producing ethanol and other biofuels.  The energy efficient process is based on photosynthetic microorganisms and it operates without the use of conventional biomass or algae biofuel processes.

CleanTechnica and Gas 2.0 have been eagerly following Joule’s progress, and the company has already produced ethanol and diesel at a lab scale rate.  It plans to start ethanol production this year at the pilot plant, with diesel to follow early next year.  Once operating at full scale, the facility has  the potential to deliver at the rate of 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre yearly, and 15,000 gallons of diesel.  That could be the tip of the iceberg, because the same process can also yield a variety of high-value chemicals in addition to biofuels.

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“Sunglasses” for windows could be the key to cutting energy consumption in homes, offices, and any other type of building.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been working on energy efficient windows that work like self-adjusting sunglasses, and they could shave about 1/8 off the total energy used by buildings.  With buildings accounting for about 40% of U.S. energy consumption, that’s a huge chunk of savings.

NREL has been working on the project under the Electrochromic Initiative and Windows Technology program since the 1980’s, using lessons learned from photovoltaics, particularly thin film solar cell technology.  There are still some kinks to work out, but the research is progressing and NREL’s research partner Sage Electrochromics is predicting that the cost of the windows will drop with improved performance.

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Pentadyne's new flywheel weighs less, stores more energy.

Flywheels are the ultimate green energy storage machines.  They store energy mechanically, like a wind-up toy, so they don’t involve large quantities of lead, acid, or other environmental hazards, and they have a much longer lifespan than conventional batteries.  That makes flywheels an ideal storage format for sustainable energy, but until recently their full potential wasn’t exploited.  Early versions were heavy, difficult to maintain, and not very efficient compared to lead-acid batteries.

Pentadyne Power has come out with a new GTX flywheel that represents the kind of next-generation improvements that are pushing the technology into more widespread use.  It combines lightweight carbon fiber components with magnetic levitation to achieve a level of energy efficiency that competes favorably, pound for pound, with conventional lead-acid batteries – and shows how the new developments are beating old school flywheels at their own game.

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Asian Development Bank has approved a loan of $135 million to facilitate the construction of an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power plant. Although the power plant will be using coal as the primary fuel it air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the plant will be lower than the conventional coal-fired power plants.

An Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power plant converts coal into gas through the process of gasification. Once the coal has been converted in synthetic natural gas or syngas, the resulting mixture of gases, mainly comprising of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is filtered to remove particulate matter. The filtered gas is then ignited using highly compressed air. The flue gases resulting from the combustion of the gas mixture is fed into a gas turbine which is connected to a generator which produced electricity. Read the rest of this entry »

Energy efficiency may not have the glamor of solar power or wind power, but it’s also a critical and immediate solution to cutting pollution.

Today, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced $19.2 million in funding for energy efficiency programs through the San Francisco Energy Watch program and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

In the announcement, Newsom highlighted the creation of new local jobs through the programs and outlined the total energy and financial savings from the San Francisco’s energy efficiency work on city buildings during the last 6 years.

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Columbia University has received a federal grant of $2.8 million to develop energy efficiency computer chips using magnetic materials.

Magnetic materials are set to play a big role in a more energy efficient future for the information technology sector.  Last month the U.S. Department of Energy announced $47 million in grants for new IT energy efficiency projects, and a big chunk of that – $2.8 million – will go to the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University (SEAS) to develop new computer chips using nano-scaled magnetic materials.

Columbia will be working with partners IBM and Cornell University on the project, which is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). It’s a compelling example of the ripple effect that government investment in research can have, as the increased efficiencies are expected to yield significant bottom line savings for established IT players and startups alike.  Private industry is chipping in a cool $70 million in matching funds for the overall DOE program.

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Like some tantalizing cursed treasure, boron nitride nanotubes have been tempting researchers with their promise of high heat tolerance, which makes them excellent candidates for components in the next generation of microscopic-scale high efficiency electronics.  But for years the tiny nanofibers, which are similar to carbon nanotubes, have lead researchers down one blind alley after another.

The fact is that boron nanotubes are much harder to produce than carbon nanotubes.   They won’t catch on until that obstacle is overcome – and it seems that a team of researchers at Michigan Technological University has done just that.  Working with the same instrumentation used for carbon nanotubes, the team has developed a way to grow virtual “Persian carpets” of boron nitride nanotubes in the lab, paving the way for their commercial use.

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