Published on February 20th, 2010
The tradition-bound, somewhat chemical-heavy sport of golf isn’t exactly the first place you’d look for evidence that we really have launched into a more sustainable future, but there you have it: golf is going green, and the ferociously upscale St. Andrews Country Club of Boca Raton is part of the revolution. The club has just announced completion of a new system that will irrigate its two golf courses with reclaimed water (aka wastewater), along with tennis courts and landscaping, too.
The news comes on the heels of an announcement by the PGA Tour and FedEx that Tiger Woods – wait, scratch that – that golf courses in several cities hosting the tour will get sustainability makeovers that include habitat and waterway restoration. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on February 18th, 2010
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has just uncovered yet another reason not to love so called “clean coal:” the agency has determined that coal mining caused the ground to shift under the Ryerson Station Dam in Greene County, which in turn caused increased seepage and cracking in the concrete structure. The 62-acre lake behind the dam was drained as soon as the damage was discovered in 2005, to prevent possible collapse and flooding.
So, add massive infrastructure failure to the growing list of messes that “clean” coal leaves behind, including mountaintop coal mining and coal ash spills, and permanent disasters such as the underground coal mine fire that has bedeviled the Pennsylvania town of Centralia since 1962. New technology may scrub more pollutants from power plants, but an army of scrubbers won’t make coal a truly clean, sustainable fuel for the future.
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Published on February 12th, 2010
InfoSpi has become the latest in a growing list of companies that are transforming sewage treatment plants into gigantic energy recovery facilities. The company has entered an agreement with IBS (Integral Bioenergies Systems) to build a demonstration plant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida that will convert sewage sludge to biofuel.
The beauty of the sewage-to-biofuel movement is the virtually endless supply of locally sourced feedstock that is readily at hand (so to speak). It’s a stark contrast to destructive the logistics of mountaintop coal mining. With New York City alone producing about a billion gallons of sewage every day, you’re looking at a nation awash in sustainable energy that can be harvested without blowing up huge chunks of our natural heritage.
Published on January 26th, 2010
Anecdotal evidence suggests that cheese and biogas go together like – aw heck, let’s cut the cheese jokes and get straight to the point. The Holmes Cheese Co. is installing a wastewater treatment system at its Millersburg, Ohio factory that will double as a sustainable biogas recovery plant, thus joining a growing number of cheeseries that are generating their own sustainable energy to power equipment.
The new system is a proprietary process called the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket. It was developed by Biothane, a subsidiary of leading wastewater treatment company Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies. As an added bonus, N.A. Water Systems (another Veolia subsidiary) is installing high-tech filtration and treatment equipment that will enable the effluent from Holmes Cheese to meet strict water quality limits for phosphorus.
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Published on January 24th, 2010
Certain politicians may be having a hard time wrapping their heads around the reality of climate change, but that hasn’t stopped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The USACE is rolling right along with sustainability programs that range from an award-winning oyster habitat restoration project to the installation of 1,200 solar powered street lights in Fallujah and a solar parking lot in New Jersey.
The Commanding General of the USACE, Lt. Gen. Robert Van Atwerp, pulled it all together just a couple of weeks ago with a blog post about the USACE and climate change, and he didn’t mince words on the USACE’s attitude about the whole issue: “It’s a very real concern that could have very real consequences all over the world, and we’re on it.” That can-do spirit has lead to some interesting new partnerships for the USACE with civilian organizations like The Conservation Fund. Maybe it’s time for the climate change deniers to come out of their shells and join the party — you know, support the U.S. Army, right? Hello?
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Published on January 18th, 2010
Hydrovolts, Inc. has been going at clean hydrokinetic power hammer and tongs with a mini-turbine called the Flipwing. The company is specializing in drawing sustainable energy in the form of hydropower from existing canals and other waterways where the current is predictable. The Flipwing is a self-contained device similar in concept to the paddlewheel on a steamboat, but it is submerged in the water and tethered to a site. Depending on the site it can generate from one and 20 kilowatts, enough to fill small scale power needs.
The key to the Flipwing and other hydrokinetic turbines is simple. Instead of relying on water pressure, hydrokinetic turbines operate on the energy of the available current. That means no need to construct dams, weirs, or other infrastructure that disrupts waterways and habitat. We’ve covered Hydrovolts before in this site before and now it seems the company is poised to explore new territory.
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Published on January 14th, 2010
Pitchers and catchers don’t report for spring training until February 18 but the Minnesota Twins are already getting a jump on the 2010 baseball season by installing a huge new rainwater harvesting and recycling system at the team’s new home, Target Field.
The new Rain Water Recycle System was designed by by Minneapolis-based Pentair, a global water innovator. Using a gigantic underground water storage tank the size of a freight car, the team aims to save more than two million gallons of water yearly – and that’s all part of a bigger sustainable plan for Target Field.
Published on January 12th, 2010
Chemical treatment is becoming a less desirable way to provide safe drinking water, and water professionals have been searching for a less expensive, more reliable and more sustainable method of killing pathogens. Cavitation Technologies, Inc. has come up with one solution. The company’s new process uses mechanical and electrical systems to blow the little bugs to smithereens.
The company’s CaviGulation reactor sounds like a piece of equipment that would be at home in Frankenstein’s lab. It delivers up a complex set of reactions based on kinetic energy, chemical, electro-chemical, and hydrodynamic principles. The result: a water disinfection process that’s 1,000 times more effective than conventional systems.
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Published on January 11th, 2010
This is the discovery that could put the College of Wooster on the map: glass that swells like a sponge. Put together like a nano-matrix, the new glass can unfold to hold up to eight times its weight. The glass binds with gasoline and other pollutants containing volatile organic compounds but it does not bind with water, so it acts like a “smart” sponge, capable of picking and choosing from contaminated groundwater.
The new material was developed by Dr. Paul Edmiston of the College of Wooster, who formed a new company, Absorbent Materials, to market the new glass under the trademark Obsorb. A number of pilot sites are being tested in the United States, and industrialized countries are not the only ones that stand to gain. Obsorb’s unique properties make it ideal for low tech, low-budget cleanups in developing areas as well.
Published on January 10th, 2010
According to a recent study, fish can live with a new type of hydropower that does not involve constructing dams, weirs, or other fish-unfriendly infrastructure. It’s called hydrokinetic power, and it simply uses underwater turbines to harness the energy of existing currents in rivers. Sounds good so far, but the key point is whether or not river dwelling fish can co-exist with the installation.
Hydro Green Energy, LLC is a leading hydrokinetic company that engaged the study. One goal was to help provide a definitive answer to the fish question industrywide, so the study went all the way. Rather than simply extrapolating from computer models, the study involved tagging and tracking hundreds of individual fish with radio transmitters and balloons. The results provide encouraging news for the development of a more sustainable energy landscape for hydropower, and rivers could be just the beginning.
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