News and commentary about ecodesign, geothermal heatstorage, PAH seasonal storage, urban farming, rainwater harvesting, grey water recycling, natural ventilation, passive summer cooling, energy autonomy, off grid solar comfort, as well as refined prototypes i am currently building.
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A highly-promising development out of Japan: a corporation called Blest has developed a home-scale plastic to oil converter. Through the process 1kg of plastic yields 1 litre of oil.
The machine, produced in various sizes, for both industrial and home use, can easily transform a kilogram of plastic waste into a liter of oil, using about 1 kWh of electricity but without emitting CO2 in the process. The machine uses a temperature controlling electric heater instead of flames, processing anything from polyethylene or polystyrene to polypropylene (numbers 2-4).
Computer-Controlled Mashrabiya Keeps Abu Dhabi’s Al Bahar Towers Cool | Green Prophet
Commissioned to design the 25-story Al Bahar Towers on Abu Dhabi’s
eastern flank, Aedas Architecture worked with Arup Engineering to create
a computer-controlled mashrabiya that wraps around the Abu Dhabi Investment Council’s (ADIC) new headquarters. They move in accordance with the sun’s position in the sky, reducing solar gain by a whopping 50%!
Perhaps more than any other Gulf nation, Abu Dhabi has taken enormous
steps towards securing its residents against an inevitable end to their
oil wealth. Naturally we don’t necessarily agree that building giant
skyscrapers is the most sustainable defense against resource depletion
and climate change, but at least the Emirate is making an effort.
Heat is one major challenge faced by all Gulf nations. This year during Ramadan, when many pilgrims flock to the holy sprawl that Mecca has become,
Saudi Arabia will experience temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius in the
shade. It’s not much cooler in Abu Dhabi, so energy-intensive
air-conditioners suck up all of the nation’s most important export
commodity (ie. oil).
The software-designed mashrabiya screens help to mitigate that
problem by deflecting solar gain, thereby significantly reducing the
buildings’ overall cooling load. These screens almost envelope all but
the northern flank of either tower, adding an aesthetically-pleasing
geometrical dimension to the glass buildings.
Initially, Siemens asked for a LEED Gold building, but then they changed their mind and asked for LEED Platinum
instead – without adjusting the budget. Ardill was fiercely
exacting with his parametric analysis and evaluated 140 calculations to
determine what materials and configurations would deliver the most
efficient structure possible on that particular site. What’s
more, Ardill and Wan worked together with their respective teams to
deliver this incredible feat under budget.
Propped up on stilts, the boxy 22,800 m2 office complex floats above a
public plaza with views of Abu Dhabi in the dusty distance. It is clad
in a lightweight aluminum shading system that provides 100 per cent
shading to 95 per cent
of the glazed surfaces, and, along with proprietary integrated building
technology designed by Siemens, contributes to energy reductions of
nearly 50 percent.
This shading system is just one example of how much care went into
the design. The geometry of each fin is fine tuned to maximize daylight,
reduce material loads, ensure the smallest percentage of solar gain,
and reflects excess heat away from the glass, which is perfectly cool to
the touch.
The building’s groundbreaking structural system reduced construction
material by roughly 60 percent, providing great flexibility across all
four office floors, thereby allowing for future reorganization, change
or growth. Currently, the building boasts capacity for approximately 800
employees, and has already received 16 awards.
A year later, Michael Grätzel, a top solar scientist from
Switzerland, teamed with Park on a paper, sparking more widespread
interest. Their paper in the journal Nature Scientific Reports reported
a conversion efficiency of about 10% with perovskite. "By then, I knew
this was something I wanted to pursue," Zhu said. At the beginning of
2013, the efficiency level for perovskite had climbed to 12.3%.
"And
then about a year ago, when they added chlorine to the materials, the
electron and hole diffusion lengths just went through the roof," Ginley
said. "The most remarkable thing is that you add a little bit of
chlorine and you see how the diffusion lengths change -- by a factor of
10. That really brought attention to them." Ideally, a solar cell has a
diffusion length long enough for the electron to reach the contacts both
above and below it, and thus escape the possibility that it will be
trapped in its layer and recombine into an electron-hole pair.
When
Zhu's proposal to examine perovskite was approved, the efficiency level
had climbed to 14.1%. Now, the highest certified rate is 16.2% by Sang
Il Seok of Korea. "Seeing how rapidly this field is progressing, I feel
very lucky that I started on this more than a year ago," Zhu said.
Meanwhile,
Zhu is in the midst of an experiment in which he prepares a precursor
solution that converts from a liquid base to an absorber in a device.
"This material is so easy to work with," Zhu said. "Working on solution
processing, we can make a device in one or two days, from beginning to
finish."
To boost efficiency levels even further will take more
effort, Zhu concedes. "But this new material can probably be processed
at a much lower cost" than rival materials, he said. It doesn't have to
deal with the problem of the substrate not matching with the material
above it, or with the delicate deposition process necessary with many
alternative solar materials.
Several companies are already
interested in forming cooperative research and development agreements so
they can work with NREL on perovskite. "At NREL, we have this depth and
breadth of understanding of materials, devices, transport, and, really,
all aspects of solar cells that should help us make an important
contribution to this new material," Zhu said.
A team from England and Ireland, however, reported on Sunday they had used a blender to make microscopic sheets of graphene.
They placed powdered graphite, the stuff from which pencil lead is made, into a container with an "exfoliating liquid", and then mixed at high speed.
The result is miniscule sheets of graphene, each about a nanometre (a billionth of a metre) thick and 100 nanometres long, suspended in a liquid.
The force generated by the rotating blades separated the graphite into graphene layers without damaging their two-dimensional structure.
"We developed a new way of making graphene sheets," Trinity College Dublin chemical physics professor Jonathan Coleman, who co-authored the study in the journal Nature Materials, told AFP.
"This method gives lots of graphene with no defects."
The team used industrial equipment called shear mixers, but successfully repeated the experiment with a kitchen blender.
Production of graphene by shear exfoliation of graphite in the solvent N-methyl-pyrrolidone using a Silverson high shear mixer. In this experiment, 100 litres of graphene suspension were produced. Credit: CRANN
The liquid so produced can be spread onto surfaces as films of graphene sheets, like paint, or mixed with plastics to produce reinforced, composite materials.
"In the lab, we produced grams. However, when scaled up, tonnes will be produced," said Coleman.
Graphene is the world's thinnest substance, transparent but stronger than steel—a conductive super-material made of carbon just one atom thick.
There is a surge of interest in it to replace semiconductors in next-generation computers, touch screens, batteries and solar cells.
Transmission electron microscope image of nanosheets of shear exfoliated graphene. The scalebar is 100 nm. Credit: CRANN
Graphene was aired as a theoretical substance in 1947. But for decades, physicists thought it would be impossible to isolate, as such thin crystalline sheets were bound to be unstable.
The problem was resolved in 2004 by a pair of scientists who used ordinary sticky tape to lift a layer from a piece of graphite.
That layer was itself pulled apart using more tape, and the process repeated until just the thinnest of layers remained—a graphene sheet.
Cistern Howto
This
article is based on a 16ft diameter, 4 ft tall tank, holding 6,000
gallons. However, you can alter the dimensions to fit your needs. Round tank:
π (3.14) x radius x radius x height x 7.5 = gallons
(e.g. 3.14 x 8ft x 8ft x 4ft x 7.5 = 6028.8 gallons) Square tank:
length x width x height x 7.5 = gallons
(e.g. a 18ft square that is 4ft tall will hold 9,720 gallons) Liner Dimensions:
You
want to make your liner a little larger than the tank's dimensions, so
that it has some slack. Also make it 1ft taller than your tank's walls.
Even
though a square tank is more efficient with space and thus your liner,
we would unequivocally recommend going with a circular design. We have
done both and the round one is far stronger and requires less work. Any
money you might save on the liner for a square tank is negated by the
extra strength you will have to add to the frame. If you decide to go
square, bury the bottom 1/3 of the tank.
Site
Mark
out the area where you wish to build your tank, and level it. You can
dig down or fill in, though a combination of the two is often the least
labor intensive.
Put a layer of sand, about 6" deep over the whole area and compact it well.
Place a rebar or post in the center of the area and attach a string to it.
Tie
the other end of the string to a stick or piece of metal, so that the
distance between the stick and the center post equals the radius of your
tank, in this case 8 ft.
Keeping the string taut and the stick upright, mark the sand in a circle around the central post.
Center bricks over this line all the way around the circumference, leveling them with each other.
Fill your circle with sand, then compact it well, so that the sand is an inch or two below the top of the bricks.
Fill that inch or so with finely screened sand and compact again.
StoreDot’s Bio-Organic Battery Tech Can Charge From Flat To Full In 30 Seconds | TechCrunch
StoreDot’s original focus for the nano-crystals was memory chips — which could write faster than traditional flash memory. It has also demoed an image sensor using the technology. But it’s now shifted its focus to what it sees as the two most promising near-term routes to commercialize the technology: fast-charging smartphone batteries, and cadmium-free displays — with its nano-crystal tech offering a cheaper and non-toxic alternative to cadmium in screens.
“We’ve demonstrated an iPhone display that the active material which emits light is a bio-organic material that is created by our compounds. This will be the first ever bio-organic display,” says Myersdorf. “We already demonstrated all the colours… we can bring the entire RGB spectrum for the display so now it’s all a matter of being able to reach the lifetime and the efficiency similar to cadmium.”
The big challenge for StoreDot is getting an industry that’s used to building electronics one way to switch to something new and different, says Myersdorf — even though that alternative may ultimately be cheaper and less toxic than existing manufacturing materials and processes.
“The only disadvantage is that the industry is not ready for it. The ecosystem is not ready,” he says. ”This is a new type of material, with new physics, new chemistry, that is actually coming from nature… Everything we do we try to imitate and to follow and to let nature take its course. To create these nano-crystals we don’t need a huge fabrication facility. We mix some basic elements — like hydrogen, nitrogen, helium.”
Myersdorf said StoreDot is therefore considering building its own facility to produce its bio-organic smartphone batteries, as a way to speed up their entry to market.
“Our challenge is not only stabilizing our own material but to change the entire ecosystem around the manufacturing of semi-conductor and batteries in order to be able to accommodate bio-organic material,” he adds.
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great simple passive solar house with attached greenhouse, well done video with good visuals, nice people!
The
purpose of this web site is to provide you with an introduction to a
series of devices which have been shown to have very interesting
properties and some are (incorrectly) described as 'perpetual motion'
machines.
What's that you say - perpetual motion is impossible? My, you're a
difficult one to please. The electrons in the molecules of rock
formations have been spinning steadily for millions of years without
stopping - at what point will you agree that they are in perpetual
motion?
So, why don't electrons run out of energy and just slow down to a
standstill? The universe is a seething cauldron of energy with
particles popping into existence and then dropping out again. If the
equation E = mC2 is correct, then we can see that a
tremendous amount of energy is needed to create any form of matter.
Scientists remark that if we could tap even a small part of that energy,
then we would have free energy for our lifetime.
The Law of Conservation of Energy is generally thought to be correct
when it states that more energy cannot be taken out of any system than
is put into that system. However, that does not mean that we cannot get more energy out of a system than we
put into it. A crude example is a solar panel in sunlight. We get
electrical power out of the panel but we do not put the sunlight into
the panel - the sunlight arrives on its own. This example is simple as
we can see the sunlight reaching the solar panel. In passing, it
might be remarked that the "Law" of Conservation of Energy has recently
been proved to be wrong, however, it wouldn't bother me at all if it
were actually right as it assumes a "closed system" which is something
that does not exist anywhere in the universe.
If, instead of the solar panel, we had a device which absorbs some of
the energy which the universe contains and gives out, say, electrical
power, would that be so different? Most people say "yes! - it is
impossible!" but this reaction is based on the fact that we cannot see
this sea of energy. Should we say that a TV set cannot possibly work
because we cannot see a television transmission signal?
Many people have produced devices and ideas for tapping this energy.
The energy is often called "Zero-Point Energy" because it is the energy
which would remain if a system has it's temperature lowered to absolute
zero. This presentation is introductory information on what has
already been achieved in this field: devices which output more power
than they require to run. This looks as if they contradict the Law of
Conservation of Energy, but they don't, and you can see this when you
take the zero-point energy field into account.
The material on this web site describes many different devices, with
diagrams, photographs, explanations, pointers to web sites, etc. As
some of the devices need an understanding of electronic circuitry, a
simple, step-by-step instruction course in electronics is also provided
in Chapter 12. This can take someone with no previous knowledge of
electronics, to the level where they can read, understand, design and
build the type of circuits used with these devices.
This is a very interesting field and the topic is quite absorbing once
you get past the "it has to be impossible" attitude. We were once told
that it would be impossible to cycle at more than 15 mph as the wind
pressure would prevent the cyclist from breathing. Do you want to stay
with that type of 'scientific' expert? Have some fun - discover the
facts.
There are many, many interesting devices and ideas already on the web.
This site does not mention them all by any means. What it does, is
take some of what are in my opinion, the most promising and interesting
items, group them by category, and attempt to describe them clearly and
without too many technical terms. If you are not familiar with
electronics, then some items may be difficult to understand. In that
case, I suggest that you start with Chapter 12 and go through it in
order, moving at whatever speed suits you, before examining the other
sections. I hope you enjoy what you re
© Asociación RUVID
So, why don't electrons run out of energy and just slow down to a
standstill? The universe is a seething cauldron of energy with
particles popping into existence and then dropping out again. If the
equation E = mC2 is correct, then we can see that a
tremendous amount of energy is needed to create any form of matter.
Scientists remark that if we could tap even a small part of that energy,
then we would have free energy for our lifetime.
Many people have produced devices and ideas for tapping this energy.
The energy is often called "Zero-Point Energy" because it is the energy
which would remain if a system has it's temperature lowered to absolute
zero. This presentation is introductory information on what has
already been achieved in this field: devices which output more power
than they require to run. This looks as if they contradict the Law of
Conservation of Energy, but they don't, and you can see this when you
take the zero-point energy field into account.
This is a very interesting field and the topic is quite absorbing once
you get past the "it has to be impossible" attitude. We were once told
that it would be impossible to cycle at more than 15 mph as the wind
pressure would prevent the cyclist from breathing. Do you want to stay
with that type of 'scientific' expert? Have some fun - discover the
facts.