Here’s an interesting article which proposes using super strong glass embedded with solar cells instead of traditional asphalt. This would have the benefits of removing snow and ice in rural areas but also has the potential to be a source for a building’s energy requirements in urban environments. http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/01/19/smart.roads/index.html?hpt=C2
Researchers at Stanford have announced a new class of solar collectors – they’re calling them “photon enhanced thermionic emission” devices. They’re claiming up to 60% conversion efficiency (theoretically) with fairly standard manufacturing process, but the real benefit is that they can operate at extremely high temperatures.
Regular PV becomes less effective as the temperature increases, making it difficult to do anything with the waste heat generated. By using this new type of energy conversion, the collecting plate can be kept at high temperatures, providing high-temp ‘waste’ heat, which can then be used for different types of energy storage. Generally, the bigger the temperature difference between your source (the sun) and sink (the atmosphere), the more efficient energy conversion processes are.
The article doesn’t go into much detail, but guess from the name (specifically the thermionic emission part) I’m guessing these things work similar to how light bulbs work, but in reverse.
Brad was trying to sell me on the idea of using a calcium chloride water feature in Red Bluff to control humidity a few weeks ago, and now it looks like some researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and used this very idea in what they claim is a radically more efficient method of air-conditioning.
Evaporative coolers are a lower-cost alternative to A/C in dry climates that don’t get too hot or humid — say, Denver, but not Phoenix or Miami. Water flows over a mesh, and a fan blows air through the wet mesh to create humid, cool air.
In humid climes, adding water to the air creates a hot and sticky building environment. Furthermore, the air cannot absorb enough water to become cold.
In Phoenix or Tucson, the evaporative cooler can bring down the temperature, but not enough to make it pleasant inside on a 100-degree day or during the four to eight week moist period known as monsoon season. The cooling bumps up against the wet bulb temperature, the lowest temperature to which air can be cooled by evaporating without changing the pressure. The wet bulb temperature could be 75 or 80 degrees on a mid-summer Tucson day. Typically, evaporative coolers only can bring the temperatures about 85 percent of the way to the wet bulb level.
So, for most of the country, refrigeration-based air conditioning is the preferred way of keeping cool.
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The DEVap solves that problem. It relies on the desiccants’ capacity to create dry air using heat and evaporative coolers’ capacity to take dry air and make cold air.
“By no means is the concept novel, the idea of combining the two,” Kozubal said. “But no one has been able to come up with a practical and cost-effective way to do it.”
HVAC engineers have known for decades the value of desiccants to air conditioning. In fact, one of the pioneers of early A/C, Willis Haviland Carrier, knew of its potential, but opted to go the refrigeration route.
Most people know of desiccants as the pebble-sized handfuls that come with new shoes to keep them dry.
The kind NREL uses are syrupy liquids — highly concentrated aqueous salt solutions of lithium chloride or calcium chloride. They have a high affinity for water vapor, and can thus create very dry air.
Sounds like the technical challenge was designing a system which would make the liquid desiccant portion of the system low-cost and reliable.
This is a map of which counties people are moving from and to. The black lines are people moving to Austin. The red lines are people moving away. Good place to be building…
From Worldchanging:
As it stands now, most emissions data focuses on the production side of our consumer society. For example, the factory that makes your gadget in China contributes to China’s emissions count. When that same gadget is shipped to a UK consumer it does not count towards the UK’s emissions count. Barrett showed that the result of this approach has led to what he called “carbon leakage.” He said that as countries become more and more service based, with demand for products and services met by imports rather than production, the overall amount of carbon leakage goes up.
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The truly startling revelation from Barrett’s data on the growth of UK greenhouse gas emissions from consumer goods and services was the degree to which strategies for “greening” consumption have failed:
- “Green products” have less impact in reducing emissions than most people think. The growth of green consumption has not reduced emissions.
- Gains in emissions reductions from technological advances have been wiped out by increases in consumption as people demand higher levels of affluence.
- The UK’s 50-70% of gains from home energy conservation are lost when they’re redirected for other resource consumption, by people buying other goods and services with the money saved.
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The big question then is: How can we drive systemic lifestyle changes broadly and more effectively than by telling people to stop consuming, or to consumer “greener” products? Barrett said that some economists are exploring one possible solution: a move toward a future of “steady state economics,” in which a high quality of life exists with no economic growth, since economic growth has (so far) driven growth in material consumption.
So many ‘big’ issues in so few sentences…
This is the first time I’ve considered the fact that if the houses we build use 50% of what a ‘typical’ house uses (let’s say $100/mo), what that really means is that the owner of our house has an additional $50/mo to spend on consumer goods. Consumer goods which were probably made in dirty chinese factories and then shipped across the ocean to be eventually buried in one of our land fills.
The second big point that is casually tossed out is ‘steady state’ economics. This is something I’ve been wondering about ever since I watched these thought-provoking videos about exponential growth.
It’s the new secret weapon fueling the US military. A hardy plant capable of growing in poor soil, camelina sativa produces a bio-fuel that’s now the focus of the US Navy’s drive for alternative fuels in its planes.
Last week an F/A-18 Super Hornet flew from the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Md., powered by a 50/50 mix of aviation fuel and camelina, also known as wild flax. It was the first supersonic fighter to fly on a bio-fuel mix. The event was celebrated by US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on the Navy’s new official blog, also launched last week .
Officials say that during the 45-minute flight the plane’s engines worked as well on the camelina fuel as on normal aviation fuel – at both subsonic and supersonic speeds.
“The fuel works so well, all I needed to do was just fly the plane.” the plane’s pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Tom Weaver said. Mabus describes the program a “significant milestone” toward operational use of bio-fuels by the Navy.
The Navy says it will take a few months before camelina can be certified as an alternative fuel source, but it has already received 40,000 gallons of camelina bio-fuel from a grower in Montana, at a cost of nearly $3 million. The humble weed is now being cultivated because of its high oil content – with farmers across the Pacific Northwest looking at its potential.
It’s not only the US Navy that’s interested in camelina. In March the US Air Force test-flew an A-10C Thunderbolt from Eglin Air Force base in Florida on the same mix; Japan Air Lines has also tested camelina.
The military program has attracted some of America’s top corporations, including General Electric (which tested the engines) and Honeywell (which blended the fuel), as well as smaller players like Sustainable Oils. But industry sources say it will only be feasible if the new fuel can “drop in” – without expensive aircraft modifications being necessary. It’s a big if – the Navy has a goal of meeting half of its energy needs from alternative sources by 2020.
Navy officials say the next step is to start testing bio-fuels in ships later this year, starting with algae-based fuels.
A new report by the Pew Charitable Trust says the US military is making good progress toward energy efficiency. It cites wind turbines on air bases and the growing use of solar farms in residential areas on bases. The Pew report concludes: “While work remains to be done, the military continues to build on its successful record in managing resources and investing in long-term innovations.”
Environmentalists give a lukewarm welcome to the programs, but say the military should be focusing on other ways to reduce its ‘footprint.’ “Does it really need all those post-WWII military bases in places like Germany and Japan? Does it need to keep all that cold-war hardware in operation? “ asks Michael Graham Richard at Treehugger.com.
AMOA ( Austin Museum of Art) recently hosted their Art Trek event at the Edward Durrell Stone house in Dallas. Built in the 50′s and lovingly restored to its full glory by our gracious host. This modernist residence was modeled after the US Embassy in Delhi, India.
Here is a link to the recent report produced by McKinsey & Company; KEMA; The Energy futures Lab at Imperial College London; Oxford Economics and the ECF. OMA & AMO also contributed to the graphic narrative.
Its an interesting approach especially towards the end of Volume 3, where AMO graphically illustrated the ideal scenario for what could happen in the next 40 years.
http://www.archdaily.com/56229/roadmap-2050-a-practical-guide-to-a-prosperous-low-carbon-europe/
These are incredible:
They’re made by an Austin company called Zebra Imaging. I really want to drop by their office and look at some of them in person…
