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Smart Roads

dan — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:21:59 +0000

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

New way to generate electricity from the sun

ryan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:13:20 +0000

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.

Liquid-dessicant cooling systems: 50-90% more efficient

ryan — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:58:27 +0000

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.

…

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.

Why I’m glad I live in Austin

ryan — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:54:10 +0000

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…

New Emissions Measurements Show “Green” Consumerism Failing

ryan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:06:28 +0000

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.

…

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.

…

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.

Security Brief: The Navy’s new secret weapon? Going green

dan — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:45:01 +0000

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.

Edward Durrell Stone house in Dallas

powei — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:52:25 +0000

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.

Roadmap 2050, Carbon Neutral Europe

powei — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:26:26 +0000

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/

Billboards in LA

dan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:26:28 +0000

The LA-based MAK Center for Art and Architecture commissioned 21 artists to take over some of the most exclusively commercial sites of public architecture

Full-color holograms

ryan — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:01:11 +0000

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…

via Landscape and Urbanism

BIG’s Danish Pavillion Shanghai Expo 2010

tom — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:47:00 +0000

Another nice video from BIG as well.

This is why God invented 3d printers

ryan — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:39:24 +0000

via BoingBoing

Bathsheba Grossman is a sculptor who uses cutting-edge technology to render math- and science-inspired shapes in three dimensions. You can buy 3D-printed laser-cut metal ones, or order them in plastic at lower costs from ShapeWays. That sound you hear is my jaw scraping my keyboard.

Borromean Rings

120 Cell

Along these same lines – check out the renderings on the Minimal Surface Archive, and for some background on what it means to project a 4-d dodecahedron into 3 dimensions, this video explains how to think in 10 dimensions. If you really want to blow your mind, try parsing this article on the Lie Group E8, which has been proposed as a fundamental model of physical existence.

Take a few minutes…

ryan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:46:32 +0000

Go here, turn on HD, full screen it and sit back. Nothing in the video is real.

MAD’s Hutong Bubble

tom — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:00:57 +0000

This little project really gives me a new appreciation for MAD. It’s too easy to misconstrue most of the office’s larger work as more Hadid inspired shape-making. But reading MAD’s description of this small intervention communicates the issues that they are struggling with working in China. There is clearly a tension between doing the flash-and-glam work that China seems to hunger for and yet to engage the history and context of this profoundly ancient place.

Interview: Ma Yansong from MAD

tom — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:22:50 +0000

Designboom, which regularly has short interviews with leading designers, recently interviewed Ma.

Multi-directional PV at a $1 per watt

tom — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:14:15 +0000

CleanTechnica has a post about PV panels made from a holographic film which is able to capture light from any direction:

Prism Solar Technologies in Highland, NY has innovated a breakthrough holographic thin-film (Holographic Planar Concentrator™) that makes possible a very parsimonious use of crystalline PV cells to counteract that problem for Northern regions.

This brings the cost down to $1 a watt.

Each of their solar modules is actually made up of both crystalline PV and their unique holographic thin-film. The thin-film strips diffract both direct and reflected energy to the PV cell strips integrated between strips of thin-film. Solar modules made in this way are cheaper because they use 50-72% less silicon to make the same energy. Read more…

Thorium-Powered Nuclear Reactors

ryan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:42:13 +0000

Wired has a great piece about the possibility of using Thorium to produce nuclear power. Turns out Thorium is more abundant than either Uranium or Plutonium, is more efficient for energy production, can be used in smaller, safer plant designs, and the byproducts can’t be used for weapons (which explains why we don’t use it).

Named for the Norse god of thunder, thorium is a lustrous silvery-white metal. It’s only slightly radioactive; you could carry a lump of it in your pocket without harm. On the periodic table of elements, it’s found in the bottom row, along with other dense, radioactive substances — including uranium and plutonium — known as actinides.

…

When he took over as head of Oak Ridge in 1955, Alvin Weinberg realized that thorium by itself could start to solve these problems. It’s abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn’t require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind.

Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab’s finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.

In 1965, Weinberg and his team built a working reactor, one that suspended the byproducts of thorium in a molten salt bath, and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.

One perspective on Copenhagen’s failure (it’s China’s fault)

ryan — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:42:09 +0000

Mark Lynas writes for the Guardian that despite the general consensus that Obama screwed up Copenhagen, it was in fact China who killed the process

Here’s what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

…

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China’s representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord’s lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

I’m sure this isn’t the last word on what happend, but it’s an interesting bit of data. Mark’s conclusion is that China doesn’t want to bother with dealing with climate change because its economy is primarily coal-fired, and any cuts in emissions will necessarily lead to a diminishment in its ability to expand.

Calatrava Chicago Tower saved by the union?

tom — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:48:38 +0000

In an interesting example of desperate times calling for desperate measures, the local trade union is looking to become the key investor in The Chicago spire:

North America’s tallest tower was stopped dead in its foundations last year as the recession bells clanged and key players argued over alleged non-payment of millions of dollars in fees. But now the fate of Calatrava’s Chicago Spire looks much brighter as union boss Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades Council (CBTC), has entered talks to loan $170million to the project’s Irish developer, Shelbourne Development Group in a bid to create work for 1000 workers. More…