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Written by Megan Treacy on 25/06/09
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Scientists at the University of Delaware have come up with a new hydrogen storage solution: chicken feathers. Well, carbonized chicken feather fibers to be exact. What's more, their discovery meets the ambitious hydrogen storage targets set by the DOE for 2010 and 2015, which call for great storage capacity at a low cost.
Chicken feather fibers are made of keratin, a protein that forms strong, hollow tubes. The scientists heated the chicken feathers until hollow carbon microtubes formed with nanoporous walls and the fibers' surface area increased. The resulting carbonized chicken feather fibers allow the storage of as much, or more, hydrogen than carbon nanotubes or metal hydrides, other materials that have been found to store hydrogen well.
The big success here is that making carbonized chicken feather storage tanks is far less costly than producing storage tanks made of the other materials. A 20-gallon carbon nanotube tank would cost $5.5 million to produce, while the same size tank made with metal hydrides would cost $30,000. Comparitively, a carbonized chicken feather tank would run about $200.
The scientists estimate that a car would require a 75-gallon tank using this material in order to have a range of 300 miles. They are working now to increase that range.
via Green Car Congress
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Here at EcoGeek we write about all the various and powerful ways in which our brains are saving our planet. Enjoy! |
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Written by Yoni Levinson on 23/07/09
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The NY Times’ Green Inc today reports on a project called The Green Roadway. In short, it’s a plan to put lots of solar panels and wind turbines along highways, at the proposed cost of $6.5 million per 10 mile stretch (though government incentives could lop off 65% of that), powering 2,000 homes in the process.
This sounds like a combination of two other ideas that are already in the works: technology that generates energy from moving traffic, and technology that simply takes advantage of roadside space.
For example, the Oregon Solar Highway project is a plan to line strips of highway with solar panels, to power the lights that illuminate the highway at night. And Massachusetts wants to put wind turbines on some land next to the highway, as well. These projects fall into that second category – they utilize the highway’s real estate, but they don’t actually tap into the passing traffic.
On the other hand, some companies want to put piezoelectric generators under roadways, or in speed bumps, to actually generate electricity from moving vehicles. The jury is still out on whether such technologies are smart ways to capture otherwise wasted energy, or simply ways to “steal” kinetic energy from moving vehicles, forcing them to burn more gas.
In principle, therefore, this is not new - except that the wind turbines will feed off the air produced by passing vehicles (though others have thought of this concept). The details of the technology are secret, though, and being auctioned off to various US states. So it’s possible that The Green Roadway’s founders have discovered revolutionary improvements over the aforementioned technologies. But the plan does seem to rely on small wind (i.e. little turbines, not giant ones), which most experts recognize as… not very effective.
However, it’s important to realize that putting solar panels and wind turbines along the road may achieve deeper and more meaningful goals than simply generating X kilowatts. Power plants fueled by coal and gas are generally hidden from sight, which helps us trivialize and forget the significance of our energy infrastructure. By bringing the instruments of clean, renewable energy into the public eye, projects such as The Green Roadway could help establish these technologies in the public consciousness. Because it’s only real if you see it in front of you.
Via Green Inc.
Image via Flickr
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Written by Yoni Levinson on 22/07/09
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Technology companies like Google are always trying to find new ways to make their data centers consume less energy. It cuts down on one of their biggest costs, and it helps them maintain their cleantech image.
Data centers get very hot, and need to be cooled. But Google’s data center in Belgium gets all the cooling it needs from two non-electrical sources: non-municipal water brought in from nearby canals, and the surrounding air. Belgium’s cool climate means that the air outside is usually cold enough to naturally cool the hot computing parts inside, except for about seven days per year, on average.
So here’s the cool part (pun somewhat intended) – when it gets too hot outside, Google will automatically divert all processing away from that data center, to one of their many other data centers around the world.
Just one potential green benefit of cloud computing. But that’s another post…
Via BoingBoing
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Here at EcoGeek we write about all the various and powerful ways in which our brains are saving our planet. Enjoy! |
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Written by Megan Treacy on 20/08/09
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The construction of new hydropower plants isn't particularly environmentally-friendly, but what about the already existing dams in the country that could be making electricity? According to MWH, a water engineering firm, out of the 80,000 dams in the U.S., only three percent are currently used for power generation. Isn't that just a bunch of untapped, clean energy?
Ohio utility American Municipal Power thinks so. It has partnered with MWH to conduct five retrofit projects on the Ohio River, turning dams that were built for navigation and watershed purposes into hydropower facilities. When completed sometime between 2013 and 2015, the dams will produce a total of 350 MW, enough power for 350,000 homes. The total cost of the projects will come to about $1.9 billion.
The potential of dam retrofits to produce clean energy is huge. Here's a list (PDF) of dams with retrofit potential according to a federal survey. If all of them began producing electiricty, think of all the coal power that would become unnecessary.
via Green Inc.
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