The month of June marks World Environment Day, World Ocean Day, and Global Wind Day – three environmentally conscious days whose main purpose is to spread awareness of environmental issues taking place in today’s world.  The Gulf oil spill is a huge reminder that now is the time to invest, innovate, and utilize specific renewable energy technologies that can reduce our dependency on oil consumption and preserve our environment.

Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition (OREC) is a national trade association that is “dedicated to promoting marine and hydrokinetic energy technologies from clean, renewable ocean resources.” They incorporate over 40 members, some of which are literally “turning the tide” when it comes to renewable energy by using the known green technique of harnessing ocean waves and currents to produce energy:

• Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is doing this via their PowerBuoy 40 [i] that acts as a “wave energy converter” while submerged.

• The Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) is installing power systems all along the Gulf Stream’s ocean currents (which has 21,000 times the energy of Niagara Falls). With the constant flow of the Gulf Stream, if ORPC harnesses just 1/1000 of the Gulf’s renewable energy that would still be enough to power up to 7 million homes.

Wave power technology, while underused, has been a known technology, for years. However, a more recent and developing green source of energy with a lot of potential can be found in algae within the ocean.  Using algae as a source of energy is a new ideology but many believe them to be “the ultimate in renewable energy” [ii].

Half of algae’s weight is based off of oil, which can be made into bio-fuel that could be used on anything from cars to airplanes. Considering that there over 65,000 known algae species this could potentially be a big time future energy source.

The time to develop these technologies is now. Former President Clinton cofounded the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), along with counselor Doug Band [iii], in order to address world issues.  Today, solving the energy problem is one of their top priorities.  Clinton recently issued a statement claiming that the U.S. Navy may have to step in and blow up the oil well in the Gulf to stop further leaks.  A statement like this really puts the magnitude of the problem into perspective.

It’s clear to see that now, more than ever, protecting our oceans stands for something much greater.  By saving our oceans, we are making a commitment to the preservation of our natural resources, our wildlife, and our humanity. Through the promise and development of a sustainable, renewable energy future, we can follow a new path which will redefine the meaning of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Article Written by Marcus Reyes

Marcus Reyes studied public policy with a focus on energy research and environmental sustainability.  He is an advocate of clean energy technology and contributes written work to the blogosphere related to energy conservation and environmental preservation.

[ii] Algae: “The ultimate in renewable energy” – CNN Tech Editorial

[iii] Doug Band – University Article

A new kind of waste treatment system has been developed by Viridis Waste Control LLC, that holds the potential to improve water quality, reduce landfill usage, and to provide a large supply of renewable fuel. The process is called Septage Bioreactor Landfill technology, and it does something that hasn’t been done before (in a way that is considered sustainable); blending sewage with garbage.

Both sewage and the organic matter in garbage decompose and produce methane on their own, resources that are both already tapped for their energy potential at many waste facilities. This occurs because anaerobic microorganisms in the waste process the organic matter and produce methane as a by-product. The greater the amount of bacteria and organic matter, the faster the decomposition.

Landfill garbage breaks down relatively slowly due to the small amounts of bacteria and the separation of the organic matter by plastic bags and other non-degradable materials. While landfills do promote decomposition and the production of methane, this process is quite slow. With the Septage Bioreactor Landfill technology, septage is blended with ground garbage, allowing the organic matter to decompose much faster than it otherwise would. This creates large quantities of methane in a short period of time, which can be tapped for fuel. The other advantage of this technology as a fuel source, is it produces methane constantly as long as there is organic material fed into it. We have no shortage of garbage or sewage, so this will create a very plentiful and reliable source of energy.

The accelerated decomposition also results in less space being used in the landfill, extending its lifespan, as well as reducing groundwater leaching or runoff. On a similar note, separating septage from the rest of the sewage flow would allow for much smaller, decentralized wastewater treatment facilities since only greywater would be left; a substance that can be easily and quite effectively treated with natural systems.

It should be noted that while this technology is well suited to our current situation, in the long run it would be rendered obsolete by more sustainable practices both in garbage disposal (through recycling practices such as Cradle to Cradle style product design and biodegradable plastics and other packaging) and wastewater treatment, such as biofilters, and constructed wetland systems.

Earlier this week online giant Amazon.com released a digital reader called the Kindle, a device that has great potential to revolutionize the way we read. While ebook readers aren’t new, Amazon’s offering brings several new features to the table. Chief among the green features of this device are the power requirements; the Kindle uses electronic ink for it’s display, a technology that only requires energy to change the display, not to maintain it.The Kindle’s e-ink display technology appears similar to normal printed ink, and differs from previous digital readers which used a backlight to illuminate the screen and had much higher power consumption. With the Kindle, reading power usage is measured in page turns instead of operating time, so you can literally read for days or weeks on a single charge with wireless turned off.

The other major feature of the Kindle is the way the digital media is distributed. Typically with digital readers, a computer is required to download and sync the data you would like to read. The Kindle, on the other hand, uses built in EVDO wireless technology; the same technology used for high speed connections over the cellular networks. Better still, instead of requiring a data plan subscription, unlimited network access is included in the initial purchase price. This allows customers to subscribe to blog feeds, online newspapers and magazines, and browse websites like Wikipedia anywhere there is a cellular signal all without any additional charge. Users can wake up each day to find the latest news headlines and blog posts already waiting for them on their device, and these will continue to be retrieved by the reader throughout the day automatically.

Books can be purchased from Amazon through the Kindle’s web store interface, with current best sellers priced at $9.99 and lower. These downloads are archived on the Amazon site, so you can download them again if your Kindle is ever damaged or lost. Your own documents can be transferred to your Kindle via email, a step necessary because the documents require converting to the Kindle’s own format.
I’ve been an active reader for as long as I can remember, and for many of my books I do still prefer real paper. I also enjoy the look of a bookshelf full of the books I’ve collected over the years, so I don’t see something like the Kindle replacing that any time soon in my own life. However, for content that is intended to be read once, such as newspaper articles, this is of immediate benefit. There are tremendous savings possible in paper, printing supplies, materials transportation and many other areas if short-term publications are converted to automatically retrieved digital content. By removing the computer aspect and and adding automated subscriptions the process, the whole system is easier for the end user who may be too rushed in the morning to download rss feeds for reading during the day.

The Kindle comes in a small, easily portable format. About the size of a regular paperback novel, it’s 5″ x 7.5″ x 0.7″, and weighs in at just over 10oz. It comes with 256mb of internal memory, enough to store about 200 books, and has an SD slot to add additional storage capacity.
The only downside to the Kindle I’ve found, is that it’s currently not available outside of the USA. I hope this will change in the future, as well as an eventual reduction in price as this is a technology that truly has green potential.

Hydrogen is generated spontaneously when water is added to pellets of the alloy, which is a mixture of aluminum and gallium. Aluminum has been used for a long time in chemical production of hydrogen, but the addition of gallium makes this alloy far more effective as a catalyst. As aluminum oxidizes, a skin forms on it’s surface preventing further contact between the aluminum and the water. The gallium prevents this skin formation, allowing the reaction to continue until the aluminum has been used up. The aluminum has a strong attraction to the oxygen in the water, and when water is added to the pellets the oxygen is stripped out of the water molecules, leaving free hydrogen gas as a byproduct.
This technology is being looked at to allow the conversion of cars and trucks to hydrogen, but the prospects aren’t quite as good as a first glance might suggest.

• Because the alloy is used up during the reaction, new pellets need to be added periodically and the waste materials need to be recycled.
• Internal combustion engines are only about 25% efficient so existing engines would require more frequent fueling than with hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.
• Additional energy and effort is required to replace the pellets and process the alloy after use

However, using the pure hydrogen generated from this process, a fuel cell system would run at closer to 75% efficiency, reducing the previously mentioned problems by 2/3. Fuel cells have long been touted as being the ultimate in power generation for mobile uses, but the complexity, inefficiencies and cost make them remain impractical for general transportation uses when compared to the simplicity of battery electric vehicles for urban use. The technology does become far more favorable when used with fuel cells instead of internal combustion however. For general urban transportation, I favor solar/wind/geothermal powered battery electric vehicles, but there are several other applications for which on-demand hydrogen fuel cell systems would be ideally suited:

• Rural vehicles that wouldn’t have easy access to a charging station
• Emergency response vehicles that require operation at all times
• Larger devices such as lawn mowers, tillers, chainsaws, backup generators, cooking devices, etc
• Emergency power generation in case of a natural disaster

These applications would benefit from the ease of fueling (just add water!) and clean operation that on-demand hydrogen would provide. Because they would not be part of normal urban usage, the hindrances of the system would be minimized and would remain cost-effective.
Source: Purdue University

Global coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate; the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network estimates that more than a quarter of the world’s reefs have died in the past few decades and that at least another quarter will die within twenty years. However, a new technology called Biorock may hold the key to saving the coral reefs of the planet from extinction.

There are several causes of coral death including physical damage from fishing nets, ocean pollution, and rising levels of dissolved carbon dioxide, but the greatest threat is the increasing temperatures of the world’s oceans. As water temperatures rise, algae living on the coral surface die and leave the bare calcium carbonate substrate exposed. This is commonly known as coral bleaching, and usually means the death of the coral. This coral bleaching is becoming more frequent, with mass bleachings killing most of the corals in the Indian Ocean in 1998 and again in the South Pacific in 2002.

Attempting to slow this damage to the world’s coral, artificial reefs have been built since the 1950s out of materials ranging from concrete blocks to discarded tires. However, most of these plans have failed to provide a new coral habitat, and one such artificial reef off the shore of Fort Lauderdale has become a complete environmental disaster. There have been some successes with artificial reefs, but most remain relatively barren compared with natural reefs. The one notable exception is the work of marine biologist Thomas Goreau and engineer and architect Wolf Hilbertz, who have been experimenting with a new type of artificial reef for over a decade.

The technology, elegant in it’s simplicity, is called Biorock. It arose from experiments in the 1970s when Hilbertz was studying how seashells and reefs grow, by passing electrical currents through sea water. What he found was that as the sea water electrolyses, calcium carbonate slowly forms around the cathode, eventually coating the electrode with a material as strong as concrete. Later experiments showed that the coatings could be grown at up to a thickness of 5cm per year. As long as the power is flowing, the structure would continue to get larger and stronger as time passed. It can also heal itself if damaged, something ordinary concrete can’t do.

Hilbertz’s original plan was to use this technology to grow low-cost structures in the ocean for developing countries, however his focus shifted to coral reefs after meeting a marine biologist. Because the Biorock process uses such simple materials, electrode forms can be constructed in a variety of shapes to mimic natural reefs. Because the calcium carbonate coating that forms is so similar to natural reef substrate, corals take to the Biorock reefs very readily. In fact, other experiments were conducted to see if the electrical current was harming the coral at all and the results were surprising; the coral actually thrived on the electrified reef.

Based on these results, it’s believed that the corals on Biorock reefs are more resistant to environmental threats than natural systems. Because of the electrical accretion of calcium carbonate to the reef, the corals are able to divert more energy to growth and reproduction instead of protection. Coral growing on Biorock reefs are able to grow up to 3 or 4 times faster than natural corals, giving them the ability to survive environmental disasters such as the mass bleaching of 1998.

The Biorock reefs can be constructed in any shape or size, but most built so far have been dome-shaped and about 12 meters in diameter. The amount of electricity each Biorock reef requires is low, drawing less than 3 watts per square meter. So far most reefs have obtained their power from solar panels but other possible sources of power are underwater turbines, wave generators or OTEC platforms.

While the research is currently focused on preserving and restoring the planet’s ailing coral reefs, there’s a possibility that one day Hilbertz’s original dream will be realized and floating islands will be created using this remarkable technology.

Biorock.net

Mention trash incineration to most people and the image that usually springs to mind is a dirty, smelly practice that is about as far from ‘green’ as you can get. However, this isn’t the case with a technology called Plasma Gasification, which is not only very eco-friendly, it’s also powered by the very garbage that it processes. It also produces clean energy and commercially useful byproducts.

While the technology of processing materials with plasma has been around for some time now, Joseph Longo, CEO and founder of Startech Environmental Corporation has developed a device that can handle pretty much any type of waste put into it and turn it into a clean source of energy.

Inside a sealed stainless steel vessel filled with ordinary air, high voltage is passed between two electrodes rips electrons from the air, converting the gas into plasma. The energy of the plasma arc is so powerful; it breaks down matter into it’s component parts by stripping the valence electrons from the atoms, and tearing apart the molecular bonds.

This process creates two byproducts; one is a synthetic gas composed mostly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide which can be converted into a clean fuel. The second byproduct is a form of vitrified glass that can be used as inert fill for construction in roads, building blocks or other uses. Depending on the nature of the materials fed into the conversion unit, the glass may be suitable for creating tiles or countertops. Some scientists caution however that the glass would likely contain toxic heavy metals.

The process produces enough synthetic gas to power the unit, as well as a surplus which could be sold directly or used to generate excess electricity, providing an additional source of revenue for the facility.

This is an attractive option for many cities who are paying large fees to transport and store garbage; one of the StarTech units can handle about 2,000 tons of trash per day. Michael Nuzzi of US Energy says:

“New York City is already paying an astronomical $90 a ton to get rid of its trash. According to Startech, a few 2,000-ton-per-day plasma-gasification plants could do it for $36. Sell the syngas and surplus electricity, and you’d actually net $15 a ton. Gasification is not just environmentally friendly, it’s a good business decision.”

Related: Popular Science via Treehugger

Entrepreneur Martin Schreibman is raising thousands of tilapia in tanks residing in a Brooklyn warehouse, in an attempt to create a sustainable fish farming business. Raising fish in the inner city may seem a bit out of place, but urban aquaculture addresses many health, environmental and economic issues associated with conventional commercial fishing.

Currently over 1 billion people rely on fish as their primary source of protein, because of this many areas are being overfished causing species depletion and environmental damage. If a region is damaged too much, the fish simply won’t come back and the area won’t be productive anymore. This is one of the reasons that fish farms were created, but these have their own issues as well.

Conventional aquaculture setups use floating pens in natural water systems, and so the fish are exposed to whatever may be in the water such as mercury and PCBs. Due to the dense populations of the fish farms, the fish are given antibiotics to keep them healthy. These antibiotics escape the nets and impact other aquatic life, as well as becoming part of the fish tissue to be consumed by humans.

Urban aquaculture is done in a controlled environment and thus requires little if any antibiotics, contains no mercury or PCBs, and the temperature and nutrient supplies can be closely monitored and controlled. Another often overlooked benefit to urban aquaculture is transportation to market; the closer the fish are raised to the people that will consume them, the less energy is required for transportation.

Urban aquaculture alongside urban farming could be a very sustainable solution to the problem of feeding hungry cities, especially in areas where farmland is scarce or coastal waters are too polluted for conventional fishing.

via Seed Magazine

A Florida county plans to build a facility to get rid of their landfills, generate electricity and produce construction material, all using a process called plasma gasification which vaporizes garbage at temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.
The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use plasma arcs to turn garbage into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first municipal plasma waste processing facility in the united states, and the largest in the world. Expected to be completed within 2 years, the 100,000 square food facility will process 3,000 tons of waste per day. Fed not only with waste being produced currently, the facility will also begin to process the waste already in the county landfill. Estimates predict that the entire volume of the existing landfill, 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978, will be processed within 18 years.
Up to eight plasma arc-equipped cupolas will vaporize trash year-round, non-stop. Garbage will be brought in on conveyor belts and dumped into the cylindrical cupolas where it falls into a zone of heat more than 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature is sufficient to destroy all organic matter including plastics, drives off all moisture, and greatly reduces the volume of the waste. The process generates a synthetic combustible gas, which will be burned in turbines to produce up to 120 megawatts of power, with fewer emissions than a natural gas power plant. The plasma facility will power itself with about one third of the outputted power, so it won’t be taking any power from the grid. The solid material left over from the process is a chemically inert glassy rock substance, which can be safely used in road construction. The electrical generation process also produces excess steam, which nearby Tropicana Inc. will buy to power their juice manufacturing facility.

Louis Circeo, director of Georgia Tech’s plasma research division, said that as energy prices soar and landfill fees increase, plasma-arc technology will become more affordable.

“Municipal solid waste is perhaps the largest renewable energy resource that is available to us,” Circeo said, adding that the process “could not only solve the garbage and landfill problems in the United States and elsewhere, but it could significantly alleviate the current energy crisis.”

He said that if large plasma facilities were put to use nationwide to vaporize trash, they could theoretically generate electricity equivalent to about 25 nuclear power plants.

Combined with the practice of mining for metals in landfills, this is an excellent solution to the current problem of our increasing stockpiles of garbage. However this isn’t a permanent solution, we must focus on eliminating our production of garbage by:

• making more products and their packaging biodegradable and/or recyclable
• greatly increasing the availability of recycling facilities
• reducing the amount of packaging used
• changing product purchases to product leases, so the products are returned to the manufacturer for proper recycling and disposal instead of being landfilled.

Geoplasma, via USA Today

Phytoplankton, the tiny plants that float in our oceans, apparently aren’t removing as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as expected. Generally the amount of CO2 uptake is calculated based on colour readings of the blooms; the greener the bloom the more carbon dioxide being absorbed. This no longer seems to be the case, as recent studies imply there may be as much as 2.5 Billion tons less carbon dioxide being absorbed each year than previously thought.

Peter Strutton of Oregon State University and colleagues studied phytoplankton fluorescence in the tropical Pacific using data from 12 years and 58,000 kilometres of ship transects and found that the phytoplankton are making far less chlorophyll than expected. They reason that in nutrient-poor waters like the tropical Pacific, phytoplankton are starved of nitrates and iron. Because of this they produce a pigment-protein complex that is not chlorophyll but shows up just as green in satellite images.

This may actually be a good thing, because it implies that ocean alage blooms are still a relatively untapped resource for storing carbon dioxide. I’ve written previously on seeding the oceans to promote algae blooms, it now appears that this same process could be used on existing blooms to bring their CO2 absorbing levels up to what is expected. The addition of nutrients to algae blooms is a relatively simple and inexpensive process, and has the potential to sequester much of the excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

via New Scientist

Japanese scientists have made an important step towards self-cleaning surfaces with the development of a material which can switch from water absorbent to water repellant on command. The inspiration? A lotus blossom. Water drops bead up and roll off of the leaves water-repellent surface, washing away every speck of dust. This type of self-cleaning surface would be very useful to us as well: No more car washes, no more dirty windows, no more signs obscured by mud or dust, all as an inherent ability of the object.

The secret behind the ability of the lotus is is in the tiny surface features, consisting of tiny nubs, on the leaves. These tiny protrusions don’t provide a surface for water drops to form, so the surface doesn’t get wet. Instead, the drops form into beads and roll off the surface carrying away any particles in their path. On a normal surface, water drops form hemispherical shapes and instead of rolling, glide over the surface. This spreads and smears dirt particles but does not remove them.

The Japanese researchers have now synthesized a special substance, a member of the group of compounds known as diarylethenes, and produced a microcrystalline film of this substance on a support. Electron microscopy images show that the surface of this film is initially smooth. When the diarylethene film is irradiated with UV light, the previously colorless surface turns blue—and is no longer smooth.

Instead it is covered with a fine down of tiny fibers that have a diameter of about 1 µm. This down has a similar effect to the micronodules on the lotus blossom, resulting in a super-water-repellent surface. If the surface is irradiated again, this time with visible light, the fibers and color vanish, leaving a colorless, smooth, and wettable surface.

This is a step towards making self-cleaning surfaces which could not only reduce some dangerous jobs but will also result in fewer chemical cleaning agents being used as well. This could also have important applications for vehicle tires, as a way to reduce accidents associated with loss of traction on wet road surfaces. GE has also been doing research on this topic, and has posted videos on their blog, they’re amazing to see!
Scientists synthesize new compound – Surface becomes super-water-repellent on command, via What’s Next In Science & Technology