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Plasma Turns Garbage into Gas |
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Florida debuts its innovative in plasma technology, backed by Atlanta-based Geoplasma
By Melinda Wenner
Every
year 130 million tons of America’s trash ends up in landfills. Together
the dumps emit more of the greenhouse gas methane than any other
human-related source. But thanks to plasma technology, one city’s
rotting rubbish will soon release far less methane—and provide power
for 50,000 homes—because of an innovation in plasma technology backed
by Atlanta-based Geoplasma.
Engineers have developed an efficient torch for blasting garbage with a stream of superheated gas, known as plasma. When trash is dropped into a chamber and heated
to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its organic components—food, fluids,
paper—vaporize into a hot, pressurized gas, which turns a turbine to
generate electricity. Steam, a by-product, can generate more. Inorganic
refuse such as metals condense at the bottom and can be used in
roadbeds and heavy construction.
Several small plasma plants exist around the world for industrial
processes, but Geoplasma is constructing the first U.S. plasma refuse
plant in St. Lucie County, Florida. The plant is scheduled to go online
by 2011; it will process 1,500 tons of garbage a day, sending 60
megawatts of electricity to the power grid (after using some to power
itself).
Emissions are far lower than in standard incineration, and the
process reduces landfill volume and methane release. Power prices are
projected to be on par with electricity from natural gas. The
difference, says Ron Roberts, St. Lucie County’s assistant director of
solid waste, is that “you’re getting rid of a problem and making it a
positive.”
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A Closer Look at Obama's Energy Plan |
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Wednesday 12 November 2008
by: Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor
If
President-elect Barack Obama enacts the energy plan he laid out during
his campaign, American taxpayers will each get a $500 rebate check -
funded by a windfall profits taxes on big oil companies.
But that's just for starters. Besides taxing oil giants
more, Senator Obama's detailed 30-point energy agenda calls for big
changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency for vehicles, and
domestic and renewable power and efficiency.
While many candidates' platform promises are cast aside
when political opposition looms, the Obama energy plan seems integral
to his promise to get the economy restarted, some experts say.
"Obama's energy plan is much more than a campaign laundry
list," says Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress, a think tank chaired by John Podesta, who heads the
Obama administration's transition effort. "It really is a centerpiece
of Obama's economic development strategy for the nation, for energy
security, and rebuilding our cities and infrastructure," Mr. Hendricks
says.
Among more than two dozen bullet points, Obama's energy plan includes:
Putting 1 million plug-in-electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) on the
road by 2015 - cars that can get the equivalent of 150 miles per
gallon.
Creating 5 million new "green jobs" by investing $150
billion over 10 years to stimulate clean-energy infrastructure and
manufacturing such as wind-turbine plants and solar panels carpeting
the nation's rooftops.
Cutting US oil consumption, within 10 years, by the amount currently imported from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
Requiring 10 percent of the nation's electricity to
come from renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and
biomass by 2012. By 2025, raise that to 25 percent.
Establishing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program
that cuts US greenhouse gas emissions by charging for every ton of
carbon dioxide that goes into the sky from coal- and natural gas-fired
US power plants.
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Solar Power Game-changer: "Near Perfect" Absorption of Sunlight, From All Angles |
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Monday 03 November 2008
by: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Researchers
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a
new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By
developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of
sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the
entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has
moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency,
cost-effective solar power.
"To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into
electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single
photon of light, regardless of the sun's position in the sky," said
Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the
university's Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project.
"Our new antireflective coating makes this possible."
An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent
of sunlight shone upon it - meaning that nearly one-third of that
sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and
efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and
a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of
solar power.
After a silicon surface was treated with Lin's new
nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21
percent of sunlight shone upon it - meaning that only 3.79 percent of
the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in
absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from
UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant
step forward toward economic viability.
Lin's new coating also successfully tackles the tricky challenge of angles.
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Warm Welcome for House Powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cell |
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Friday 10 October 2008
by: Alok Jha, The Guardian UK
From
the outside, the house at the bottom of Stocking Street looks no
different from any other in the cul-de-sac. But step around the back
and a purpose-built shed hums with the latest in green technology - a
state of the art hydrogen fuel cell.
Today the house in Lye, near Stourbridge in the West
Midlands, will be opened as the first permanent hydrogen-powered home
connected to the national grid. The refrigerator-sized fuel cell unit
will produce 1.5kW of electricity and 3kW of heat for the occupants of
the house, with any excess power being fed into the national grid.
"You shouldn't notice any difference in the house," said
Waldemar Bujalski from the University of Birmingham's fuel cells group,
which will monitor its performance and reliability.
"For the typical house, the unit is capable of providing
65% of the power on average and about 75% of total energy demand, both
electricity and heat."
There is no way yet to pipe hydrogen directly into homes,
so the demonstration house will use natural gas that comes in via the
existing mains supply. This is first passed through a steam reformer
that generates hydrogen. The hydrogen is then combined with oxygen in a
fuel cell unit, made by German company Baxi Innotech, that produces
both electricity and heat and without producing carbon dioxide.
Although creating the hydrogen from gas does produce some carbon
dioxide, using the fuel cell cuts overall household emissions by 40%
compared with running on gas alone.
The electricity is fed directly into the house, while the
heat warms water for the taps and conventional radiators. Bujalski said
the demonstration house would be monitored by his team to see how well
the fuel cell works, with the aim of ironing out problems before the
devices reach the mass market. Initially they would cost about £2,000
each, he said. In Germany, there are plans to install 800 hydrogen fuel
cell units by 2010 as part of a large-scale demonstration of the
technology.
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New Jersey: We'll Become a World Leader in Wind Power |
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Tuesday 07 October 2008
by: The Associated Press
Atlantic
City, New Jersey - New Jersey is powering up an ambitious plan to
become a world leader in the use of wind-generated energy.
Gov. Jon Corzine wants the Garden State to triple the
amount of wind power it plans to use by 2020 to 3,000 megawatts. That
would be 13 percent of New Jersey's total energy, enough to power
between 800,000 to just under 1 million homes.
"We want to create this generation's race to the moon, but
this time, a race to the sea, to harness this potential wind source off
of our coasts, and bring economic development, environmental benefits,
and new, green jobs to the Garden State," Corzine said Monday.
Environmentalists hailed the plan. Dena Mottola Jaborska,
executive director of Environment New Jersey, termed it "a gale force
for change, moving us away from dirty power and towards a new energy
future. It is the most visionary plan to promote offshore wind energy
in the nation."
Last week, Garden State Offshore Energy, a joint venture of
PSE&G Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, was chosen to build
a $1 billion, 345 megawatt wind farm in the ocean about 16 miles
southeast of Atlantic City. That plant would be able to power about
125,000 homes.
There are currently no offshore wind power projects
anywhere in the United States, but two others have been approved for
areas off Rhode Island and Delaware, environmentalists said.
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Green Cement May Set CO2 Fate in Concrete |
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Tuesday 02 September 2008
by: Carrie Sturrock, The San Francisco Chronicle
Call him cement man.
Back when Stanford Professor Brent Constantz was 27, he
created a high-tech cement that revolutionized bone fracture repair in
hospitals worldwide. People who might have died from the complications
of breaking their hips lived. Fractured wrists became good as new.
Now, 22 years later, he wants to repair the world.
Constantz says he has invented a green cement that could
eliminate the huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere
by manufacturers of the everyday cement used in concrete for buildings,
roadways and bridges.
His vision of eliminating a large source of the world's
greenhouse CO2 has gained traction with both investors and
environmentalists.
Already, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is backing
Constantz's company, the Calera Corp., which has a pilot factory in
Moss Landing (Monterey County) churning out cement in small batches.
And Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, says
it could be "a game changer" if Constantz can do it quickly, on a big
scale and at a decent price.
"It changes the nature of the fight against global warming," said Pope, who has talked with Constantz about his work.
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Join the Virtual March to Stop Global Warming.
This site has lots of tips to reduce your carbon output plus a newsletter with regular petition actions.
STOPGLOBALWARMING.ORG
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