Sustainable WNC

I’m taking notes on each episode of this Eco-Tech series and plan to summarize each one in future posts. I’m doing this for the benefit of those that aren’t able to watch the series on cable or satellite and because it is such up to date information about what people are doing to advance the cause of sustainability. I hope it becomes a regular educational series and that it will be released on YouTube and or rentable on DVDs.

These are the green tech news topics that were covered on the first of five episodes of
Eco-tech: On the Discovery Science Channel which aired Monday at 9PM.

Carbon neutral jet fuel made from the really nasty orange goop comprised of animal and plant fats and oils that regularly accumulates in sewer grease traps in restaurants and food preparation facilities. NYC alone pays a huge sum to vacuum out and dispose of 200 million gallons per year of this seemingly useless by product. Most people thought this waste product was too contaminated to bother making carbon neutral fuel from it, but one entrepreneur decided that it’s a major resource, a virtual green oil field in NYC waiting to be tapped…. and that’s just one city.
The technique to create carbon neutral jet fuel from this disgusting goop involves screening and filtration, mild acids added, then steam and pressure. It’s more involved and takes longer than converting fry grease to biodiesel. They are selling the jet fuel for $2.20/gallon at a nice profit and they are employing homeless people in the suction trucks used to clean the traps in the city.
The requirements for jet fuel are much more rigorous than biodiesel due to freezing temperatures at altitude and the multibillion dollar infrastructure necessary for aviation. The airline industries point of view is that “we cannot adopt our infrastructure to your fuel, you must adopt your fuel to our engines and infrastructure”. Airline travel is the worst single offender in CO2 pollution. One cross country round trip on an airliner will dump 1.91 tons of carbon into the atmosphere PER PASSENGER. In a mid-sized car the same 6000 mile round trip will emit 1.3 tons and could carry 4 passengers. BTW, Here’s a handy carbon calculator site. http://www.co2balance.uk.com/
And here’s an article about how air travel is killing the planet.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/43095

Rechargeable Lithium Ion Batteries made by “trained” viruses- the inventor is a woman named Angela Belcher who has triple degrees in chemical engineering, biochemistry and electrical engineering. These organically synthesized rechargeable batteries are non toxic and will be mass produced and used in plug in hybrids among other things. The inspiration to use an organism to create natural batteries was conceived when she was looking at the way mollusks, specifically an Abalone shell, benignly secrete shells by accreting minerals the surrounding waters.
“Abalone just happened to be a great example of a natural biomaterial, and one of the reasons that it is such a great material is that it’s constructed on the nano-scale,” she says. “So I approached the question, can you use the same principles that nature’s evolved and apply it to other materials that nature hasn’t had the opportunity to work with yet, like electronic materials and magnetic materials?” Since then, her goal has been to grow inexpensive nanomaterials in her lab at room temperature and pressure, that, among other qualities, self-assemble, self-correct and generate little waste, but offer the possibility of ever smaller and more powerful electronic devices.”

video http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/pop11.php3?video=quicktime&video_id=[stn2img:2024123:stn2img]&date10=09.22.05&article_id=218392647

Woody cellulosic waste ethanol production made by acid and heat baths which break the cellulose into several complex sugars. Normally yeast only breaks sucrose down into ethanol and is unable to break down the other “sugars” that comprise cellulose. These other sugars are not readily broken down by yeast or bacteria…But after years of research they have genetically altered E.Coli with 2 implanted genes that allows this new mutant to break all the sugars down into ethanol. They can get 50 to 100 gallons of ethanol from each ton of wood waste.
Amory Lovins pipes in that this will triple farm income in the US.

New fire-safe lithium phosphate ion batteries from A123 made with olivine (which is found in the Spruce Pine area in abundance) that have extremely quick release of power on demand http://www.a123systems.com/newsite/index.php#/home/cordless available which is great for vehicular power. as seen in the killacycle, a drag racing electric motor cycle which accelerates from 0-60 in 1.5 seconds and does the quarter mile in 8.21 seconds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDHJNG2PngQ

Amory Lovins’ Hypercar Project after successfully developing new carbon fibre fabrication techniques from FibreForge which will reduce the costs comparable to normal steel automobile fabrication producing cars that are half the weight. Now the Hypercar concept car which has the interior room of a typical SUV is making a lot of economic sense. Accordingly, Lovins has finally been contacted by more than one auto manufacturer and told “we need this NOW”. The cars will be equipped with a multifuel plug-in hybrid motor and the A123 batteries. It will be available on the market within 3-5 years and will get over 100 mpg. Here’s a YouTube video from the segment about the hypercar:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D-uhKHy7mk&mode=related&search=
Lovins also pointed out that our cars and trucks in this country burn 7 times more fuel than the electric grid, so it makes a great deal of sense to use the battery to not only power the car but as an integral part of the power grid and to use to battery capacity of hypercars to provide back up power that can be plugged back into the grid during peak (air conditioning demand) hours for example, selling power back to the utility as needed and collect a check from them at the end of the month. As the effects of global warming are being felt all around us, this makes more sense than building more hydrocarbon burning power plants to meet the air-conditioning demand.

Hydrogen storage problem has been technically solved for vehicular fuel- by making hydrogen in your car as needed with gallium aluminum alloy pellets. Just add water to the metal pellets and hydrogen gas froths up to fuel a slightly modified internal combustion engine or a fuel cell powered electric motor. Normally the aluminum oxide that forms on the surface of raw aluminum automatically prevents water from contacting the pure aluminum. The gallium however, blocks the oxide formation and when you add water to the alloy, from the aluminum reacting with water, you get aluminum oxide and hydrogen. The gallium is chemically un-affected in the reaction and would be constantly recycled. The hydrogen producing process won’t currently compete cost-wise with gasoline burned in an internal combustion engine… but if fuel cell cars were competitive right now, the gallium aluminum pellets would actually be cheaper than $3/ gallon gas (and we could get alumina right here in the US). The fuel cell application would be cheaper due to the fact that hydrogen fuel cells convert more energy into useful work from the hydrogen fuel than an internal combustion engine can.
Here’s an article on how it works. http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

Tuesday night’s Episode 2, has the focus on waste….Zero Waste is becoming a prominent pursuit in science. Power plants from waste, “earthships” being built from tires and cans and bottles.
Mining dumps/landfills for the energy of the future. also there’s a new technique discussed on what to do with nuclear waste.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.