Please allow me to present the inaugural skeleton of Curtiss’ Green Stuff — a weekly smattering of clean technology news and innovation, culled from the turbulent trenches of the interweb.
On any given day I sift through a stack of press releases, message boards, blogs, RSS feeds and original content in the clean technology arena in order to stay current and up to date.
I also tend to dig tangentially at times and this tends to turn up little treasures and trinkets that form what I interchangeably refer to as the ‘CleanTech underground’ or ‘crazy-fresh CleanTech snizz.’
It’s exciting to cover a beat that brims and beams with news of progress, but to be honest, it all starts to blend together after a while if left uninterrupted — another astounding Series A financial round for this solar panel start-up over here, another successful phase II demonstration wind energy project over there. Never mind the scattered, short-sighted mainstream ruminations on global climate change or the biofuels technofix puff pieces that litter our collective front pages.
After a while, I started putting together little custom summaries of the news cycle in order to remind myself of what felt relevant or important after everything was said and done that week. I also started piecing together some of the more far-flung, sci-fi sounding ideas that were coming out of left field and the ‘undernet’, because to be honest, it integrated mad science into the CleanTech collective fold and we all need a little more mad science in our lives.
Thus, I give you Curtiss’ Green Stuff in all its bare-bones glory. Please enjoy and feel free to comment or suggest anything that strikes you as odd or interesting.
Curtiss P. Martin
Editor — Clean Technology
ScribeMedia.org
This Week’s Top Stories
1. McDonald’s UK delivery fleet to convert to 100% biodiesel
2. Subaru sells 100,000 PZEVs and sends nothing to the dump for three years
3. Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil
4. Bring on the french fry juice: Burning Man goes Biodiesel
5. Making ethanol out of biodiesel byproducts
1. McDonald’s UK delivery fleet to convert to 100% biodiesel
McDonald’s UK has committed to running its delivery fleet on 100% biodiesel made with its own used cooking oil. The announcement, made earlier this week (2nd July), will mean oil from around 900 McDonald’s UK restaurants will be combined with pure rapeseed oil to make high-quality biodiesel to fuel the company’s delivery vehicles.
The carbon saving of the move will be 1,675 tonnes annually when the national roll-out is completed – the equivalent of removing 2,424 family cars from the road each year.
- read this story from the Biofuel Review for more details
2. Subaru sells 100,000 PZEVs and sends nothing to the dump for three years
The Subaru assembly plant in Indiana has now gone three years without taking out the trash and the corners of the building still haven’t filled up. Actually all the waste in the SIA plant is either reused, recycled or used to generate electricity that is fed into the grid for the city of Indianapolis.
Many of the Legacys, Outbacks and Foresters built in Indiana are certified as Partial Zero Emission Vehicles (ninety percent less emissions than average new vehicles) and Subaru has sold 100,000 of those PZEVs. The area around the plant is also a designated wildlife habitat with all manner of critters including coyotes, herons, ducks and more calling the area home.
- read this article from AutoblogGreen for more details
3. Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil
Global Resource Corporation (GRC) (OTC: GBRC.PK) claims that its HAWK 10 high-frequency microwave recycling process can recover oil and gases from oil shale, residual oil, drill cuttings, tar sands oil, contaminated dredge/sediments, tires and plastics with significantly greater yields and lower costs than are available utilizing existing known technologies. The patent pending process process is claimed to be "the world’s first self- sufficient, environmentally friendly, fuel-generating recycler to reduce waste, cut emissions, and save energy by going green."
In a July 2 press release GRC reported that the results of first round of tests on gasifying bituminous coal indicated that methane, other hydrocarbon gases, liquids in the diesel-heating range, and hydrogen could be extracted from the coal. After processing, what was left behind were activated carbon and coke as a residue, all the products having real market value. A second round of testing has commenced to substantiate original results. If further testing confirms the results, GRC could very well be the first company to gasify coal without contributing a major greenhouse negative effect by not using oxygen in the gasification process.
- read this article from New Scientist for more details
4. Bring on the french fry juice: Burning Man goes Biodiesel
Burning Man is working on shifting our entire power generation load from regular old diesel fuel to clean, green biodiesel, thanks to a very dedicated effort by Mr. Blue of Recycle Camp and many others. It will be used to power things like the medical and fire outposts, rangers stations, BMIR, and other event operations. What does that mean in real terms? It means that 20,000 gallons of diesel that would have been coming from places like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iraq and other human rights holiday spots will instead be coming from old French fry vats and the like in nearby Reno, Nevada.
- read this article from The Burning Man Environmental Blog for more details
5. Making ethanol out of biodiesel byproducts
Microorganisms can be used to metabolize glycerol–one of the primary byproducts in converting vegetable oil or animal fat into biodiesel–into high-value products, said Ramon Gonzalez, the William Akers Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Gonzalez and a group of students, for instance, have identified a process in which Escherichia coli, in an oxygen-free environment, will convert glycerol into ethanol. The strain of E. coli currently being used in the experiments isn’t genetically modified or enhanced, which could further enhance yields.
The glycerol could also be converted into different types of industrial acids, which could even be more profitable than ethanol.
- read this article from cNet News for more details
Crazy-Fresh CleanTech Snizz
1. Micro-generator feeds on good vibrations
A sugar-cube-sized electric generator that feeds on environmental vibrations has been developed. It could power swarms of wireless sensors or even medical implants, researchers claim.
The new micro-generator harvests power electromagnetically, exploiting the wobbling of several magnets attached to a millimetre-sized cantilever. It measures just 7.0 millimetres by 7.0 mm by 8.5 mm, and the team behind it say it is the most efficient micro-generator yet developed.
The generator converts 30% of environmental kinetic energy into electrical power, and could keep all sorts of low-power devices running without batteries – particularly when alternatives like solar power are not an option.
- read more at New Scientist Tech
2. Renewable Cooling and Water from Air
The XDOBS night radiant condensation system is a water-from-air extraction system and air conditioner that does not use any external electricity or fuel. Power is provided by an integrated solar panel. The system uses almost no moving parts, consuming 95% less energy than conventional AC systems, and is powered by an integrated solar panel.
It produces water by chilling the local air below dew point temperature. The incoming air is filtered through a HEPA-type filter to remove dust and bacteria so that the water is potable.
In arid climates, the best use of the system is for air conditioning. The system uses Night Radiant energy to send heat into the night sky. Overall, the system reduces HVAC electricity consumption by 80%, and as much as 90% during peak demand hours.
- read more at the PES Wiki
Curtiss Martin is ScribeMedia.Org’s CleanTech editor. He can be reached at Curtiss [at] ScribeMedia [dot] Org
