Balloon Shaped Solar Collector

Balloon Is Solar Collector: Solar Technology to Power the Planet

Cool Earth Solar has developed a breakthrough solar technology that can ultimately produce enough clean energy to address the global energy crisis. This technology dramatically reduces the cost and time to develop power plants capable of generating massive amounts of clean, inexpensive energy. They’ve designed a breakthrough solar technology based on a two-pronged design philosophy:

* Use a minimum amount of materials

* Use materials that are inexpensive and abundant

CoolEarth has created an innovative way to harness the sun's energy. Instead of large expensive solar panels or costly concentrating mirrors, the company is using balloons made of metalized plastic films. Half of the balloon is transparent, letting the light in to be concentrated into a small high-efficiency solar panel by the concave interior. Each is 2 meters across and, depending on the source, estimates vary from 500 watt to 1 kilowatt. They are supported by cables, leaving the ground below clear and limiting environmental impact.

Read more at: http://www.coolearthsolar.com/technology

Scientist Says Blowing Bubbles Could Cool the Earth

Earth Cooling Bubbles

As anyone who has ever left an open can of soda out too long knows, some things are just better with a little fizz, and the world's oceans may be no exception. One physicist from Harvard University thinks that he's found a solution that may help curb the rate of global warming--and it comes in the form of tiny bubbles pumped into our planets water sources. Such microscopic bubbles, says the scientist, act as "mirrors made of air," reflecting sunlight from the water, generating a cooling effect that could be quite dramatic.

According to a report from Science, micro-bubbles are a naturally occurring phenomenon, and their 'undershine' already contributes to tiny fraction of the total amount of sunlight reflected back to space. The physicist, Russell Seitz, believes that pumping more bubbles into oceans will increase the reflectivity enough to cool the planet considerably - all without further damaging aquatic ecosystems.

Read more at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/scientist-says-blowing-bubbles-could-cool-the-earth.php

A cost-effective solution to make city buses cheaper and greener

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

Buses with ultracapacitors stop at recharging stations, which double as bus stops, to recharge in less than a minute. A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and in October 2009 that technology came to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration. Chinese company Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, along with its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies, predict that this approach will provide an inexpensive and energy efficient way to power city buses in the near future.

A bus with ultracapacitors uses 40% less electricity compared to an electric bus with lithium-ion batteries, and requires just one-tenth the energy cost of a typical diesel-fuelled bus, which would save about $200,000 during the life of the vehicle. Plus, the buses are environmentally friendly: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor," said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. The downside of ultracapacitors is that they currently have a very short range, providing a distance of only a few miles, due to the fact that ultracapacitors can store only about 5% of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold.

Although their short range makes ultracapacitors impractical for cars, city buses have to stop frequently anyway.

The two companies hope that this is just the beginning for ultracapacitor buses. The company that makes the Shanghai buses, Foton America Bus Co, based in Tennessee, plans to deliver another 60 buses to the Chinese city in early 2010. The new buses will have ultracapacitors manufactured by Shanghai Aowei that supply 10-watt hours per kilogram, compared with the current ultracapacitors that have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. Other US cities, including New York City, Chicago, and some towns in Florida, have also expressed interest in trailing the buses.

A cost-effective solution to make city buses cheaper and greener

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

Buses with ultracapacitors stop at recharging stations, which double as bus stops, to recharge in less than a minute. A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and in October 2009 that technology came to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration. Chinese company Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, along with its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies, predict that this approach will provide an inexpensive and energy efficient way to power city buses in the near future.

A bus with ultracapacitors uses 40% less electricity compared to an electric bus with lithium-ion batteries, and requires just one-tenth the energy cost of a typical diesel-fuelled bus, which would save about $200,000 during the life of the vehicle. Plus, the buses are environmentally friendly: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor," said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. The downside of ultracapacitors is that they currently have a very short range, providing a distance of only a few miles, due to the fact that ultracapacitors can store only about 5% of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold.

Although their short range makes ultracapacitors impractical for cars, city buses have to stop frequently anyway.

The two companies hope that this is just the beginning for ultracapacitor buses. The company that makes the Shanghai buses, Foton America Bus Co, based in Tennessee, plans to deliver another 60 buses to the Chinese city in early 2010. The new buses will have ultracapacitors manufactured by Shanghai Aowei that supply 10-watt hours per kilogram, compared with the current ultracapacitors that have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. Other US cities, including New York City, Chicago, and some towns in Florida, have also expressed interest in trailing the buses.

Pavement slabs work to capture energy

Pavegen Slabs Collect Kinetic Energy

If the energy people expend dancing and working out can power cellphones, lights and other electrical appliances, why not apply the same concept to all the energy spent by millions of people every day simply walking along city sidewalks? That's exactly the premise behind Pavegen slabs, which can be inserted among regular sidewalk sections to capture the kinetic energy people spend just walking.

Each rubber slab from UK-based Pavegen Systems gets depressed by about 5 mm each time it gets stepped on. Using just that small movement, it can convert the kinetic energy used into electricity, which is then stored in the slab. Specifically, 5 percent of the energy harvested is used to make the slab's LED glow, making it clear to users that their energy has been captured. The rest can be used to power pedestrian lighting, information displays and many other applications. Pavegen's patent-protected technology has also been used to harvest energy from users' footsteps on stairs.

Check out their website: http://www.pavegensystems.com/index.php

Motorized knee can make you run faster

The motorized knee comes in a 5 kg kit, part of which straps to your leg, and part of which (the control unit and battery) is worn as a backpack. The device is not designed to help people who are physically handicapped, but is designed to support the flex of the knee for people who just want to run more efficiently. The strap-on knee assistant allows runners to jog steadily at 7.5 km/h, but using 30% less muscle power than they would use for unassisted running. The researchers do not say how much of the saving in muscle power is offset by carrying the 5 kg weight of the gadget.

The research team who developed the device is confident it will be commercialized within the next three years, and that there is a market for it. There are similar devices that help the physically handicapped walk, but the new gadget will be much smaller and lighter by the time it comes to market, and is intended for healthy people who just want to run more efficiently.

Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news180681294.html

Assembly line hydrophonics

Hydro Harvest production greenhouse---stuns the visitor with its nearly wall-to-wall contents of green. It's a rabbit's dreamland: three 9-foot-wide mats of densely planted lettuce, elevated waist-high and slightly aslant, running the length of the greenhouse with only narrow aisles between. Everything looks ready to eat, but closer inspection reveals that each house-long strip of plants starts with seedlings at the far end and offers mature heads only nearest the greenhouse entrance. The seemingly unbroken ribbons of planting actually consist of hundreds of nine-foot sections of white plastic rain gutter laid side by side like ties on a railroad, each filled with perlite and sporting eleven lettuce plants spaced along its length.

A section of seedlings, placed on the rails with gutters edge to edge, begins the process at the back end of the greenhouse. After one to two weeks of growth, depending on the season, the whole section is rolled forward. As the gutters are moved ahead, they are also spread apart on the skids, to make room for more growth. Then a new section of seedlings is added behind the section that has advanced. More moves follow after additional growth, until there are four sections on the tracks, and the initial planting has reached the other end of the house---by which time its gutters have been spaced several inches apart to correspond with the breadth of full-grown plants. After harvest, the liberated gutters in the lead section are topped off with new perlite and shifted to the rear to take on more seedlings, while the three remaining sections move ahead again.

The system makes optimum use of available space and ensures that plants are ready for harvesting when they arrive at the end of the greenhouse from which they will be shipped. The system also works well for feeding. The support rails under the gutters are designed so that the gutters slope for drainage. Long, black, four-inch vinyl pipes, suspended over the high edge of the gutters, act as reservoirs for the nutrient fluid. Hundreds of tubes project from the larger pipes, and the nutrient solution drips into the perlite and heads downslope. What the plants don't drink and the perlite doesn't absorb runs out the lower ends of the gutters into drain channels, which carry this unused solution to sumps, where pumps return it to the overhead pipes.

Read full article at: http://www.schundler.com/hydrofarm.htm