It is very interesting to check out the hundreds of great green ideas over at the National Geographic “Green Effect” contest.
We have an entry: ATC Green Effect
Please check it out and vote + comment on our proposal. It has been called a “winner for sure” by one person.
Thanks
jsbarrie and The Appropriate Technology Collaborative
Kirei Board is a strong, lightweight, durable, environmentally friendly substitute for wood. It is usable in furniture, cabinetry, casework, and interior design elements. Kirei Board is manufactured from reclaimed sorghum straw and no formaldehyde based adhesives are used in its production. (Safe for FEMA Trailers!) Kirei board has a strong character and the laminated layers of sorghum are a bit uneven giving this product a unique natural beauty. Uses for Kirei Board are limited only by the designer’s imagination. They include architectural millwork, wallcoverings, furniture and displays. Kirei has more products than just Kirei Board. You should check out their website: www.kireiusa.com. Kirei design elements can help a design gain LEED credit for environmentally friendly construction. More at: KireiUsa
Is Algae based biofuel production recession-proof?
Solazyme, Inc., a manufacturer of biofuels made from Algae, has reached an amazing $76 million in funding, which means the folks who review such things for investors see real merit in the Solazyme process.
Solazyme uses microalgae biotechnology to produce clean and scalable fuels, “green” chemicals, edible oils and health and wellness products.
“This most recent funding validates the unique value of our oil production platform and adds to our already strong financial position. Solazyme’s mission is to answer the increasing global demand for clean and renewable sources of oil. We offer sustainable and scalable technology that provides unique solutions for addressing four of the largest challenges facing our country and our planet: increasing energy demand, heightened energy security needs, energy related environmental degradation and hunger,” said Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme.
“Braemar’s mission is to identify and support the most promising alternative energy firms with disruptive technologies that provide meaningful clean energy solutions,” said William Lese of Braemer Energy Ventures. “Solazyme’s renewable oil and advanced biofuels technology is leading the industry on the path to commercialization and will be cleanly powering our vehicles with renewable fuels that fit within the existing infrastructure.”
“Solazyme has proven itself as a pioneer in the advanced biofuels space, by being the first to do many things including scale-up, production and road testing of a variety of advanced biofuels that can simultaneously meet current U.S. fuel specifications while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by over 80%,” said Chris Schaepe, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Solazyme’s unique renewable oil production process grows algae in the dark in an industrial fermentation process, where the algae are fed non-food biomass and industrial byproducts including a wide variety of cellulosic materials and low-grade waste glycerol which are converted by the algae into oil. This allows the company to produce oil cleanly and economically in a controlled, large-scale process. Solazyme is currently producing thousands of gallons of oil in commercial scale facilities and has produced in-specification fuels including renewable diesel, biodiesel and jet fuel. Solazyme’s first fuel, SoladieselTM, has been successfully road tested as an unblended fuel (100%) for thousands of miles in a variety of unmodified vehicles. Additionally, Solazyme’s process is the first bridge from non-food carbohydrates and industrial waste streams to edible and renewable oils. This technology has already been shown to produce high quality oils for a multitude of purposes across a variety of industries.
I like the folks over at Free Green. They produce nice looking, clean and efficient plans for buildings you would like to wake up in. They have a good sense of materials. If interested I think they can ship a kit form of their designs just about anywhere.
From their site:
Enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the outdoors from the spectacular front porch of this charming cabin. A crawl space foundation was chosen for The Cabin to accommodate a rural lot where full basements and slab on grade are often not feasible. Wood windows will hold up well in climates with extreme exposures. Vertical cedar board siding is time tested exterior finish and can be painted any color or left raw to reflect rustic charm. If properly treated and maintained cedar will last many years.
In keeping with the rustic theme we have chosen a clear finish for the cabinets, windows, doors and interior trim. The kitchen is adequately sized to serve the needs of a large group. The kitchen is open to the dining room, which itself, can open up to the front porch through two double French doors. The high ceiling and exposed structure is the defining element of the interior spaces of The Cabin.
There is more to check out at: Free Green
In Mexico City green space is hard to come by. One estimate is that over half of the Cities 22 million inhabitants live in slums or squatter cities. So, finding space in the Federal District is getting harder. Urbanists have been exploring solutions to combat the thickening smog, impersonal buildings and urban gridlock that so often defines this great city. The Vertical Park by (shown above) by Jorge Hernandez de la Garza is a whimsical attempt to infuse the city with pollution absorbing, solar powered green space. His design is a modular skyscraper made up of a series of unique and abstract stacking units. It exhibits the biomimetic qualities of an exoskeleton or possibly a coral. The solar-powered structure contains green spaces, spaces for living, business spaces, integrated within a structure that recycles all of its own water.
From Plataformaarquitectura:
Dentro de Ciudad de México la vida urbana tiene una interesante actividad comercial que destaca por su dinamismo e interacción entre diversos sectores que actúan interconectados para la comunidad. Lamentablemente el desarrollo y crecimiento actual de esa ciudad están planteados en otros términos, los que actúan más centralizados y aislados cortando muchas veces esta cadena autosustentable. Esto, se traduce en puntos separados que traen significativos problemas en el transporte y distribución de los recursos y espacio urbanos.
Como respuesta a este conflicto, Jorge Hernández de la Gaza diseña un módulo en base a estructuras triangulares con el objetivo de poder articularlo dentro de las ciudades tanto de manera horizontal como vertical y con el fin de poder ser insertado en distintas locaciones urbanas reforzando la idea de interconexión dentro del tejido urbano. Ubicado en Coyoacan, Ciudad de México, este proyecto permite replicar sus módulos para plantear espacios urbanos que aporten al comercio y a las principales demandas de la ciudad. Además, según los arquitectos, este proyecto esta pensado para dar respuesta a las demandas de consumo de manera sustentable, a través de energía solar, cultivos verticales y re-utilización de aguas.
Una de las estrategias importantes, fue la de diseñar un módulo flexible para que la propuesta no produzca una homogeneidad visual y espacial en los diferentes lugares donde fuese aplicado. La estructura permite ser modelada y revestida de muchas maneras, entregando diversidad en sus espacios, forma y aspecto.
More at: Platformaarquitectura
Mascoma Corporation today announced that the company has made major research advances in consolidated bioprocessing, or CBP, a low-cost processing strategy for production of biofuels from cellulosic biomass. CBP avoids the need for the costly production of cellulase enzymes by using engineered microorganisms that produce cellulases and ethanol at high yield in a single step. “This is a true breakthrough that takes us much, much closer to billions of gallons of low cost cellulosic biofuels,” said Michigan State University’s Dr. Bruce Dale, who is also Editor of the journal Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefineries. “Many had thought that CBP was years or even decades away, but the future just arrived. Mascoma has permanently changed the biofuels landscape from here on.”
In a recent Forbes article, biofuels expert Helena Chum of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, commented on CBP, saying “This is the golden dream. All of the processes in one super-organism. That would be the lowest cost possible.” A prominent DOE/USDA research agenda states that “CBP is widely considered to be the ultimate low-cost configuration for cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation.”
Multiple research advances presented by Mascoma Chief Technology Officer Dr. Mike Ladisch at the 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals in San Francisco provide proof of concept for CBP. These include advances with both bacteria that grow at high temperatures, called thermophiles, and recombinant cellulolytic yeasts such as:
Thermophilic Bacteria:
Cellulolytic Yeast:
“These advances enable the reduction in operating and capital costs required for costeffective commercial production of ethanol, bringing Mascoma substantially closer to commercialization,” said Jim Flatt, Executive Vice President of Research, Development and Operations at Mascoma. “Our results go a long way toward establishing the feasibility of the processing concept that we have built our company around - so this is a big day for us.”
More at: Mascoma
