Sustainable Design Update

Public art addresses environmental concerns and leads the way to the annual Planet Arlington World Music Festival

Arlington, Virginia, June 2007

A trio of environmentally-friendly artists, Jack Sanders, Robert Gay, and Butch Anthony have created a temporary public artwork in Rosslyn

Through Sept 1, 2007. The project, titled CO2LED, is erected in a the traffic island at near the Iwo Jima memorial. On display through Labor Day, CO2LED celebrates environmental stewardship and beckons the way to the second annual Planet Arlington World Music Festival.

552 solar-powered LEDs (light-emitting diodes) secured to rods of varying heights, each topped with a reused plastic drink bottle, illuminate the traffic island in an unmistakably beautiful way. The poles’ slight flexibility, combined with the LEDs’ nebulous glow underneath the ridged surfaces of the plastic drink bottles, create a soft, undulating cloud of light. A native American prairie grass, little bluestem, is planted beneath the poles and stands in contrast to the grid upon which the poles are installed.

At the end of the exhibit I hope someone finds a way to preserve this inspiring use of solar energy.

Via: Inhabitat

This non-toxic alternative to paint may not be what comes to mind when you think of wall coverings, but compare it to wall paper, a material most often now made of vinyl.

From Building Green TV:

If you’ve been thinking about slapping a fresh coat of paint on the walls in your living room, or your bathroom, or your bedroom, or anyplace inside your home, you might want to stop and reconsider. Unless you’re buying zero-VOC paint, the fumes can be harmful to your health.

You could skip the paint altogether and, instead, cover your walls in clay. Sounds a little odd; however, once you see the photo gallery at American Clay, you might be sold on the idea.

American Clay’s line of natural earth plasters are non-toxic, non-dusting mold resistant, repairable—and the stuff creates essentially zero waste, as leftovers can be saved for patching or even spread around in soil outside.

Interested? You can attend a hands-on workshop near you and give the stuff a try.

Sometime in the next few days my interview with Actor, Blogger and Eco Crusader Daryl Hannah will be posted on EcoGeek.

In my research I’ve found her blog, DHlovelife, to be both very informative and edgy. Also, DH seems to defy the Blond stereotype. She’s damned smart. She can even gets Fox News to shut up and listen when she speaks about using eco topics like BioDiesel!

I checked out her IMDB listing and she has been very active since playing the robot Android Pris in Bladerunner. Imagine playing a robot, a mermaid, a giant, an assassin (twice) and also countless girls next door and ambitious business types. DH has two movies currently filming or in post production.

DH has a video podcast over at her site with dozens of videos posted so far. What I find inspiring is that her V podcasts are really about important eco topics, not just a vehicle to promote her career.

Check out her site before the interview: DHLovelife

SDU was mentioned for our article on paintable solar at Building Green TV.   They have a nice assortment of articles that would be of interest to SDU readers.

Somenath Mitra, PhD of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has developed an inexpensive solar material that can be sprayed on surfaces or printed on plastic with an ink jet printer. “The process is simple,” said Mitra, “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.”

Mitra’s invention, a “Fullerene single wall carbon nanotube complex for polymer bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells,” is featured as the June 21, 2007 cover story of the Journal of Materials Chemistry published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Harvesting energy directly from abundant solar radiation using solar cells is increasingly emerging as a major component of future global energy strategy, said Mitra. Yet, when it comes to harnessing renewable energy, challenges remain. Expensive, large-scale infrastructures such as wind mills or dams are necessary to drive renewable energy sources, such as wind or hydroelectric power plants. Purified silicon, also used for making computer chips, is a core material for fabricating conventional solar cells. However, the processing of a material such as purified silicon is beyond the reach of most consumers.

“Developing organic solar cells from polymers, however, is a cheap and potentially simpler alternative,” said Mitra. “We foresee a great deal of interest in our work because solar cells can be inexpensively printed or simply painted on exterior building walls and/or roof tops. Imagine some day driving in your hybrid car with a solar panel painted on the roof, which is producing electricity to drive the engine. The opportunities are endless.”

The solar cell developed at NJIT uses a carbon nanotubes complex, which by the way, is a molecular configuration of carbon in a cylindrical shape. The name is derived from the tube’s miniscule size. Scientists estimate nanotubes to be 50,000 times smaller than a human hair. Nevertheless, just one nanotube can conduct current better than any conventional electrical wire. “Actually, nanotubes are significantly better conductors than copper,” Mitra added.

Mitra and his research team took the carbon nanotubes and combined them with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to form snake-like structures. Buckyballs trap electrons, although they can’t make electrons flow. Add sunlight to excite the polymers, and the buckyballs will grab the electrons. Nanotubes, behaving like copper wires, will then be able to make the electrons or current flow.

“Using this unique combination in an organic solar cell recipe can enhance the efficiency of future painted-on solar cells,” said Mitra. “Someday, I hope to see this process become an inexpensive energy alternative for households around the world.”

From a New Jersey Institute of Technology press release.

Via: Science Daily

The LED project with Xela Teco was a great success! We made several different LED circuit boards and trouble shot a few bugs. Jose Ordonez of Xela Teco discovered a problem with the very inexpensive resistors we purchased direct from China and made up a circuit board that proved his assumptions. He managed to pull all this together after a hail storm nearly collapsed the roof of the workshop. We spent most of one afternoon propping up the roof and sweeping water out of the building. Even with this delay the project was all finished a day ahead of schedule.

Our in-house appropriate technology group, The Appropriate Technology Design Collaborative, or @design, is working on several AT projects right now. One very exciting development is our off grid, remote ice making project. The ice project uses a variation of the R718 refrigerant technology we developed with the Stratos Co. In a nutshell, the ice project uses manual pumping, probably via a bicycle pedal, to provide the pressure differential necessary to chill water and turn it into ice.

Remote areas of the planet need access to cooling for medical supplies and also to refrigerate farmer’s produce to bring it to market. Our ice project may be developed as a potential micro business where a person purchases the equipment and then sells ice. The business model needs some work, as does the design. Right now we are purchasing equipment for making a series of prototypes. We are looking for partners to assemble ice machines in the field from materials supplied and PDF assembly instructions. Real feedback from end users at all design stages is essential to making an AT product that brings real value to the end users.