Sustainable Design Update

This over revving wind turbine is all over the internet. I found the link on Treehugger.

Check out the chaos @ Youtube

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Janine Benyus @ TED

I took some time out from my design work today to watch this great TED Talk.

12 Sustainable Design Ideas is well worth 23 minutes of your time.

From TED:

With 3.8 billion years of research and development on its side, nature has already solved problems that human designers and engineers still struggle with. In this inspiring talk, Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry — the way humans mimic nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. And because the champion adapters in the natural world are, by definition, those that can survive without destroying the environment that sustains them, biomimicry can contribute to the long-term health of our planet.

Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example of this “innovation inspired by nature.”

The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.

Like the viceroy butterfly imitating the monarch, we humans are imitating the best and brightest organisms in our habitat. We are learning, for instance, how to grow food like a prairie, build ceramics like an abalone, create color like a peacock, self-medicate like a chimp, compute like a cell, and run a business like a hickory forest.

The conscious emulation of life’s genius is a survival strategy for the human race, a path to a sustainable future. The more our world looks and functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.

Check out the talk: TED

Solar Panels - Big Carbon Savings

The eco-naysayers (think AM radio personalities) have used specious arguments against wind power, bio-fuels and solar panels for decades. The rap on solar panels has been that it takes more energy to make them than they produce or that the CO2 given off creating the panels is greater than the CO2 you might save by installing solar on your house.

Scientific American has an article about a study at Brookhaven National Labs that shows once and for all, that solar panels are a real plus for the environment.

From Sciam:

It takes power to make power—even with a solar grand plan. From the mining of quartz sand to the coating with ethylene-vinyl acetate, manufacturing a photovoltaic (PV) solar cell requires energy—most often derived from the burning of fossil fuels. But a new analysis finds that even accounting for all the energy and waste involved, PV power would cut air pollution—including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change—by nearly 90 percent if it replaced fossil fuels. More at: Sciam

Frances Arnold - Caltech

Ethanol from corn reduces greenhouse gasses by 18 to 28 percent. Corn for ethanol also competes with corn for humans and corn to feed cattle. Scientific American had it right when they said “Grass makes better ethanol than corn does”, it also reduces carbon emissions, doesn’t compete with food crops and could cost significantly less.  The problem so far has been finding the right enzymes to convert grass cellulose into fermentable sugars.

Technology Review has a great update on the search for enzymes that turn cellulose into sugars.

From Technology Review:

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for U.S. production of renewable fuels to reach 36 billion gallons a year–nearly five times current levels–by 2022. Of that total, cellulosic biofuels derived from sources such as agricultural waste, wood chips, and prairie grasses are supposed to account for 16 billion gallons. If the mandates are met, gasoline consumption should decline significantly, reducing both greenhouse-gas emissions and imports of foreign oil.

The ambitious plan faces a significant hurdle, however: no one has yet demonstrated a cost-competitive industrial process for making cellulosic biofuels. Today, nearly all the ethanol produced in the United States is made from the starch in corn kernels, which is easily broken down into the sugars that are fermented to make fuel. Making ethanol from cheaper sources will require an efficient way to free sugar molecules packed together to form crystalline chains of cellulose, the key structural component of plants. That’s “the most expensive limiting step right now for the large-scale commercialization of [cellulosic] biofuels,” says protein engineer Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering and biochemistry at Caltech.

The key to more efficiently and cheaply breaking down cellulose, Arnold and many others believe, is better enzymes. And Arnold, who has spent the last two decades designing enzymes for use in everything from drugs to stain removers, is confident that she’s well on her way to finding them.

Cellulosic biofuels have many advantages over both gasoline and corn ethanol. Burning cellulosic ethanol rather than gasoline, for instance, could cut cars’ greenhouse-gas emissions by 87 percent; corn ethanol achieves reductions of just 18 to 28 percent. And cellulose is the most abundant organic material on earth.

More at Technology Review

Check out the video content at the TR site. Dr. Arnold clearly explains the state of development for cellulosic ethanol.

SIGG 100 Eco Moments

SIGG, the aluminum water bottle company, is celebrating it’s 100^th birthday with a countdown of 100 “SiGGnificant” eco-events.

My family is a SIGG family. We have given up the plastic bottle in favor of the reusable lightweight SiGG bottles. In Guatemala we found hand woven fitting bottle holders that protect the SiGGs from denting. (they do dent) We like the SiGG bottles because there is no plastic or steel taste in the water.

Check out SIGG bottles: Access to Tools

Now SIGG has teamed up with Laurie David’s Stop Global Warming Virtual March to commemorate 100 Eco Moments in honor of the Swiss bottle-maker’s 100th birthday. This is a great first in the morning blog check at SiGG

SIGG’s Event #99:

Nearly four million acres of land are lost to development each year. When once-pristine land is developed, the conversion fragments the ecosystem and leaves it in small disjointed patches. Already looking ahead, in 1903, Teddy Roosevelt set aside the first national wildlife refuge on Florida’s Pelican Island to protect bird species which were being hunted for their plumes. Now managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Refuge System protects 94 million acres of pristine land and water.

Via: Treehugger

Gravia Gravity Lamp

A Virginia Tech student won the Greener Gadgets Competition that was part of the Greener Gadgets Conference. The lamp is powered by lifting a weight within the lamp. The energy from the lowering weight illuminates LEDs in the base.

From Virginia Tech:

A Virginia Tech student has created a floor lamp powered by gravity.

Clay Moulton of Springfield, Va., who received his master of science degree in architecture (concentration in industrial design) from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 2007, created the lamp when he was an industrial design graduate student. The light-emitting diode (LED) lamp, named Gravia, has just won second place in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition as part of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City.

Concept illustrations of Gravia depict an acrylic column a little over four feet high. The entire column glows when activated. The electricity is generated by the slow fall of a mass that spins a rotor. The resulting energy powers 10 high-output LEDs that fire into the acrylic lens, creating a diffuse light. The operation is silent and the housing is elegant and cord free — completely independent of electrical infrastructure.

The light output will be 600-800 lumens - roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours.

To “turn on” the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour glass-like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gentle glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp, Moulton said. “It’s more complicated than flipping a switch but can be an acceptable, even enjoyable routine, like winding a beautiful clock or making good coffee,” he said.

Moulton estimates that Gravia’s mechanisms will last more than 200 years, if used eight hours a day, 365 days a year. “The LEDs, which are generally considered long-life devices, become short-life components in comparison to the drive mechanisms,” he said. More at Virginia Tech

Related Posts: Greener Gadgets Conference, Chris Jordan at Greener Gadgets

Thanks Again Ben!