Trash Today, Electricity Tomorrow, Thanks to Landmark Solar Energy Farm January 28, 2011

A landfill in Georgia is being converted into a solar-energy generating farm

DECATUR, Ga. –  Your trash could soon produce enough energy to light a neighborhood.

A landfill in DeKalb County, just north of Atlanta, is being converted from a simple hill of decaying garbage into an power-producing solar energy farm, Fox News has learned.

“It’s very exciting to be a part of this new technology, particularly given the potential for landfills across the country,” said David Stuart of Georgia’s Republic Services.

An enhanced geo-membrane liner, which looks like a large green tarp, covers the surface of the landfill. The liner is then covered with lightweight solar panels that are about 15 inches wide, 18 feet long and only about a quarter of an inch thick.

“We expect to produce 1 MW of power from the landfill — equivalent to providing energy for 150 homes,” he said.

Once the project is complete, more than 10 acres of the landfill will be producing energy.

The installation of the membrane and the solar panels doesn’t disrupt the landfill’s normal process of breaking down garbage. Instead, it serves as a dual-purpose system that produces solar energy while capturing landfill gas for heating homes. A smaller test site was created in San Antonio but this is the largest project of its kind in the nation so far.

“This is unique in Georgia as it represents the first solar energy landfill project in the state and is nearly seven times the size of the project constructed in San Antonio,” Stuart said.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, there are about 100,000 closed landfills in the United States. Stuart estimates that hundreds of thousands of acres under those landfills could potentially use this technology to produce energy. Many of these sites are close to urban areas, he said, and have the necessary infrastructure to economically distribute the energy.

Video:  http://video.foxnews.com/v/4515233/georgia-landfill-going-solar

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New Reactor Harnesses Sun’s Energy Like Plants January 20, 2011

In the reactor, sunlight heats a ceria cylinder which breaks down water or carbon dioxide, just like plants do (CALTECH)

Researchers have unveiled a prototype reactor which mimics plant life, turning the Sun’s energy to make hydrocarbon fuel.

Developed by a team of scientists from the United States and Switzerland, The solar device uses the Sun’s rays and the metal ceria, or cerium oxide, to break down water or carbon dioxide into energy which can be stored and transported.

Harnessing the power of the sun has been but a pipe dream as conventional solar panels must use the power they generate in situ. With the ceria fueled reactor, this issue is solved.

The scientists, which include Caltech professor Sossina M. Haile and Swiss Institute of Energy Technology professor Aldo Steinfeld, wanted to figure out a way to harness the sun efficiently, without incredibly rare materials. They decided on ceria, a relatively abundant “rare-earth” metal with very special properties.

The reactor takes advantage of ceria’s ability to “exhale” oxygen from its crystalline framework at very high temperatures and then “inhale” oxygen back in at lower temperatures.

“What is special about the material is that it doesn’t release all of the oxygen. That helps to leave the framework of the material intact as oxygen leaves,” Haile explains. “When we cool it back down, the material’s thermodynamically preferred state is to pull oxygen back into the structure.”

Conceptually, the device has boundless potential with its ability to break down water into hydrogen fuel and oxygen or carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen, key ingredients for the fuel cell component methanol. Because they are broken down thermochemically, the resulting fuel is easy to transport.

But the prototype is still in its infant stages and extremely inefficient, harnessing only 0.7% to 0.8% of the solar energy it absorbs with most lost through heat or re-radiation. The researchers are confident they can reach levels of around 20% which would make the device commercially viable.

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NASA Shows Off Planes of the Future January 17, 2011

NASA is looking into advanced aircraft that could enter service within the next 25 years — designs that range from the familiar to the very far out.

Other revolutionary technologies help achieve range, payload and environmental goals

 

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