What Do You Do With Material That is Barely Recyclable? Repurpose It. April 9, 2014

Repurposing glass from cathode ray tubes from old televisions.

Once a critical part of every home and office’s technology, cathode ray tubes (CRT) were located inside televisions and computer monitors around the globe. As these devices have since become outdated in favor of flater and clearer LCD and plasma screens, we’re left with over 860 pounds of waste from the CRT alone.

Unfortunately, these tubes are one of the hardest forms of electronic waste to recycle, which means we are stuck with a whole lot of very unusable (and potentially dangerous) tubes. ButFireclay Tile has a clever solution to breathe new life into CRT by melting them down into glass tiles.

The company is now selling the tiles to the public for residential purposes and they are working on a version that can stand up to the challenges of a commercial site. They are available in 2×8, 2×4 and penny-size, sold in matte and gloss, and can be used for indoor or outdoor purposes.

The cathode ray tubes were required to be very thick and highly shatter resistant for their original intended purposes, which makes them perfect to be reused as tiles. After melting the tubes down at tempertures over 1,700 degrees fahrenheit, Fireclay adds a touch of white color pigment before pouring the glass into the molds to create a more design friendly hue.

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London’s new solar bridge is the largest in the world January 29, 2014

London’s largest solar bridge, in the world.

Network Rail, which is responsible for Britain’s rail infrastructure, just opened the “world’s largest solar-powered bridge” — which stretches across the Thames, has 4,400 solar panels on it, and will provide half the energy to central London’s Blackfriars train station.

BusinessGreen reports:

The project was one of the most complex to date for Solarcentury, which installed the panels in a series of phases over the past two years, pausing to minimise the impact on the station during the 2012 Olympic Games.

“We had different sections of roof available at different times to fit in with this complicated jigsaw of getting everything up and going,” explained Gavin Roberts, Solarcentury’s senior project manager, adding that the company had even considered shipping some of the components in via the Thames.

This is exactly the sort of project, though, that gets easier the more times a company’s done similar work — the more big, urban solar projects go up, the faster and cheaper the next one will be. Looking forward to an all-solar London Bridge!

Protean Electric in-wheel motors rolling toward production December 26, 2013

A new set of wheels is on the way.

Protean Electric has teamed up with a major automobile manufacturer to develop its novel in-wheel electric motor technology, with the intent of using it in a production car.

The Michigan-based company is working with FAW-Volkswagen, a Chinese automaker part-owned by VW Group, to integrate the system into a battery-powered Bora sedan demonstration vehicle.

Based on the last-generation VW Jetta, FAW-VW has been working for a couple of years on an all-electric version of the car using more conventional electric-drive technology. But now it is re-engineering it with Protean to incorporate its in-wheel motors.

Protean says that installing its motors directly at the wheel eliminates the need for driveshafts and  other components, while offering better control of the power delivery to each wheel.  The design also incorporates all of the electronics required to operate them, so they don’t require a separate unit located somewhere else in the vehicle, as all electric cars currently use.

The Bora is being developed as a rear-wheel-drive vehicle with one motor at each wheel. The Protean motors feature an inside-out design, with the stator on the inside and rotor on the outside, and are bolted directly to the wheels, where they deliver 100 hp and 739 lb-ft of torque each, the latter as much as the twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter V12 in a Mercedes-Benz CL63 AMG. Each motor should cost about $1,500 when series production begins.

However, Protean Vice President of Business Development Ken Stewart notes that while they plan to have a working prototype on the road in 2014, a production vehicle for FAW-VW is likely still several years down the road.

The company is also in talks with several other automakers through its offices in the U.S., China and the U.K.

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Back to Land Lines? Cell Phones May Be Dead by 2015 December 5, 2013

Flickr/BindApple.com

What do a cell phone, a laptop and an electric car have in common?

All three use batteries made with lithium — the lightest metal in nature. About five grams is in an average laptop, about half a gram in a cell phone. Surprisingly, what keeps your devices charged and wireless can also affect your brain: It’s an active ingredient in drugs used to treat manic depression. Batteries using lithium have twice the capacity of traditional nickel cadmium batteries, creating a “lithium boom” in several places around the world as these technologies become more ubiquitous. In China, cell phone sales were up 57 percent last year; in India, cell phone use is expected to double by 2014.

The More We Use It the More We Lose It
Lithium is difficult to find and excavate. Tiny amounts are found in compounds everywhere, including in the bodies of mammals, but in extremely small quantities. The best way to mine it is to dig under the beds of dried lakes with high saline contents, where volcanoes in wet climates leached groundwater into a landlocked basin tens of thousands of years ago — not exactly in your backyard. Very few places on the globe match these exacting conditions, and some of them are politically problematic.

The Afghan Connection
The world’s best reserves are in the Bolivian Andes, with smaller quantities in Chile, China and the U.S. The Pentagon created a stir last year when a leaked memo called Afghanistan a potential “Saudi Arabia of lithium” because of deposits located in dried salt beds in the west — though much of it remains unexploited because of the war. Bolivian President Evo Morales has said he wants the nation to mine its own lithium and he has discouraged foreign investors; but it’s uncertain if Bolivia can build the necessary extraction plants to handle the expected high demand. The Western Lithium USA Corp. announced plans last year to develop a deposit in the Kings Valley region of Nevada, which could yield up to 11 million tons.

Crisis by 2015?
A shortage could affect the price of laptop computers, as well as cause a slowdown in the production of hybrid electric cars that could cripple new initiatives in Detroit, and undermine President Obama’s plans to reduce our dependence on oil. The car manufacturer Mitsubishi has predicted a worldwide supply crisis by 2015 if new reserves are not discovered. Obama has called for at least 1 million of these plug-in vehicles on the roads by then. Conventional nickel-cadmium batteries do not allow them to store as much energy or drive as far as lithium, which has been a major impediment to the future success of electric cars. New advances in nanotechnology may allow more lithium than ever before to be stored inside hybrid car batteries, as much as 10 times the previous levels, putting even more pressure on global supplies.

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Honda’s next hydrogen car coming in 2015 November 21, 2013

LOS ANGELES –  Honda has been in the hydrogen car game for over a decade, and while its latest effort looks like it comes from the far future, its right around the block.

The FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle) Concept on display at the 2013 Los Angeles Auto Show is a preview of the company’s next generation hydrogen-powered vehicle, which is set to go on sale in 2015.

The sleek five-passenger four-door has all of the trappings of an ultra-efficient car, including skirts over the rear wheels like Honda’s first hybrid car, the 1999 Insight, which still holds the record for highest fuel economy among vehicles without a plug-in battery.

Key to the FECV’s design is a new fuel-cell powertrain that Honda says fits entirely in the “engine” room of the vehicle, rather than spreading its components throughout the car as many hybrids and electric vehicles do. Instead of burning the gas, a fuel cell combines it with oxygen in the air to generate electricity which drives an electric motor. It effectively takes the place of battery in an electric car, and its only emission is water vapor.

Details on power and performance have not been revealed, but Honda says the FCEV will have a range of over 300 miles per fill up, which takes less than three minutes at a hydrogen fueling station.

No word yet on pricing, but Honda currently leases its Clarity fuel cell vehicle for $600 per month with fuel and collision insurance included, so the new car should at least be competitive with that, if not less expensive.

It’s not likely to be widely available at first, however, as the hydrogen distribution infrastructure is still in its nascent stage, with just a handful of public stations currently in operation, mostly in Southern California. But with several automakers, including Hyundai and Toyota also rolling out fuel cell-powered cars over the next couple of years, the industry is expected to start expanding along with the availability of vehicles.

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Toyota Brings Hydrogen Cars to Production November 15, 2013

The automaker’s new hydrogen fuel-cell car can go 400 miles on a fill-up.

Twelve years ago, Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) began testing a unique — and outlandishly expensive — automobile in California: a car powered by hydrogen fuel cells. This so-called FCHV (fuel cell hybrid vehicle) was an electric car that didn’t need to be plugged in. Its electricity was generated by a stack of fuel cells that ran on compressed gaseous hydrogen, a relatively cheap fuel that gives off no harmful emissions; its only byproduct was water vapor. The FCHV never made it to dealer lots, however. Production of plug-in electric cars proved more viable, partially because the FCHV technology was prohibitively expensive.

Fast-forward a decade, and things have changed. In 2015 Toyota will begin selling a production version of its hydrogen fuel-cell (HFC) car that can refuel in three minutes with enough hydrogen to drive more than 300 miles, the company says. Toyota won’t be alone. Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda Motor Co. (NYSE: HMC), Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) (in partnership with Renault), and Chevrolet at General Motors (NYSE: GM) are also all expected to begin producing HFC cars, beginning a new revolution in automobiles that, Toyota estimates, should result in “tens of thousands” of HFC cars on American roads by 2020.

“We think this is the only alternative-fuel technology right now that comes close to gasoline,” says Craig Scott, advanced technology manager for Toyota — and someone who’s been working on fuel-cell cars for the company since the program’s onset. “There are no compromises, unlike with other alternatives.” Scott also works on plug-in electric cars, and loves them, but notes that they are limited by current battery technology; batteries are heavy and expensive, and you just can’t drive very far using them as a power source. An HFC car, however, “looks and drives like a gasoline-powered car” with no range limitations. That is critical, Scott notes. Consumers want to be good environmental stewards — if they can do it without being inconvenienced. “You have to be able to let people drive it like a normal car,” Scott says.

Scott says that politics helped push EVs to the forefront, while relegating HFCs to the back burner, but he also admits that the cars weren’t ready, technologically, for the mass market. “We hadn’t solved durability, or cold weather. These were major engineering hurdles that we spent the past eight years cracking.”

Once Toyota cleared those hurdles, the next challenge arose: making the HFC car affordable for mass production. The original prototypes were valued at $1 million or more per car. “For the last four years or so we’ve been steadily working on how to get the cost out,” Scott says. “That’s what Toyota does best.”

Toyota welcomes competition, Scott says, because HFCs can only be viable if there’s an infrastructure to support them. And convincing the business world to invest in hydrogen filling stations will require volume — enough cars to make those stations profitable.

He understands that consumers are naturally hesitant to take a risk on anything new, but he’s confident that they’ll come around. After all, when Toyota introduced the Prius, now America’s best-selling hybrid, sales were sluggish. “Fuel-cell cars will probably be polarizing at first,” he says. But over time, people will see that a HFC car has the range and convenience of a gasoline-powered car, with absolutely no emissions. “Then they’ll realize, ‘Why wouldn’t I buy this?’”

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Don’t Buy an Electric Car April 6, 2013

I live in California, home to all sorts of environmental nonsense.

We couldn’t build our house where we wanted to because of a tiny plant you can hardly see and a grasshopper that might – just might – live there.

It cost a fortune to replace our perfectly good septic system with a more environmentally friendly one to meet new codes. We’re just two people living on 10 acres. What do they think comes out of us, plastic?
You wouldn’t believe how many hoops we had to jump through and environmental consultants and regulators we had to pay off. It was a real nightmare.
Still, I’m not a green Grinch. Our house is entirely powered by an enormous solar array. My wife has owned a Honda Civic Hybrid since it first came out in 2003. It just turned over 100,000 miles today. It’s a good car.
When it comes to energy and the environment, I like to think I’m a pretty sensible, practical person. But I wouldn’t buy an electric car if you paid me.

Here’s why:
It’s not a piece of fruit. My wife buys organic chicken, eggs, vegetables, and fruit even though they’re way more expensive. It’s better for our health and the animals and farmers. I get that. But a car is the most expensive thing you own that depreciates – a lot. The cars we drive meet California’s tough emission standards. They don’t hurt my family or the chickens. I’m cool with that.

The car I want to drive doesn’t come in electric. There are two kinds of people in this world: car people and everyone else. I am a car person. I’m very particular about how I get from point A to point B. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s an extension of my male ego or a character flaw. Whatever. All I know is, it’s a free country, it’s my money, and the car I want to drive doesn’t come in electric.

It isn’t cost effective. I spent my career in the high-tech industry. When I tell you that it’s smart to be a late adopter of anything new, especially technology, you should listen. In time, competition increases, prices come down, and reliability goes up. Let rich people like rock stars and actors buy Teslas and Volts. They’re not for you.
It’s different. We bought the Honda Civic Hybrid because it looked just like a regular Civic. We embrace that philosophy. We don’t do fads. We don’t want to be different or trendy. We just want to be practical and sensible. Hybrids are practical, sensible cars.

You have to plug it in. Hybrids are great. They’ve come down the technology learning curve. They’re actually more efficient than standard gas powered engines. They deliver more bang for the buck. They don’t have to be subsidized. And, more importantly, you don’t have to plug them in. Ever.

The whole government subsidy thing. I bought a solar array. It was government subsidized. Do I think it should have been? No.

But for our needs, solar power made fiscal sense. I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. Do I think the U.S. government should subsidize specific companies like Solyndra and Fisker? No. That’s just plain idiotic. That’s for venture capital and private equity firms with limited partners with beaucoup bucks and high risk tolerance, not for a government that owes $17 trillion or American taxpayers who can’t pay their bills.

Who says electric power is clean? When China has electric cars, they will be powered by electricity from coal plants that pollute the atmosphere, big-time. The assumption that, just because a car is electric, it must be green, clean, renewable, whatever, is nonsense. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with where our electricity comes from. I think we should drill, frack, and nuke to our heart’s content. I want America to actually export energy. What I don’t get is why anyone would think an electric car is in any way greener than a hybrid. It’s not.

I don’t like dumb fads. I guess the bottom line is that I don’t like the color green for the sake of being green. In other words, I don’t like fads, especially fads that are fueled by overblown hypocrites and bad science. In case you’re wondering, by “hypocrites,” I mean Al Gore. And by “bad science,” I mean man-made global warming, climate change, or whatever the hypocrites are calling it these days.

Here’s an idea. If you’ve got some extra cash you can part with, give it to a good charity like the Wounded Warrior Project. You know, the folks who are crippled while fighting to defend our freedom, our way of life. The folks our government should be spending what little money it has to take care of but doesn’t. Don’t waste it on an electric car.
Steve Tobak is a Silicon Valley-based strategy consultant and former senior executive of the technology industry.

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Lightbulb alert! Another one bites the dust February 2, 2013

Created in the 1930s, these fluorescent tubes are now obsolete.

The old joke, “How many (blonds, lawyers, etc.) does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” just got more complicated! The old  flourescent tubes that used to illuminate millions of homes, and still light up many garages, workrooms and office buildings, bid their final adieu on Saturday.

If you have one of these old fixtures in your home, you’ll need to know your options when the lights go out. T12 bulbs, engineered in the 30′s and used for over 50 years, are no longer being manufactured.

I don’t have that particular fixture in my house, but I still get overwhelmed walking down the lightbulbaisle of the hardware store.

Our choices used to be 100, 75, or 60 watts, single wattage or 3-way, and maybe a few different shapes.  Now the choices of CFL, halogen, halogen incandescent and LED are growing annually. Luckily, with increased choices come improvements in lighting quality and energy efficiencies.

There are even 3-way and dimmable CFL’s and LED’s now, and the lighting quality has improved by leaps and bounds over first-generation offerings.

I found some great primers on the changes in lighting technology, and you’ll want to take a look before you head out to pick up any replacement bulb. You’ll pay more at the register, but with bulbs that last 50,000 hours and use 75% LESS energy than the old incandescents, the savings will light up your smile! (pun intended) I think even Edison himself would approve.

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How will the Army feed its BigBelly? Army GOs GREEN! January 26, 2013

Dec. 5, 2012: Rich Valcourt checks on a BigBelly solar-powered waste disposal unit at Natick Soldier Systems Center, Mass. NSSC has 12 of the units positioned across the installation. (Bob Reinert, USAG Natick)

To reduce, reuse and recycle, the U.S. Army plans to start stuffing its BigBelly.

The Net Zero Strategy is the cornerstone lf the Army’s commitment to go green, a plan to ensure the future Army has the same access to energy, water, land and natural resources as today’s. NetZero has five key components: reduction, re-purpose, energy recovery and disposal, recycling and composting.

Enter BigBelly.

Formally known as the BigBelly Solar Intelligent Waste and Recycling Collection System, it’s a compactor powered by solar panels that can contain as much as 150 gallons of trash thanks to its self-compacting mechanism.

According to the manufacturer, it can hold five times more trash than your standard bin.

As early as 2008, Georgia’s Fort McPherson and Fort Gillem rolled out BigBellies. Now Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, home to innovation for the soldier, has also converted to BigBelly, purchasing twelve.

NSSC aims to give soldiers the best equipment in the world, focusing on developing advanced food, clothing, shelters and airdrop systems.

While Natick may be one of the smallest Army installations, it still has a whopping 78 acres. At the end of last year, it distributed the units throughout this expanse to collect waste.

Natick also purchased two indoor BigBellies that plug into electrical outlets instead of using the sun for power.

The model Natick has purchased weighs 170 pounds and can contain 50 gallons of waste.

Feeding the beast
Solar panels on the exterior continuously charge the battery during the day. The batteries allow a unit to function for more than three days without direct sunlight.

These batteries power the sensors, compacting and wireless communications.

Inside a BigBelly, sensors detect how full the container and trigger a compaction cycle. Each unit can tell its operator how many times it has compacted, when it is close to full and when it is indeed full.

A BigBelly owner can monitor how often each unit is opened and compacted, which are used most frequently, along with other statistics from his or her computer.

Each unit communicates with servers over cellular networks that transfer the data updates to the CLEAN Management Console. It can even provide real-time data by satellite, where it can be monitored by a standard computer.

Made in the USA at sites in Kentucky and Vermont, the BigBelly exterior is made from recycled U.S. steel and recycled plastics, such as leftover cuttings from the disposable diaper manufacturing process.

The BigBelly advantage
In the civilian space, the company’s research suggests that more than $2,000 annually can be shaved off collection with each trash receptacle in a downtown area.

Rather than crews emptying bins that are only partially full, the status reports BigBelly provides means crews can conserve time and effort by limiting collection to bins that are confirmed full by the system.

Cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and others now use the technology to collect all of their waste.  This smart approach means the Army, not to mention the rest of the military, can save money and better allocate resources, while reducing their carbon footprint.

Natick is a research and development facility with a laboratory that uses hazardous materials, so it also has particular environmental challenges. A new “Green Team” intends to introduce certified “Green Laboratories” and “Green Offices” for the center.

The goal for Army-wide Net Zero Energy installations: producing as much energy on site as it uses over the course of a year.

Now THAT’s going green.

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Hottest year ever? Skeptics question revisions to climate data January 12, 2013

July 6, 2012: Six-year-old Alexander Merrill of Sioux Falls, S.D., cools off in a cloud of mist at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb., as temperatures reached triple digits. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

2012 was a scorcher, but was it the warmest year ever?

A report released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) called it “the warmest year ever for the nation.” Experts agree that 2012 was a hot year for the planet. But it’s that report — and the agency itself — that’s drawing the most heat today.

“2012 [wasn’t] necessarily warmer than it was back in the 1930s … NOAA has made so many adjustments to the data it’s ridiculous,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.

A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperatures up last year, to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit according to the government. That’s a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998 — and breaking such records by a full degree is unprecedented, scientists say.

But NOAA has adjusted the historical climate data many times, skeptics point out, most recently last October. The result, says popular climate blogger Steve Goddard: The U.S. now appears to have warmed slightly more than it did before the adjustment.

“The adjusted data is meaningless garbage. It bears no resemblance to the thermometer data it starts out as,” Goddard told FoxNews.com. He’s not the only one to question NOAA’s efforts.

“Every time NOAA makes adjustments, they make recent years [relatively] warmer. I am very suspicious, especially for how warm they have made 2012,” Spencer said.

The newly adjusted data set is known as “version 2.5,” while the less adjusted data is called “version 2.0.”

NOAA defended its adjustments to FoxNews.com.

Government climate scientist Peter Thorne, speaking in his personal capacity, said that there was consensus for the adjustments.

“These have been shown through at least three papers that have appeared in the past 12 months to be an improvement,” he said.

NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen agreed.

“These kinds of improvements get us even closer to the true climate signal, and help our nation even more accurately understand its climate history,” he said.

One problem in weather monitoring occurs when there is a “break point” — an instance where a thermometer is moved, or something producing heat is built near the thermometer, making temperature readings before and after the move no longer comparable.

“Version 2.5 improved the efficiency of the algorithm…. more of the previously undetected break points are now accounted for,” Smullen explained.

He added that the report also recalculated “the baseline temperatures [that] were first computed nearly 20 years ago in an era with less available data and less computer power.”

Spencer says that the data do need to be adjusted — but not the way NOAA did it. For instance, Spencer says that urban weather stations have reported higher temperatures partly because, as a city grows, it becomes a bit hotter. But instead of adjusting directly for that, he says that to make the urban and rural weather readings match, NOAA “warmed the rural stations’ [temperature readings] to match the urban stations” — which would make it seem as if all areas were getting a bit warmer.

Aaron Huertas, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that the debate over the adjustments misses the bigger picture.

“Since we broke the [temperature] record by a full degree Fahrenheit this year, the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison,”

“I think climate contrarians are doing what Johnny Cochran did for O.J. Simpson — finding anything to object to, even if it obscures the big picture. It’s like they keep finding new ways to say the ‘glove doesn’t fit’ while ignoring the DNA evidence.”

Climate change skeptics such as blogger and meteorologist Anthony Watts are unconvinced.

“Is history malleable? Can temperature data of the past be molded to fit a purpose? It certainly seems to be the case here, where the temperature for July 1936 reported … changes with the moment,” Watts told FoxNews.com.

“In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.”

 

Climate blogger Steven Goddard, who in the past helped program government climate models, has put together a graph to show how the adjustment warmed the most recent years and cooled past years. (Steven Goddard)