Hybrid Living

Professor Mike Rowe OBE at Cardiff University is investigating ways to ‘green up’ cars using something you’re more likely to find in your home boiler – thermocouples.

Thermoelectric generators utilise dissimilar metals or semiconductors to produce electricity from a difference in temperatures. This is the key, Professor Rowe believes, to extracting waste energy – which normally escapes out of a car’s exhaust, into something useful – electricity – reducing the burden on the vehicles alternator – reducing the load on the engine; or possibly even eliminating the complexity of an alternator altogether in favour of a solid-state solution.

Professor Rowe believes that 5% efficiency savings can be made by eliminating vehicles alternators and the load they place on the vehicles engine. Whilst we at EcoGeek are excited by future Alternative Vehicles and Fuels, we also believe that there is a place for transitional solutions which help us to reduce the environmental footprint of existing vehicle technologies. … and that’s not the best news. Professor Rowe believes that the thermoelectric generation technology could also find a place in generating electricity from the sun – representing a potentially more cost-effective technology that present photovoltaic cells.

Hot on the heels of ‘Pee standing up for the Earth‘ come these bogtastic urinals for Europe. One pint of water per flush might be something to write home about on your side of the pond, but here in Europe, we’ve already seen our fair share of water-less urinals.

It turns out that the two main problems with not having water run around your loo after each pee are odor and blockage. Odor isn’t as much of a problem as you would think, as specially designed traps can pretty much eliminate smells escaping. The other problem is blockage – solids and salts accumulate in the traps of waterless urinals – however, two litres of hot water a week poured down them is enough to ensure they stay clear.

Furthermore, the people at IFO have solutions for times when you just have to sit down. Some of their loos will clear the bowl using as little as two litres of water for less serious matters – whilst effectively clearing the bowl using as little as four litres – a shade over a U.S. Gallon.

Furthermore, taking water out of the equation altogether – with a solution that may seem a little extreme to the average U.S. consumer – but one which might appeal to EcoGeeks is the ‘composting toilet‘ – now being carried at Home Depots – a compost toilet biologically digests waste to produce harmless compost as a waste product. If the balance of biological functions in a composting toilet is maintained at the correct levels then it should emit no odor at all!

Well… it’s far from being a prototype, but with everyone racking their brains about how aviation can continue in a world where we are all tightening our carbon belts, there is a consensus that the days of air-travel powered by Jet A1 are numbered. Hope for intercontinental eco-savvy globe trotters could come from a small firm in Oxfordshire, UK, who claim to have designed a hypersonic plane that can do the jaunt from the UK to Australia in under five hours.

With a top speed of 4000, it’s fast, and there are claims that it could be prototyped within 25 years – by which time aviation fuel and environmental taxes will surely have made air travel blindingly expensive. Hypersonic flight has been achieved before, but whether it could be sustained on a scale to make it commercially viable is yet to be seen.

However, at EcoGeek, we like the fact that it runs on "liquid hydrogen." Whilst the bulk of hydrogen is currently produced from those nasty fossil fuels at the moment, hydrogen does offer a solution as an energy carrier in a post-carbon world, and if Reaction Engines’ design does "take off," combined with clean sources of hydrogen, it could go a long way toward making air travel sustainble.

Via BBC World

Here at EcoGeek, we love to see what sustainable technologies average folks can get working in their back yard. Whilst we also marvel at teh advanced in cutting edge high-technology, it’s refreshing to see ‘hands on’ technology, which you can build at home.

One response to Peak Oil and fossil fuel shortage has come from three members of Sustain Jefferson, a Natural Step community, who have built this downdraft gasifier, to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide (also called syngas) from ordinary wood pellets.

With hydrogen production currently dominated by the petrochemical industry, it’s nice to see some simple carbon neutral solutions to producing hydrogen, which you can make yourself.

This gassification process is an extremely simple version of Coskata’s plasma gassification which should soon be producting large quantities of cellulosic ethanol. Coskata has a microorganism that can convert syngas into ethanol at extremely high efficiencies.

Kick up a footstool, lay back and enjoy – the video is also accompanied by a fairly smooth piano soundtrack!

And if you want to build one yoursef, the plans are open source and available here.

Here at EcoGeek, we love to see what sustainable technologies average folks can get working in their backyard. Whilst we also marvel at the advances in cutting edge high-technology, it’s refreshing to see "hands-on" technology, which you can build at home.

One response to peak oil and fossil fuel shortage has come from three members of Sustain Jefferson, a Natural Step community, who have built this downdraft gasifier, to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide (also called syngas) from ordinary wood pellets.

With hydrogen production currently dominated by the petrochemical industry, it’s nice to see some simple carbon-neutral solutions to producing hydrogen, which you can make yourself.

This gassification process is an extremely simple version of Coskata’s plasma gassification, which should soon be producting large quantities of cellulosic ethanol. Coskata has a microorganism that can convert syngas into ethanol at extremely high efficiencies.

Kick up a footstool, lay back, and enjoy – the video is also accompanied by a fairly smooth piano soundtrack!

And if you want to build one yoursef, the plans are open source and available here.

We never thought we’d be featuring a drying rack at EcoGeek, but this is too perfect to pass up. A simple design solving a simple problem elegantly.

The goal in this case is water saving – with increasing pressure on our natural resources, it makes sense to make the most of every little drop and not waste natural resources – as producing clean water requires energy, resources and infrastructure.

So designer Erdem Selek’s "Planter Dish Drip" is pretty interesting. The design is remarkably simple — just folded sheet steel the right size for you to put a plant pot into; however, as your dishes drip, the plant gets all the watery goodness rather than the drain…