Waste Generation From Alternative Energy Sources

For many years we have been trying to get away from using fossil fuels and old inefficient electrical grinds. But, the move toward the widespread use of alternative energy sources has been a history of stop and goes attempts. Research and development of new technologies are needed for use to find cost-effective ways to harness this seemingly endless supply of clean, natural energy.

The most talked about form of alternative energy resources we can tap is wind power. The development and engineering of wind turbines continues to improve as the popularity, aka capital funding availability, spreads among the business community. In fact "wind farms" have begun to spring up across the world. The biggest issues with these wind farms are the noise vibration they emit and the danger to birds. No complete research has been completed to understand how the low ultrasonic vibrations may affect other wildlife; or humans.

Growing in popularity is solar energy. It is abundant and easy to capture for alternative energy use. The manufacturing of solar cells has rapidly developed with multiple uses adapted for small and even large scale applications. These solar cells gather the light energy given off by the sun which can be easily converted into electricity. It also is widely used to naturally generate hot water. Solar energy joins wind energy as alternative energy sources that create zero pollution. That is if you don't count sound or landscape alterations as pollution.

The largest and most abundant alternative energy source on earth is water. Governments and scientists backed by investors have been studying wave energy and the potential to tap it for clean energy. France has been operating a generator for a few years to study this potential and initial reports are promising.

The ocean is not the primary focus for water based alternative energy. Electricity has been generated from hydroelectric plants for almost a century. Places on earth that have a ready supply of adequate water sources such as rivers and lakes are in perfect position to generate clean energy. The issue becomes more complicated when a dam needs to be generated to create sufficient water flow to power the generators. Dams are not friendly to the wildlife and organisms in the area a dam may be built.

More recent technological advancements have opened the door to consider new alternative energy sources.

The first of these energy sources is energy we can create from the waste that people generate every day. Consider the number of landfills and expended oils. Methane gas can be captured and used to power generators. Not exactly "clean" gas but cleaner that coal and heavy oil. Waste oils from industrial and food consumption is likewise usually dumped. These waste oils can be used to power heaters and boilers to produce heat and steam as a power source.

Though the use of ethanol seems to have a very negative impact on the world's fuel supply it may prove beneficial in areas that can't efficiently tap into hydropower. We can't afford to use or food sources of wheat, sugarcane, grapes, strawberries and corn to provide us fuel when we need the nourishment for our personal source of energy. Likewise the consumption of soybean, rapeseed, and sunflower oils for bio diesel production is causing havoc on the world's food supply.

You can't discuss alternative energy without mentioning atomic energy from nuclear power plants. There is no alternative energy source that neither is as efficient nor can generate the enormous amount of clean pure energy than nuclear power. The waste product is the expended atomic energy that remains radioactive for hundreds of years. The amount of this waste product however, is minuscule relative to waste generated from other alternative energy sources.

You cannot create energy without some form of waste generation.

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European Union: Generation Awake

Each of the decisions you make are important and it is time that you begin to appreciate each one of them because they have a greater impact than you can imagine, it is time to consider before buying a product.

The Generation Awake promotes consumers to think before you buy, not only by society today if not for future generations, it is a thinking about the future today, take care of our own and those yet to come.

If each of us to take conscience that the products we choose to speak of our future and of all generations, pararíamos to reflect each of our decisions because our resources are dependent on what you do today.

Now we tend to forget natural resources such as water, fertile soils, the fresh air or biodiversity by our desire to improve our standard of living, but this has a price because resources are beginning to dwindle and it endangers our near and distant future wellbeing.

What is before us today is not stop consuming the level to which we are accustomed, if not learn to consume efficiently and different, where respect for what gives us the Earth, saving money and reducing the impact exerted on the environment.

Today we present you a very funny video that tells us about the Awake Generation of the European Union with a catchy song and a few exceptional players: paper bags.

Your choices is to make the world different.

Awake Generation

What we propose this so catchy song with this new announcement is that we begin to take conscience that each of the decisions we make are important and relevant to the environment. Why is the moment that we begin to think and reflect on purchases we perform because the future depends on it.

It is the time to think about the positive and negative consequences of each of our choices because it is what we do which affects both our present and future generations.

Increasingly more people that take into account every day the use of natural resources at the time, for example water.

But we must also start thinking about the fertile soil, clean air which now only you can breathe in certain areas, the biodiversity.

We believe that we improve our standard of living to consume certain products when the only thing we do is that they begin to scarce resources and threaten our well-being and also that of future generations.

The Generation Awake does not propose to reduce consumption, if we learn to eat in a different way while respecting the resources we have, with respect for the environment not environment and what gives us the Earth. Of course, this will bring benefits of all types, we only need to make a small investment of effort and attention.

Today we bring you the video of the Generation Awake of the European Union in which you can see some unforgettable paper bags to sing a song catchy and sensitive to the environment.
You join the Awake generation?

Waste Generation From Alternative Energy Sources

For many years we have been trying to get away from using fossil fuels and old inefficient electrical grinds. But, the move toward the widespread use of alternative energy sources has been a history of stop and goes attempts. Research and development of new technologies are needed for use to find cost-effective ways to harness this seemingly endless supply of clean, natural energy.

The most talked about form of alternative energy resources we can tap is wind power. The development and engineering of wind turbines continues to improve as the popularity, aka capital funding availability, spreads among the business community. In fact "wind farms" have begun to spring up across the world. The biggest issues with these wind farms are the noise vibration they emit and the danger to birds. No complete research has been completed to understand how the low ultrasonic vibrations may affect other wildlife; or humans.

Growing in popularity is solar energy. It is abundant and easy to capture for alternative energy use. The manufacturing of solar cells has rapidly developed with multiple uses adapted for small and even large scale applications. These solar cells gather the light energy given off by the sun which can be easily converted into electricity. It also is widely used to naturally generate hot water. Solar energy joins wind energy as alternative energy sources that create zero pollution. That is if you don't count sound or landscape alterations as pollution.

The largest and most abundant alternative energy source on earth is water. Governments and scientists backed by investors have been studying wave energy and the potential to tap it for clean energy. France has been operating a generator for a few years to study this potential and initial reports are promising.

The ocean is not the primary focus for water based alternative energy. Electricity has been generated from hydroelectric plants for almost a century. Places on earth that have a ready supply of adequate water sources such as rivers and lakes are in perfect position to generate clean energy. The issue becomes more complicated when a dam needs to be generated to create sufficient water flow to power the generators. Dams are not friendly to the wildlife and organisms in the area a dam may be built.

More recent technological advancements have opened the door to consider new alternative energy sources.

The first of these energy sources is energy we can create from the waste that people generate every day. Consider the number of landfills and expended oils. Methane gas can be captured and used to power generators. Not exactly "clean" gas but cleaner that coal and heavy oil. Waste oils from industrial and food consumption is likewise usually dumped. These waste oils can be used to power heaters and boilers to produce heat and steam as a power source.

Though the use of ethanol seems to have a very negative impact on the world's fuel supply it may prove beneficial in areas that can't efficiently tap into hydropower. We can't afford to use or food sources of wheat, sugarcane, grapes, strawberries and corn to provide us fuel when we need the nourishment for our personal source of energy. Likewise the consumption of soybean, rapeseed, and sunflower oils for bio diesel production is causing havoc on the world's food supply.

You can't discuss alternative energy without mentioning atomic energy from nuclear power plants. There is no alternative energy source that neither is as efficient nor can generate the enormous amount of clean pure energy than nuclear power. The waste product is the expended atomic energy that remains radioactive for hundreds of years. The amount of this waste product however, is minuscule relative to waste generated from other alternative energy sources.

You cannot create energy without some form of waste generation.

New Generation Inverters to Drive Down Cost of Solar Power: Interview with Silicon Valley’s Array Power

Digital and solid state electronics are reshaping the way solar power systems are designed and built, holding out the promise of higher, more efficient performance at significantly lower cost and with a smaller footprint. This is especially true in the market for inverters, which convert direct current (DC) from modules or batteries to the alternating current (AC) used to light and power homes, buildings, appliances and industrial and commercial processes.

As auto manufacturers have done in recent decades, power inverter designers and manufacturers are increasingly using semiconductors and digital, solid state electronics rather than traditional electronic components to design and build power inverters, and they’re incorporating them into solar power modules themselves. They’re also redesigning the wiring and architecture of solar power arrays to increase system performance and efficiencies, as well as make it easier and less costly to install solar power systems capable of reliably supplying grid-ready, commercial-grade electricity.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, Array Power is one of a number of power inverter designer/manufacturers that’s taken advantage of Solar Power International (SPI) 2011 in Dallas this week to launch new product lines.

In Array Power’s case, that includes launching the Array Power Sequenced Inverter, as well as the start-up coming out of Silicon Valley “stealth mode.” Its Sequenced Inverter is the first in the world that reliably converts DC power to grid-ready, commercial-grade, three-phase sequenced AC, according to the company.

A Quintessential Silicon Valley Start-Up

The Antenna Group’s Tomi Maxted and Kimberly Setliff organized a Skype video interview for Clean Technica with Array Power CEO Wendy Arienzo and director of business development Nick Cravalho.

The creation of Array Power is the quintessential story of a Silicon Valley start-up as Ms. Arienzo describes it. Founded in 2008, the company’s origins go back to a Silicon Valley garage where a group of inventors with expertise in solar and power electronics and semiconductor technology joined in an effort “to perfect a completely novel approach to solar power conversion.”

Successful in their initial efforts, the company’s founders were able to attract seed capital from venture capital firms and attracted the interest of a California manufacturer of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, one of the top 10 in the world. Arienzo and Cravalho left us guessing as to exactly which company this might, as they were unable to disclose the name.

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Hydrogen Generation and Storage Made Easy with Nano-Technology

Fuels like gasoline, based on hydrocarbon, create pollution and carbon footprint. Hydrogen has been claimed to be a good alternative to replace fossil fuel since the 1970s. But hydrogen’s potential has not been realized even partially mainly because of storage and commercial production difficulties. There have been research being done on renewable energy sources like hydrogen for quite some years. Recently, breakthrough research has been successful in creating a new method for storing hydrogen.

Difficulties faced in usage of hydrogen
Hydrogen is a cleaner renewable energy source if only the two problems of safe storage and easy access are overcome. The traditional way of fastening hydrogen into solids has not been very successful. Too less volume of hydrogen was absorbed while storing and too convoluted methods like too high heating or cooling was needed for releasing it which did not make it commercially viable.

New way of storing hydrogen
A team of scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Department of Energy (DOE), US have discovered a new material called air-stable magnesium nano-composites which can help in storing hydrogen without complex methodology. This composite material consists of ‘nano-particles of magnesium metal sprinkled through a matrix of polymethyl methacrylate – a polymer related to Plexiglas.’

Advantages of new material
This nano-composite is a pliable material and it is capable of absorbing and releasing hydrogen at an ordinary temperature without oxidizing the metal. This capacity has been touted as the major step towards a better design for hydrogen storage, hydrogen batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. The scientists have been able to design for the first time successfully composite materials that are nano-scale and which are capable of overcoming the barriers that are thermodynamic and kinetic in nature.

Observing the new material scientifically
The team observed the material and its behavior via TEAM 0.5 microscope at National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM). They tracked the behavior of hydrogen in the new storage material. They further studied the performance of hydrogen in the nano-composite material at Energy and Environmental Technologies Division (EETD), at the Berkeley Lab. EETD has been pioneering research about technologies about renewable energies, their generation and storage etc including hydrogen.

Role of DOE – Nano-scale Science Research Centers (NSRCs)
The NSRCs are a group of five facilities with state-of-art wherewithal to research in depth about nano-scale materials. The National Nanotechnology Initiative from DOE has resulted in huge investments for developing the infrastructure of these facilities. The team has put together and manufactured this new material at Materials Sciences Division. In words of team member Urban, “The successes we achieve depend critically upon close ties between cutting-edge microscopy at NCEM, tools and expertise from EETD, and the characterization and materials know-how from MSD.”

The team
Jeff Urban, Deputy Director, Inorganic Nanostructures Facility, Molecular Foundry, Office of Nano-Science Center DOE, Berkeley Lab, Christian Kisielowski and Ki-Joon Jeon were the co-authors and Hoi Ri Moon, Anne M. Ruminski, Bin Jiang and Rizia Bardhan were the rest of the team. DOE’s Office of Science supported the research work.

What do you think?

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A Power Sticker to Boost Solar Power Generation

New and unique ways of making solar panels more efficient in power generation are coming to light every day. The new kid in the block of one such device is a large transparent sticker applied to the front of the panel which increases the power output by about 10% or so. Genie Lens Technologies is the firm which has developed these polymer film stickers. These polymer films are imprinted with special kind of microstructures. Even the panels that have been prior installed and working can have these polymer stickers applied easily to them and the stickers will boost their efficiency.

Specialty of the microstructures:
The microstructures on the polymer stickers are capable of bending and redirecting the sunlight. These materials in the panel are made to absorb more light and so more power is generated. Seth Weiss, CEO & Cofounder of Genie Lens, Englewood, CO is confident of the advantages of using these special films.

Three purposes of the polymer films:
There are three main actions that are activated by these polymer films:

Preventing light from reflecting off the solar panel surfaces.Trapping light to stay inside the semiconducting materials which absorb the light and then convert it into power.Redirecting the light that comes in so that the light will travel along the semiconductor material surface and not just pass through the material; this increases the likelihood of absorption of light more than before.

Special algorithms for the microstructures:
All the above three purposes are achieved by the special pattern the microstructures. The polymer films direct and re-direct the light rays that fall on the solar panel. The glass cover that protects the solar panels, the semiconductor material that is within and the panel’s back surface – all react with the polymer films in a special pattern.

Just so re-direction of light rays:
The polymer films bend the light just the optimal amount so it will not be reflected off and lost. It makes the light to be redirected right into the solar panel again to reap the maximum power generation. Improvement is present even when sky is cloudy.

Results claimed:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory results prove the fact that the films increase power output between 4-12.5% even when cloudy weather makes the light diffuse. Just adding the films increase cost of power generation by 1-10% but benefits far outweigh the cost, claims the lab. The question to be proved is the test of durability – which will be best answered by future.

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