Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[pinstripers]

Get out the way!

[WstateU]

Get out the way!

No $hit…

[Downtown Shocker Brown]

Some more context. Can’t believe in all those trucks there was not a set of bolt cutters.

[ShockerPrez]

Ummm, isnt sitting in the middle of the road chained up putting your own life at risk? Isnt that the whole 'point'? Isnt that sort of the underlying faux sacrafice? That they are willing to put their lives in harms way to save the planet? Then cry that the people they are blocking are putting their lives in danger.

Isnt Burning man a big lefty gathering too?

**** kinda cracks me up. That they all do this knowing full well that 99% of the time they get to be little pests with no consequences. Then when the bluff is called they go crazy and whind like *******.

[WstateU]

Some more context. Can’t believe in all those trucks there was not a set of bolt cutters.

Beer is good and people are crazy…

[SubGod22]

Commercial Cargo Ship is Crossing Ocean Using 'Wind Wings' Like High-Tech Sails

It seems a bit silly, but merchant shipping which long ago ditched its sails for internal combustion is now switching back, but not to any sail you’ve ever seen.

Called WindWings, the large wing sails measure around 100 feet (37 meters) in height and can be added to the deck of commercial vessels.

Pyxis Ocean, chartered by US global food corporation Cargill, is the first vessel to be retrofitted with two WindWings.

Produced by industrialization partner Yara Marine Technologies, they are expected to generate average fuel savings of up to 30% on new vessels, which could be even higher if used in combination with alternative fuels.

Pyxis Ocean is now on the water, conducting her maiden voyage with the WindWings having recently launched in China.

“At Cargill we have a responsibility to pioneer decarbonizing solutions across all our supply chains to meet our customer’s needs and the needs of the planet,” Jan Dieleman, President of Cargill’s Ocean Transportation business, said in a statement.

“A technology like WindWings doesn’t come without risk, and as an industry leader—in partnership with visionary shipowner Mitsubishi Corporation—we are not afraid to invest, take those risks, and be transparent with our learnings to help our partners in maritime [sic] transition to a more sustainable future.”

Cargill states that on an average global route, WindWings can save 1.5 tonnes of fuel per day. That's a hell of a lot of potential savings for the shipping industry, and one would think that once they get more data back from Pyxis Ocean that there will be improvements upon that.

[ShockTalk]

Beer is good and people are crazy…

But Biden says you should only have one beer a week and yes, he's crazy.

[WstateU]

But Biden says you should only have one beer a week and yes, he's crazy.

I almost posted that news... it was actually two beers per week.

[SubGod22]

I think I've linked something similar in the past as it sounds vaguely familiar.

Discovered Enzyme Turns Air into Electricity, a New Clean Way to Make Energy Dreams Come True

Australian scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy by using the low amounts of hydrogen in the atmosphere to create an electrical current.

The enzyme in question is called Huc (pronounced “Huck”). It’s made by bacteria, and helps them with growth and survival in soil, in the oceans, in volcanic craters, and even Antarctica.

Monash microbiologists have now discovered it can make electricity from thin air.

The important discovery is outlined in the journal Nature. The research team was led by Monash’s Dr Rhys Grinter, PhD student Ashleigh Kropp, and Professor Chris Greening, from the Biomedicine Discovery Institute.

Professor Greening’s lab specializes in how bacteria obtain energy. Dr Grinter’s lab focuses on the molecular machines that make up bacteria, and how they work.

“We’ve known for some time that bacteria can use the trace hydrogen in the air as a source of energy,” Professor Greening said. “But we didn’t know how they did this, until now.”

Huc works as a hydrogen gas scavenger, and unlike all other known enzymes and chemical catalysts, it can consume the gas below atmospheric levels.

In this way it’s like a natural battery, making a small electrical current from air or added hydrogen. Science has been stumped as to how it worked. This finding opens the way to create devices that literally make energy, in the form of electricity, from thin air.

Plenty of work still to be done, but it's an intriguing development.

[pinstripers]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/electric-car-florida-catches-fire-225737587.html

[ShockTalk]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/electric-...225737587.html

Found this interesting.

"We sprayed about 200 gallons per minute at the car, and it took us about 45 minutes to extinguish," the fire department said.

The best fire teams can do is keep water on the battery until the fuel burns out."

[Kung Wu]

Found this interesting.

"We sprayed about 200 gallons per minute at the car, and it took us about 45 minutes to extinguish," the fire department said.

The best fire teams can do is keep water on the battery until the fuel burns out."

So now it's "Save fossil fuel and eff clean drinking water!"

[SubGod22]

China's War on Pollution Improved Air Quality 42%, Reduced Global Pollution Average, and Returned 2 Years of Life to Citizens

Proving that change is possible if the will to create it is present, Chinese megacities like Beijing that were once famous for their apocalyptic grey skies are enjoying the lowest levels of air pollution they’ve experienced in the 21st century.

Falling 42% from an average high in 2013 when Chinese air pollution was higher than 50 particles per cubic centimeters of city air, the change has increased the lifespan of Chinese urbanites by 2.2 years.

The news comes from a report published by the University of Chicago called the Air Quality Life Index which listed some of the actions taken by the Chinese government to reduce air pollution, described by the CCP as a “war on pollution.”

This has included reducing the presence of heavy industry like steel production in city centers, as well as restricting coal power plants from being built inside cities while shuttering those that were already there.

Some cities like Beijing have reduced the number of cars allowed on the roads during peak hours, similar to London’s congestion charge. Lastly, China’s mass urban tree-planting campaigns have been well documented.

While the life expectancy has risen on average 2.2 years, some cities have seen far more drastic increases. Citizens living under the new “Beijing Blue,” are predicted to live 4 additional years, while those 11 million in the north-central city of Baoding are predicted to gain 6.

Progress is being made even in China.

[SubGod22]

Ocean CleanUp Launches Huge System in Pacific Garbage Patch to Clean a Football Field Every 5 Seconds

Last week, The Ocean Cleanup organization that has been tackling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch deployed their System 03 for the first time—nearly three times larger than the previous technology and capable of cleaning the area of a football field every five seconds.

This follows testing of their two smaller systems which succeeded in extracted over 275 tons of plastic from the Garbage Patch since 2021.

The arrival of System 03 marks a huge leap forward for the Dutch CEO Boyan Slat and his team, and their mission of ridding the oceans of at least 90% of the plastic trash by 2040.

System 03 consists of a floating barrier approximately 1.4 miles (2.2 km) long, which is towed between two slow-moving vessels. This barrier suspends a screen extending 13 feet (4 meters) below the surface of the water, where most floating plastic is encountered.

Once the trash is removed, an onboard crew sorts it to ensure the plastic is put to good use, by recycling it into sustainable new products.

They also have a new machine that helps capture waste in rivers to prevent them from ever ending up in the ocean.

I also like that they're taking this plastic and trying to find ways to reuse/recycle it.

[SubGod22]

More of this would go a long way in the US doing better at recycling and being able to supply those that use recycled materials at a better rate.

Robot Named Sorty McSortface Uses Mechanical Claws and AI to Sort Tons of Recyclables in Minutes

Conversations about artificial intelligence took off in the media after the debut of ChatGPT this year, but AI had already been coiling its industry-changing hands around all sorts of applications for years, from conceptual art and design to these robot trash pickers, Sorty McSortface and Sir Sorts-a-Lot.

Working all day long at 80 recycling facilities across the US, Amp Robotics’ smart sorting machines pluck contaminants from waste conveyor belts or sort various plastics into bins with the accuracy of a search engine and the mechanical speed of a chameleon’s tongue catching flies on the wing.

Sorty McSortface and Sir Sorts-a-Lot ply their trade at the Boulder County Recycling Center in Colorado where they do a job that the USA has typically been bad at doing when averaged across states.

Very few recycling facilities can manage to produce sorted waste streams of the kind needed to provide companies with high-quality raw materials for reuse.

Along with that, perhaps only 9% of all plastic in America even makes its way into recycling facilities in the first place; rising as high as perhaps one-third of all glass waste.

Amp Robotics’ Cortex sorting machine can pick out 80 separate items from waste streams per minute while recognizing billions of different shapes, sizes, granular specifics, colors, logos, and even SKU numbers among the garbage that would often remain hopelessly entangled.

It’s already 99% accurate and becomes more accurate every year the waste is being sorted.

In a brilliant piece by Joe Fassler at The Atlantic, the CEO of Amp Robotics explained that robots like Sorty McSortface and Sir Sorts-a-Lot can read an SKU number of an item moving down the conveyor belt and recognize that as something manufactured by Unilever or SC Johnson for example, and know immediately what chemicals are used in the fabrication of the identified plastic.

There's a two minute video at the bottom of the article on it if you're interested.