Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[Atxshoxfan]

I don't need to follow the money to prove my point. I'm not advocating a good idea from a bad idea. The facts I was bringing up were in regards to ALL RESEARCH, They weren't intended to downgrade research on global warming (even though this particular thread is largely regarding research on global warming). I was making a comment regarding ALL RESEARCH which includes everything from Medical research to Food (Farming) Research (Everything).

Out of 20 ideas, MORE than 19 will fail, and much of the information we are given by large companies, are propaganda, to the masses, intended to advertise their great business ideas prior to the idea having success. As a public, we need to recognize propaganda from real facts.

Because of American freedom, and (not during the Biden Administration), and past STEM education, plus because America is largely free of regulations (again not during Biden), America has the largest amount of INNOVATION in the world. And then, of course, China steals it from us. Freedom and education seem to be waning, especially during this administration.

Hope you weren't taking offense to my statement. I'm all for research that can advance any technology. I just don't like paying my taxes only for Congress to give my money away for research.

[Shockm]

Follow the money. Research for green energy always gets our tax dollars for their research. If they can give one small positive outcome, they apply for and generally get more of our tax dollars.

I read that Dem policies are now listed as a top 5 threat to our power grids because of the mandates moving us away from fossil fuels coupled with the catering to the activists by shutting down our nuclear energy plants.

I don't need to follow the money to prove my point. I'm not advocating a good idea from a bad idea. The facts I was bringing up were in regards to ALL RESEARCH, They weren't intended to downgrade research on global warming (even though this particular thread is largely regarding research on global warming). I was making a comment regarding ALL RESEARCH which includes everything from Medical research to Food (Farming) Research (Everything).

Out of 20 ideas, MORE than 19 will fail, and much of the information we are given by large companies, are propaganda, to the masses, intended to advertise their great business ideas prior to the idea having success. As a public, we need to recognize propaganda from real facts.

Because of American freedom, and (not during the Biden Administration), and past STEM education, plus because America is largely free of regulations (again not during Biden), America has the largest amount of INNOVATION in the world. And then, of course, China steals it from us. Freedom and education seem to be waning, especially during this administration.

[Atxshoxfan]

An interesting tidbit I learned from the tube a couple of weeks ago, got me thinking. I'd appreciate it if some of you Research Scientists, and others who do research can add more information..

The researcher I heard on the tube said that very few research ideas bear fruit, and said that most of the items in print, are actually just advertisements that researchers put out to bring attention to their products, but ultimately are unsuccessful.

So I looked it up, and found out that only 1 out of 1000 ideas (0.1%) ideas launched generate to products. After launching, 95% of launched products fail. So if you combine both of the metrics, overall, only 0.005% are successful. I'm sure there are different stages of research, but it sounded to me like there is a lot of "hot air" and wasted time/space trying to inform the public about how great the idea is. This would include pharmaceutical advertisements (I would think) that my doctor told me were often "busts", but a lot of money wasted that is spent on advertising them to the public. He said not to pay attention to advertisements.

How can the public tell the difference between successful ideas and "hot air" and wasted "air space"?

Follow the money. Research for green energy always gets our tax dollars for their research. If they can give one small positive outcome, they apply for and generally get more of our tax dollars.

I read that Dem policies are now listed as a top 5 threat to our power grids because of the mandates moving us away from fossil fuels coupled with the catering to the activists by shutting down our nuclear energy plants.

[Shockm]

An interesting tidbit I learned from the tube a couple of weeks ago, got me thinking. I'd appreciate it if some of you Research Scientists, and others who do research can add more information..

The researcher I heard on the tube said that very few research ideas bear fruit, and said that most of the items in print, are actually just advertisements that researchers put out to bring attention to their products, but ultimately are unsuccessful.

So I looked it up, and found out that only 1 out of 1000 ideas (0.1%) ideas launched generate to products. After launching, 95% of launched products fail. So if you combine both of the metrics, overall, only 0.005% are successful. I'm sure there are different stages of research, but it sounded to me like there is a lot of "hot air" and wasted time/space trying to inform the public about how great the idea is. This would include pharmaceutical advertisements (I would think) that my doctor told me were often "busts", but a lot of money wasted that is spent on advertising them to the public. He said not to pay attention to advertisements.

How can the public tell the difference between successful ideas and "hot air" and wasted "air space"?

[SubGod22]

Ingenious Snow-Proof Solar Panels Can Work in All Weather: 'Game-Changing Tech'

Snow accumulation atop solar panels causes energy losses of between 5% and 15% every Winter in northern climates around the world, with some heavy snowfall even leading to mechanical loads that damage PV modules.

Keeping solar panels snow-free has been a costly and inefficient proposition—until now.

Materials and engineering scientists at the University of Toledo have developed an ingenious solution that is winning awards and satisfying the demand of 150 solar plant operators in their latest pilot tests.

The product is a novel strip that is applied to only the lower edge of the panel, which causes the melting of the snow without interfering with the absorption of sunlight.

In a video demonstrating Snow-Free Solar, the Ohio innovators say the easy-to-apply strip “does not cause any partial shading or hot spots on the panel and does not invalidate module warranty.” It can, in fact, improve the life expectancy of the panels.

The flexible strip doesn’t require any energy to operate and the coatings are “extremely durable, strongly adhering to the PV.”

“There is no need for power—it is passive,” says Hossein Sojoudi, the Associate Professor and Technical Advisor who founded Snow-Free Solar. “You apply it to the lower bottom and it works from there.”

Another step towards making solar a little more resilient and reliable. We've seen tech discoveries to make panels lighter, absorb energy at better rates, ability to recycle/reuse materials from them when they're ready to be replaced and now this, which would help them be more valuable year round.

[SubGod22]

More ways to repurpose old wind turbines.

Old Wind Turbines are Repurposed into Footbridges Capable of Supporting 30 Tons

Wind turbine blades set to be landfilled or incinerated, are being turned into footbridges that can hold the weight of a 30-tonne digger.

Currently, there are around 11,000 wind turbines in the UK, and estimates suggest that 450 blades will be decommissioned in Ireland by 2030, creating tons of non-recyclable waste.

In a bid to avoid filling up the landfill, a transatlantic research network led by Queen’s University Belfast called ‘Re-Wind’ was set up to find new ways to repurpose the blades. Working together, geography experts, design architects, and engineers have discovered that by using just two turbine blades they can create a bridge.

Already, the team has successfully built two footbridges in Ireland—a 21-foot (7-meter) bridge in Draperstown, Northern Ireland, and a 15-foot (5-meter) bridge in Cork in the Republic of Ireland.

The bridges, which are made from two wind turbine blades, are known as ‘BladeBridges’ and passed rigorous testing in May. A third bridge is also underway in Atlanta Georgia.

[SubGod22]

Looks like the US is about to control the largest known lithium deposit ever found. And in the process, can take more environmentally friendly approaches to mining and avoid supporting foreign countries/businesses that may be more exploitive than most would prefer. This could also help lower some costs as the need of shipping massive amounts of lithium across the seas will no longer be a necessity.

Lithium Discovery in Crater in Nevada Could Be Biggest Deposit Ever Found

If even half of the lithium that’s estimated to exist in the McDermitt caldera is mined, it would change the world. Full stop.

Early this year, GNN reported that massive lithium reserves totaling 5.9 million metric tons were discovered in the Indian mountains near Kashmir which put them among the highest known lithium reserves on Earth by country.

The McDermitt caldera reserves are almost 700% larger—40 million metric tons, 13 million more than the known reserves of every lithium-producing mine on Earth.

With every manufacturing nation running around for lithium to make batteries and computer chips, any additional source is highly anticipated.

Up until now, large deposits have been found all around the world, but Bolivia is believed to hold the highest at between 16 to 21 million metric tons. However, political turmoil and low development rates have interfered with getting their reserves out of the ground.

“If you believe their back-of-the-envelope estimation, this is a very, very significant deposit of lithium,” Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven University, told journalist Anthony King. “It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply, and geopolitics.”

A new analysis of the in situ lithium reveals that the sediments of the McDermitt caldera include a unique claystone composed of the mineral illite that could contain as much as 2.4% lithium by composition, which is higher than the more widely extracted magnesium smectite.

[SubGod22]

World's First Electric Aircraft Flight Powered by New Liquid Hydrogen Flew for 3 Hours

The world’s first piloted flight of an electric aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen has taken place.

H2FLY, the Stuttgart Germany-based developer of hydrogen-electric powertrain systems for aircraft announced it has successfully carried out four flights from Maribor, Slovenia, powered by liquid hydrogen as part of its flight test campaign, including one flight that lasted for over three hours.

They believe the flights lay the foundation for long-range, emissions-free flight, with liquid hydrogen doubling the range of the HY4 aircraft to 932 miles (1,500km), compared to using gaseous hydrogen which is much heavier.

“Results of the test flights indicate that using liquid hydrogen in place of gaseous hydrogen will double the maximum range of the HY4 aircraft from 750 km to 1,500 km, marking a critical step towards the delivery of emissions-free, medium- and long-haul commercial flights,” the company said in a statement.

Over the last 12 months, GNN has kept abreast of all hydrogen electric flight milestones, as the liquid fuel is the only current option for decarbonizing aviation. In December, Rolls Royce and EasyJet successfully tested a hydrogen engine for a jumbo jet.

This is a pretty big step in furthering this technology and moving into the future with a new, clean fuel source.

[pinstripers]

I call it a money grab. Tax dollars given to green energy companies who kick some back to their favorite politician before going bankrupt.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/2023/08/09/biden-backed-bus-maker-got-millions-in-us-aid-before-bankruptcy/78aea0d6-36ef-11ee-ac4e-e707870e43db_story.html

and there ya have it

[Atxshoxfan]

Many Climate Change experts believe that Global Warming is a hoax. A science study from this year.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1112950/

I call it a money grab. Tax dollars given to green energy companies who kick some back to their favorite politician before going bankrupt.

[Shockm]

Many Climate Change experts believe that Global Warming is a hoax. A science study from this year.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1112950/

[SubGod22]

A new purpose found for wind turbine blades that have reached their expiration date.

Company Devises Ingenious Method of Repurposing Old Wind Turbines: 'The perfect time'

With the first generation of wind turbines well into a period of decommissioning, questions about what to do with the massive fiberglass blades is a pressing one for an industry that markets itself as green and sustainable.

While indeed no fossil fuels need be burned to generate electricity with wind turbines, the mounting landfill burden of the blades which are not recyclable is projected to climb to over 40 million tons of fiberglass over the next 20 years.

Some companies though are changing the angle of approach of the problem from how to recycle the blades into raw materials to simply moving them onto other uses—and the company REGEN Fiber, owned by the trucking company Tavero, sees their future as additives in concrete and asphalt.

The primary end-product is a top-performing reinforcement fiber that increases the strength and overall durability of concrete and mortar applications such as pavement, slabs-on-grade, and precast products. The company also produces microfibers and additives from components of the wind blade for use in a range of composite, concrete, and soil stabilization applications.

By preventing decommissioned wind turbine blades from ending up in landfills or releasing combustion byproducts, such as carbon, to the atmosphere if burned, REGEN Fiber’s new and sustainable solution is helping to solve the wind industry’s growing challenge of finding environmentally friendly ways for disposing of wind turbine components.

“With tremendous growth projected in the wind industry and an increasing number of turbines already reaching the end of their approximately 20-year lifespan, REGEN Fiber is entering the market at the perfect time,” Jeff Woods, director of business development at Travero, said in a statement.

[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.

[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]

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.