Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[SubGod22]

I look forward to seeing how well this goes. I like the potential of hydrogen.

This Sleek New LA Commuter Train Is Pollution-Free

In Los Angeles County, a new, low-emissions commuter train is helping combat local and global smog by powering itself with hydrogen fuel cells.

Liquid or gaseous hydrogen is considered the best green alternative to the heavy fuels that power society’s largest machines, and this ZEMU train is just a few months away from starting routine service from San Bernadino and Redlands to LA proper.

ZEMU stands for zero-emissions multiple units, and possesses several advantages over other decarbonized rail transport. Electric trains recharge via overhead powerlines, but these require millions in funding to install and maintain and aren’t practical for long distances.

“The reality is it can be used anywhere existing rail happens now,” says Tim Watkins, chief of legislative and public affairs at the San Bernardino County Transit Authority, the agency behind the project. “It doesn’t require a new capital investment into infrastructure.”

Manufactured by the Swiss company Stadler, ZEMU trains take on hydrogen fuel that is split into hydrogen molecules, generating energy that recharges an electric battery that powers the train’s motors. The battery is also recharged by breaking, and the only emission of any sort is water vapor.

“I think it’s going to enable a lot of places to decarbonize without having to make extremely expensive investments in infrastructure,” Watkins told Fast Company Magazine.

[SubGod22]

Maybe some progress in energy storage.

World's Largest Battery to Revolutionize Renewable Energy Storage in Maine with 'Reverse Rusting'

In northern Maine, a company is planning the largest battery ever made by humans with 8,500 megawatt-hours of storage.

The purpose is to store renewable energy like solar and wind, produced but not needed, for times when the Sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

The batteries store and discharge energy via a novel process called “reverse rusting.” Inside the battery is iron, and as the battery stores electricity, it takes in oxygen from the air turning the iron inside into iron oxide—or rust. When it discharges, the oxygen is released and the oxide is removed, leaving the iron pure again.

While unusable for everyday electronics, this method works at scale and is around one-tenth of the running and manufacturing costs of using lithium-ion batteries.

Form Energy, the firm behind the project, received over $380 million in grants from the Department of Energy for projects all over the North Atlantic, of which $147 will go to the Maine battery project.

With 8,500 megawatt-hours of power at maximum capacity, the battery bank could power up to 85,000 homes for 100 hours. The battery system will have the most energy capacity of any announced in the world, Mateo Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Form Energy, said in a statement.

The amount of power it contains would allow an electric car to circumnavigate the world 1,288 times. The batteries stand 3 feet tall, are about the size of a side-by-side washer-dryer unit, and 50 will make them the station, according to Live Science.

[pinstripers]

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/foreign-automaker-lays-off-thousands-of-michigan-workers-after-pocketing-hundreds-of-millions-in-biden-ev-subsidies/

typical green

[asiseeit]

Two very good posts. You could give the politicians unlimited amounts of money and they would only make things worse while making themselves and their friends/benefactors even richer. Let free markets work.

[Atxshoxfan]

100% agree with sub on this.
I hate the name of this thread, it implies we have some sort of major control on the climate, which I totally disagree with. Climate change is nothing more than a money grab for companies willing to pay off the politicians who push the narrative.
Keeping our environment preserved and clean, is a different story, that I agree with, as do about 100% of humanity. Just keep the politicians out of the money loop though.

[SubGod22]

Also..:Nuclear energy is the most dense energy source available to humanity. Petroleum is second. We should continue to exploit these resources to their maximum capacity and increase human flourishing.

You won't find a bigger supporter of nuclear energy than I. I have no major issue with petroleum, but I fully support research and efforts to move away from it as it isn't the cleanest of energies and anything we can do to clean up our air, water, and environment without crushing the economy and the people. Petroleum will always have a place if it's for energy or other things.

With that said, wind and solar have limited capabilities in most areas and have other concerns that many environmentalists ignore. They're not bad on their own, but it is bad when government forces it on people. There are certain areas where each might be more efficient and make more sense than other areas and it should be a part of the grid in such places.

I'm generally not a fan of solar farms. Seems to be a waste of good land. I am intrigued by some of the work done along rivers in drought areas where they use solar panels above the river to help reduce loss of water. I need to look into results on how that's going, but in theory it seemed like a way to not take away potentially valuable land and produce energy while also potentially save some water. I am a big fan of utilizing solar on tops of buildings, storage units, and even as cover in parking lots. That space is already being used and you can potentially use the same land twice and produce energy and keep cars a little cooler while they sit outside. There's also been some interesting research into ways to get them more efficient, durable, and lighter.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm for an all of the above approach as long as it doesn't come at the expense of the consumer. We have it hard enough as it is.

But in the shorter term, we really do need more nuclear in this country. A while back I shared some articles on smaller nuclear plants that can still produce a lot of energy and take up less space that are cheaper and faster to build and operate than the more massive plants we're used to. And they've even found ways to reuse the little waste that is produced in the process. There's really no reason to fear nuclear energy at this point. It's the cleanest and most reliable option available and takes up the least amount of space as well compared to all the other alternatives.

[Kung Wu]

Also..:Nuclear energy is the most dense energy source available to humanity. Petroleum is second. We should continue to exploit these resources to their maximum capacity and increase human flourishing.

wufan sighting!

[wufan]

Also..:Nuclear energy is the most dense energy source available to humanity. Petroleum is second. We should continue to exploit these resources to their maximum capacity and increase human flourishing.

[SubGod22]

Aesthetically pleasing and helps reduce energy costs. Definitely interesting.

Tuscany's New Airport Terminal Will Have a Vineyard on the Roof, Obviously

With more visitors than ever before, the new airport terminal in Florence will have a green roof and sport a vineyard.

The Italians are passionate about greening their buildings, with the famous Bosco Verticale in Milan being the flagship example.

To celebrate its heritage as one of the wine capitals of the world, the Amerigo Vespucci International Airport in Florence will feature an eight-hectare (19-acre) vineyard on top of its long, sloping roof.

A local, prestigious wine company will harvest the grapes and manage the green vineyard roof, and the vinting will also be done on-site in a cellar on the airport grounds.

The creative minds behind the project are Rafael Viñoly Architects, an American firm that was tasked with redesigning the international terminal as part of renovations to reorient the existing airport runway which is inadequately short and adversely affected by nearby hills.

Linear structures of precast concrete contain the soil and irrigation to sustain the vineyard and are held aloft by a network of branching columns, inspired by the vines they hold up.

The columns shade most of the terminal areas, which will help reduce energy from heating. Skylights will flood these areas with natural light.

“This enormous surface, which hides the airport terminal when viewed from Brunelleschi’s Duomo and other prominent vantage points in the city, will not only serve as a new landmark for the city’s sustainable future, but also as a symbol of the traditions, history and innovative spirit that continue to drive the Italian economy into the 21st century,” the firm wrote on their website.

[SubGod22]

Recycling plastics could get cheaper and more efficient and reduce the amount of new plastic needed.

New Process 'Vaporizes' Plastic Bags and Bottles to Help Make Recycled Materials

An innovative chemical procedure turns ubiquitous waste plastic items in our society into hydrocarbon building blocks for use in making new plastics.

The scientists behind the project explained that the process works “equally well” with the two dominant types of consumer plastic waste: polyethylene, the component of most single-use plastic bags; and polypropylene, the stuff of hard plastics, from microwavable dishes to luggage—which together are called polyolefins.

It also efficiently degrades a mix of the two types of plastics, according to the findings published in the journal Science.

The research team says the catalytic process, developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, could help bring about a circular economy for many throwaway plastics, with the plastic waste converted back into the monomers used to make polymers, thereby reducing the fossil fuels used in making virgin plastic.

“We have an enormous amount of polyethylene and polypropylene in everyday objects, from lunch bags to laundry soap bottles to milk jugs—so much of what’s around us is made of these polyolefins,” said research leader Professor John Hartwig, of University of California, Berkeley.

Hartwig and his collaborators in a public sector-academia partnership developed a chemical process that employed three different bespoke heavy metal catalysts: one to add a carbon-carbon double bond to the polyethylene polymer and the other two to break the chain at this double bond and repeatedly snip off a carbon atom. However, the catalysts broke down in the liquid reaction and were rarely recoverable, making the process difficult to scale.

That was two years ago. Today, as part of a new process, the expensive, soluble metal catalysts have been replaced by cheaper solid ones commonly used in the chemical industry for continuous flow processes that reuse the catalyst, including sodium on alumina, and tungsten oxide on silica.

“You can’t get much cheaper than sodium,” Hartwig said, “and tungsten is an earth-abundant metal used in the chemical industry in large scale, as opposed to our ruthenium metal catalysts that were more sensitive and more expensive.”

[Atxshoxfan]

[SubGod22]

More innovation to reduce waste and provide energy.

Scientists Make Stunning Breakthrough, Turning Banana Peels into Textiles and Renewable Fuels

Off-grid communities in parts of rural Pakistan could soon have access to a reliable source of electricity for the first time thanks to a new project that aims to convert waste from the banana-growing industry into energy.

80 million metric tons of agricultural waste are generated in Pakistan every year from growing bananas.

Academics from Northumbria University have now teamed up with partners in the UK and Pakistan to create a new solution that will make use of this waste product and provide benefits for local people at the same time.

Together the project partners are developing an innovative two-part system – the first part of which will use new technology to convert the banana waste into textile fibers, with the second part taking the waste generated from that process and using it to produce renewable energy.

This will not only reduce the environmental impact of Pakistan’s textile industry, but also bring cleaner electricity to the 50% of people living in rural areas of the country who live off-grid and currently rely on fossil fuels for energy.

The process has the potential to be applied to almost any form of agricultural waste, meaning it could be used all over the world, benefitting communities and the environment through the supply of renewable textiles and energy.

Entitled, Improving access to sustainable energy in rural Pakistan using food and fiber agro-waste as a renewable fuel (SAFER), the project has been awarded around $330,000 through Innovate UK’s Energy Catalyst program.

Funding through the scheme is awarded to support UK and overseas businesses and organizations to develop highly innovative, market-focused energy technologies that enable energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa and South or Southeast Asia.

Dr. Jibran Khaliq, of Northumbria University’s Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, is a material scientist who researches converting waste energy.

This will be interesting to see how it develops. I've always been an all of the above type when it comes to producing energy and if you can get it cleaner and more efficient the better everyone is. The fact that they believe they can do this with any and all agro-waste could be significant as being able to use every part of whatever we're growing is always a good thing. And if it can potentially alleviate the need for fossil fuels down the road and ease that burden then that would be a win for everyone as well. Not saying this kind of thing could ever be the total power source for a country like the US, but it could help with the burden of powering certain areas and take pressure off of certain aspects of a grid that is starting to struggle at times.

I still think nuclear makes the most sense as a trusted power source, but I'm all for thinking outside of the box and finding other sources and help cleaning up the air and water and such around us.

[Atxshoxfan]

6 million plastic bags?! That's every single woman in Los Angeles!

Not nags, not hags, he said bags.

[Kung Wu]

Startup Replaces 6 Million Plastic Bags with Prototype Made from Corn Waste That Decomposes in 180 Days

6 million plastic bags?! That's every single woman in Los Angeles!

[SubGod22]

I didn't have this on my sustainable resource bingo card.

Taiwan Business Spinning Oyster Shells into Yarn

A man in Taiwan is helping reduce fashion waste by creating a sustainable alternative to artificial textiles from an already existing waste stream.

He’s using oyster shells—which when ground up and processed can produce a flexible yarn similar to sheep’s wool that’s been appropriately dubbed “sea wool.”

According to the Taiwanese Department of Agriculture, 160,000 metric tons of mollusk shells are discarded annually from restaurant and fishing businesses.

This isn’t necessarily a waste material, as many fisheries have a policy to dump discarded shells onto oyster reefs. The shells are made of 95% calcium carbonate which is the perfect ingredient to repair and grow living oyster reefs as it greatly increases the number of surfaces the oyster larvae can glom onto.

Eddie Wang grew up in western Taiwan, where oysters and other shellfish have long been a profitable and delicious local industry. The South China Morning Post reports that Wang first got the idea to turn the shells into a thread from lower-income locals who use(d) crushed oysters to insulate their homes.

It was a great idea as it turns out, and materials scientists were keen to work with Wang to develop the industry and make it competitive with existing garment production.

One minute video at the bottom of the article if you want a quick explanation of it all.