A fuel-saving gas pedal!

Sources: Netto, Autoblog

Recently, Nissan has presented a fuel-saving gas pedal. According to the manufacturer, in the future, a car will feel when is using too much fuel. Nissan's new "ECO pedal" has been engineered to encourage good fuel economy with a servo-actuated gas pedal that will push back on the driver's lead foot when on-board computers detect wasteful acceleration. According to Nissan, vehicles equipped with the ECO pedal, and real-time fuel consumption gauges in the instrument panel, have returned a 5-10 percent increase in fuel efficiency.

Google gives the good example

Sources: Geek.com, EI Solutions, Google

Everybody knows Google. They are maybe the most powerful company on the planet. They hold the key to the internet kingdom. For this, they have huge data centers to store information on which websites contain which information. And using these huge data centers costs a LOT of energy. However, Google has always been an example of a company that thinks ahead, and they are committed to helping build a clean energy future.

They support breakthrough clean technologies and implement them in their own company. For example, in May 2007, Google went solar, as they completed the installation of the largest solar power system ever installed on a single corporate campus, at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California (have a look at this video). If interested, one can even see



Recently, Google filed a patent entitled “Water-Based Data Center”. It reveals their plans to create a sea-based and sea-powered data center. The power would be generated from Pelamis machines, that harness energy from waves (as discussed earlier on this blog). These Pelamis machines are already tested and used in wave farms or aboard ships to generate power while they are anchored. Google’s patent suggests a number of Pelamis machines combined with a server farm to create a floating, self-sufficient data center. The energy generated would not only power the servers, but also the pumps to cool the farms.



The benefits of such a system include the fact they are easily scalable by just adding new Pelamis machines and farms, they can be deployed quickly to different locations and are a clear use of renewable energy while catering for future data center capacity needs.

Microbial fuel cells produce electricity from wastewater

Source: Ecotality Life, International Harald Tribune, Penn State Live

Microbial fuel cells are a hot topic among environmental biotechnologists. Basically, the microbial fuel cell is a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble waste such as sugar, starch and alcohols. The battery produces electricity plus clean water. These technologies will make it possible to generate electricity while treating domestical or industrial wastewater. The organic molecules present in the wastewater (the 'waste') posses a certain amount of chemical energy, which is released when converting them to simpler molecules like CO2. The microbial fuel cell is thus a device that converts the chemical energy present in water-soluble waste into electrical energy by the catalytic reaction of microorganisms.

Diagram copyright © 2007 American Society for Microbiology.

Recently, scientists (the group of Professor Jürg Keller) and the Australian beer maker Foster's are teaming up to generate clean energy from brewery waste water - by using sugar-consuming bacteria. "Brewery waste water is a particularly good source because it is very biodegradable." Professor Keller said. It is also highly concentrated, he said, which helps improve the performance of the cell. He expected the brewery cell would produce 2 kilowatts of power - enough to power a single household, which is not that much, but it's primarily a wastewater treatment that has the added benefit of creating electricity.

Also Anheuser-Busch is supporting a project run by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, by supplying wastewater from their brewery. They are more optimistic. They a bioelectricity generating wastewater treatment system in just one large food-processing plant could power as much as 900 American single-family households.

And the potential applications are not limited to brewery wastewater! Prof. Bruce Logan, from Penn State University (who co-invented the process), showed that microbial fuel cells can produce electricity directly from wastewater skimmed from the settling pond of a treatment plant. In other words, one can now generate electricity while simultaneously cleaning the wastewater that you flush down the drain or toilet!

Quiet Revolution, an elegant wind turbine for urban environments

Source: EcoGeek, XCO2

The quietrevolution (QR) was designed in response to increasing demand for wind turbines that work well in the urban environment, where wind speeds are lower and wind directions change frequently. The siting of any wind turbine is crucial to the output that can be expected from it. Ideally, a wind turbine would have no obstructions between it and the prevailing wind direction.

Of course, in an urban or built-up environment, some wind turbulence is inevitable unless the turbine is sited well above any surrounding buildings. Most of the time, turbulence from surrounding buildings will affect a wind turbine to some extent. This is the primary reason for opting for a vertical axis wind turbine, as such a design doesn’t require wind from a consistent direction to continue producing power. Conversely, a horizontal axis wind turbine has to physically rotate into the wind every time the direction changes, wasting valuable resources.

Typically, reasons for wind turbines causing disruption or being refused planning permission include its visual impact, noise and vibration. The QR turbine’s elegant design is geared towards adding visual appeal to its surroundings, and the aerodynamics of the vertical axis design mean that noise and vibration is reduced to near silence.

Renewable Energy From the Deep Ocean

Sources: OTEC News, YouTube

When I was looking for information on wave energy for one of the previous posts (this one), I came across many different technologies that make use of the energy present in the ocean. Whereas the wave energy converter described in the referred post uses the mechanical energy from the waves, the technology described here uses the thermal energy stored in the ocean. Check it out!

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a means of converting into useful energy the temperature difference between surface water of the oceans in tropical and sub-tropical areas, and water at a depth of approximately 1 000 meters which comes from the polar regions. For OTEC a temperature difference of 20^oC is adequate, which embraces very large ocean areas, and favors islands and many developing countries as shown on the map below.


Have a look at this YouTube video that explains how it works!



I left a comment on YouTube in which I asked if anyone knew of a full-scale application of this technology and I got this reply from the person who posted the video: "To date there is no commercial application of this technology although there are a number of commercial projects in the works and I would expect some major announcements by the end of this year. It is commercially viable so long as oil prices remain over $50 a barrel and interest rates remain low. In time, it will probably be competitive with around $30 a barrel oil. It is unlikely to be competitive with oil under $20 a barrel."