Conservation News

Flush with care – An average toilet uses about 3-5 gallons of water per flush. Combine that with multiple flushes during the day and your water bill can sky rocket. But a company called Clivus Multrum has come up with a solution to help conserve water use in the home and business.
*Foam flush toilet- Use biodegradable soap and water to flush waste with only 3oz. of water- a tremendous reduction over the conventional toilet. The waste is carried to a composting tank that breaks it down with bacteria. The finished mass can be used as plant fertilizer, another added bonus and more savings.
http://www.clivusmultrum.com/products_foam_flush.shtml

Harness the wind – You don’t have to live in the Windy City to use this new technology. Clarian Technologies is said to put out a home-friendly wind turbine that can generate up to 40 kWh monthly, enough to light a 3,600 square foot home. The 3 foot turbine simply plugs into an outlet, no extra wiring is necessary. Although the price tag is a bit hefty ( it would run around $400), the savings in utility bills would definitely cover the cost.

http://www.clariantechnologies.com/main/page_plugin_wind_power.html

Hot water, cool savings – Hot water heaters were one of the most inefficient and energy consuming appliances. Until now. General Electric has come out with a Hybrid Electric Water Heater that absorbs heat in the air and transfers it into the water. Because it takes less energy to absorb water than to generate it, as a traditional heater does, this hybrid heater uses half the energy of a traditional heater, an estimated savings of $250 annually.

http://www.geconsumerproducts.com/pressroom/press_releases/appliances/energy_efficient_products/doetanklesshybrid.htm

Adura Technologies has developed a new wireless light-monitoring system which allows business owners to switch off or dim office lights remotely. The network assigns an IP address to each sensor, so that owners can turn on specific lights instead of wasting energy by powering whole floors. The technology cuts lighting costs by 40 to 70 percent.

http://www.aduratech.com/system/alps2.php

After two years of experimentation with “between-row” cover grasses, researchers at Iowa State University have concluded that environmentally sound agricultural practices will not slow corn production. The team successfully extracted 95 percent of field stover, a crop residue that can be used to generate biofuels, while increasing the total corn yield by more than 1,000 kilograms of corn grain per hectare. Removal of stover is generally associated with water runoff and depletion of soil, which both slow production. But perennial sod, which was planted and kept on the field year round, trapped the organic matter that is usually lost during and after the removal process. With only a minor change to the current cropping system, farmers can increase efficiency and contribute to the future of biofuels.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100615151124.htm

A MIT-led team of researchers recently came up with a green airplane design that uses 70 percent less fuel than conventional airliners. The engineers of the180-passenger D “double bubble” scrapped the established single fuselage cylinder in favor of two partial cylinders connected by a bubble-like cross-section. They also placed the engines at the rear of the plane instead of on the wings. This configuration takes advantage of Boundary Layer Ingestion, a technique that allows the slower moving air in the wake of the fuselage to save fuel while creating the same amount of thrust. While the presented version was highly conceptual, the team also designed another D-series plane that could actually be built with aluminum and current jet technology and would still use half the fuel of a current aircraft.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100517162834.htm

EU Wind Turbines May Gain Edge on Natural Gas Plants – For the third year in a row, new wind power units in the European Union have produced the same amount of electricity as newly built natural gas plants. New wind installations produced 10 gigawatts last year, while new natural gas plants produced only 7. 2010 is expected to bring in an additional 10 gigawatts of wind power capacity, which would boost the annual total to about 85 gigawatts. Gas is still the leading electricity generator with 119 gigawatts, but as wind power continues its rapid expansion this may change.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/new-wind-power-is-neck-and-neck-with-gas/

Trapping Nuclear Waste – Northwestern University researchers have recently developed a new synthetic material that soaks up the elusive radioactive ion cesium. The material, composed from layers of a gallium, sulfur and antimony compound, traps the hazardous ion while ignoring other harmless ions like sodium that are also found in liquid nuclear waste. Until this point, cesium removal has been incredibly difficult because nuclear waste has much higher concentrations of sodium ions than cesium ions (with ratios as great as 1,000-to-1). The material may mean big things for the future of nuclear waste remediation.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2010/01/flytrap.html

The Nano Solution – MIT researchers have created a tenfold increase in the power capacity of lithium-ion batteries by using carbon nanotubes, which have a high surface area for lithium reactions. If their new design is produced on a mass scale, it could expand the market for electric vehicles. The researchers have already paired up with an undisclosed company to make the technology public.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2470
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/25634/?ref=rss

The Power of the Sun – Albuquerque recently teamed up with the innovative energy provider CleanSwitch to host the nation’s first solar powered farmers’ market. The company’s “solar roller,” a four-module unit which generates about one kilowatt of electricity, powered everything from the ATM machines to the live band. The city hopes that farmers’ markets across the nation will begin to use similar equipment.

http://cleanswitch.com/

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/albuquerque-launches-nations-first-solar-powered-farmers-market-will-other-cities-follow.html