Light Cue 23

Solar Sunday is my weekly roundup of renewable energy and energy efficient lighting news from around the web.

Celebrate Earth Hour!

About a year ago, Sydney started a trend of turning off your lights for one hour in a show of support for protecting our environment. Soon after, London, San Francisco quickly followed suit. One year later, the organizers of Sydney’s Earth Hour feel that one city at a time doesn’t really cut it anymore. Which is why this year’s event is going global, with cities from every continent, including the US, participating in what promises to be the largest ever show of solidarity in the world on March 29th for Earth Hour.

What goes down, comes up again

What goes down the drain — detergents, personal-care products and discarded and excreted medications — may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are not, unfortunately, out of this world.
Significant amounts of toxic chemicals from households persist in the environment because they end up in sewage sludge. Though pathogens are removed in wastewater treatment plants, no treatment is required to address some of the most abundant chemical contaminants that originate in the home. So sludge and sludge-rich composts, often containing toxic chemicals, are commonly applied to farmland, parks, forests and yards.

E.coli – Its what’s for dinner

For most people, the name “E. coli” is synonymous with food poisoning and product recalls, but a professor in Texas A&M University’s chemical engineering department envisions the bacteria as a future source of energy, helping to power our cars, homes and more.

By genetically modifying the bacteria, Thomas Wood, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has “tweaked” a strain of E. coli so that it produces substantial amounts of hydrogen. Specifically, Wood’s strain produces 140 times more hydrogen than is created in a naturally occurring process, according to an article in “Microbial Biotechnology,” detailing his research.

Though Wood acknowledges that there is still much work to be done before his research translates into any kind of commercial application, his initial success could prove to be a significant stepping stone on the path to the hydrogen-based economy that many believe is in this country’s future.

Renewable, clean and efficient, hydrogen is the key ingredient in fuel-cell technology, which has the potential to power everything from portable electronics to automobiles and even entire power plants. Today, most of the hydrogen produced globally is created by a process known as “cracking water” through which hydrogen is separated from the oxygen. But the process is expensive and requires vast amounts of energy – one of the chief reasons why the technology has yet to catch on.

Wood’s work with E. coli could change that.

Zenn and the art of Driving

If you are in the market for a small low speed urban vehicle for everyday use, ZENN, a zero-emission, no-noise vehicle might just be your answer. Available in most parts of the United States, it’s a compact car that’s as green as it is useful. According to the EPA, the ZENN is capable of achieving a whopping 245 miles per gallon!

The ZENN is clasified as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, meaning it’s really just for local and city driving, and shouldn’t be taken to the highway at all. The top speed of the car is 25mph, definitely not speedy, but more than enough for driving around town. The car uses a 100% electric front wheel drive; plugs into an outlet to recharge; and will take you about 35 miles before it needs to juice up again. And of course, as the name implies, the ZENN is for all intents and purposes a very low emitting vehicle (it does need to recharge from an electrical outlet after all).

Food is Energy

A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.

Buildings that clean the air

Make Your old flashlight LED

LEDtronics® announces its 3-Watt LED PR-Style Flashlight Bulb with a T3¼ (9mm) Flange Base that fits almost any two- or three-cell flashlight.

With up to 1200 foot-candles of light the new 3-Watt LED PR bulb provides common flashlights with a bright, solid-state, durable, and weather-resistant lamp. No gases to heat, filaments to break, or glass globes to shatter! These lamps integrate one 3-Watt LED into a standard T3¼ (9mm) flange base.

NanoCrystals Make LEDs pretty

Topping LEDs with a coating of carefully tuned nanocrystals makes their light warmer and less clinical, a new study shows. The researchers argue this is a must for energy-efficient LED lights to make headway in the commercial market.

Illuminating buildings accounts for about a quarter of the electricity used in the US, according to the Department of Energy. Because most of that electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, lights account for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

LEDs have the potential to be far more efficient than other lights, but face two major hurdles. Firstly, they trail behind fluorescent lights for efficiency and, secondly, the colour of typical commercial LEDs isn’t pure white.

Most emit a “cool” light with a bluish tinge, sometimes called “lunar white”, that most people find unattractive in the home. Now researchers have used nanocrystals to create LEDs that give off a warm white light, with efficiency far beyond compact fluorescents.

The Nano-Swarms are coming

A new process for catching gas from the environment and holding it indefinitely in molecular-sized containers has been developed by a team of University of Calgary researchers, who say it represents a novel method of gas storage that could yield benefits for capturing, storing and transporting gases more safely and efficiently.