A Renewable That Could Pollute More Than Non - Renewables

Every green lover (sometimes non green lovers too) will feel enthusiastic when some one show a new method for producing Electricity from waste. They won't even fail to praise (even I won't) those innovative ideas of generating Electricity from waste and unfortunately they forgets to analyze how the Electricity is generated. Some times this waste to energy conversion may be harmful than that of some other methods of generating Electricity, like from coal.

Waste To Electricity Conversion. Image Credit : tx.us

Recently, I went to a college exhibition where they placed a miniaturized (not so small) model of Waste to Energy converter. Like the most of the existing converters, they too employed the method of burning the waste and then converting the heat generated into electricity. When I asked the student who gave the demo of that converter, "don't you think it could still pollute our environment?". He saw me like an unresolved quest and asked me "how?".

This is because, most of the people's forget to talk about the by-products generated through this burning of waste. Although the by-products generated varies according to the type of wastes that we burn, but they mostly were plastic and electronic wastes. When we burn these type of wastes, they not only increase the carbon footprint but also pollute the environment through harmful mercury, lead, ash and other polluting gases. They were strong enough to bring in the acid rains to your city and cause some severe damages to human health.

Image Credit : Green Building Press (UK)

I do support the waste to energy conversion, than any one else, just because they solve two of our problems. First by clearing the tonnes and tonnes of wastage that were keept on stealing more space in our earth and then by generating Electricity, that runs our present world. But, how do they do it also an important thing to be considered. It should be in a way, without polluting our environment. Next time when some one tell/show you a method for generating Electricity from waste, don't forget to ask them, "how do they do it?".

PAPER PP ALLOYS CAN SAVE THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY FROM PLASTICS

           The plastics that always sticking with the consumer electronics is now going to get replaced by a new material. PEGA Design and Engineering found a new material to make the computers, laptops and other consumer electronic devices an environmental friendly one. Currently we are in the trouble of disposing the electronic wastage's. The main reason for that is the plastics which are cheap and strong always partnering with electronics.

          The PEGA D&E got this new material called Paper PP Alloy which has all the advantages that the plastic materials having with an extra qualification of environmental friendly(biodegradable, reusable and recyclable). This Paper PP Alloy has the characteristics of paper which makes it biodegradable. It is only made up of paper and polypropylene.

Laptop Shell made from Paper PP Alloy

                                    

                                      Bio Degradable Material

            The materials needed to make Paper PP Alloy are easy to retrieve drawn the attention of consumer electronics manufactures towards this material. An even more exciting feature is Paper PP Alloy can be molded using injection molding method; it can be easily adapted without changing the manufacturing process.

PIEZOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTER FROM VIBRATIONS - A MODULE FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION

          This project is just an example of Vibrational Energy Harvesting. We can give whatever the vibrational source available as input. Also, here we are storing the obtained power it can be used for any purpose. If you want to eliminate battery then no problem just with the help of proper power conditioning circuit you can directly connect the obtained power to load. But make sure the continuous source of vibration before eliminating battery.

THIS IS THE BLOCK DIAGRAM FOR THE PIEZOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTER
FROM VIBRATIONS

THIS IS THE SET UP FOR UTILIZATION OF HARVESTED POWER

APPLICATION OF VIBRATIONAL ENERGY FROM ANY
VIBRATING SOURCE

AFTER THE APPLICATION OF VIBRATION THE INDICATOR GLOWS
INDICATING THE POWER GENERATED

NOW THE GENERATED POWER IS STORED IN BATTERY AFTER PROPERLY
CONVERTING IT INTO DC 

POWER FROM BATTERY IS GIVEN TO LOW POWER SENSOR - THERMISTOR

THEN THE POWER FROM BATTERY IS SUPPLIED TO LDR

FINALLY SUPPLYING IRDA

PIN CONFIGURATION FOR IRDA

THE NEXT THREE PICTURES SHOWS THE CONTROLLING OF SENSORS 

INTERFACING CIRCUIT OR CONNECTION DIAGRAM

OUTPUT OF THE PROJECT

TIDAL POWER - SO PROMISING FUTURE

             Got "Shocked", but not by electricity just by hearing the amount of electricity that can be generated by tidal energy as the source but with a huge investment(that may give shock to most of the investors). Why "TIDAL"? you may ask. Tidal energy sounds more interesting when we think of why we need to invest a huge amount of money for tidal and why not for other renewable's. There exists a big explanation for it.

     Tidal power generation has lot of disadvantages associated with it like High Initial Capital Investment, Limited Locations, It's Effect on Marine Life, Long Gestation Time, Difficulty in Transmission of Tidal Electricity, Weather Effects(storms and typhoons), etc. When considering advantages like No Fuel, Long Life, High Energy Density, High Load Factor attracts big investors(Siemens and Vatten fall) toward it and it's Predictable nature, Renewable, Non-Polluting and Carbon Negative gets the most of the governments attention towards it.

     The Danish government spent £1.3 billion to establish onshore wind, which currently brings £2.7bn per year in revenue. A properly capitalized wave and tidal sector could create 43,500 direct jobs and generate a potential £4.2bn per year in revenue for the  UK economy - a report says.

     

     Renewable UK’s State of the Wave and Tidal Industry report, released at the conference, states that the UK is still leading the world with the largest installed wave and tidal generating base of 2.4 MW, a further 27 MW with planning consent, 77.5 MW of projects in planning, and 700 MW expected in the Pentland Firth area by 2020.

     In total, Renewable UK forecasts 1-2 GW of wave and tidal energy installations in the UK by 2020. Then installing tidal power in India not only helps the unemployment problems out here but also can supply the uninterrupted power to the whole nation(in Tamil Nadu there is daily power cut for 3-5hrs and so on in other states may fade out) when we utilize the most of the tidal energy available here. Finally tidal power sounds so promising.

Light Energy(solar) Harvesting Using Fiber Optic Cables To Light the Buildings - Low Cost, Simple Technology

      

Fiber Optic Cable

 Bored of hearing "Switch off the lights when not in use"???. Now, a new technology came into scene to solve the problem of lighting the buildings during day time without using electricity. I know what you are thinking right now!!!. I'm for sure not going to say a word about "Photovoltaics" and let you feel bored.

     In current day scenario there are a lot of new technologies came around to generate electricity from non renewable energy sources, But most of them costs us much and can't be implemented by normal peoples who belong to low or middle class families. Not only cost matters, also the technology implemented in most of harvesting technologies are quite complex.

Building Implemented With
Fiber Optic Light Harvesting

Here it comes the Energy Harvesting via Fiber Optic cables, where we are using a mirror and lens arrangement to intensify and collect the light energy coming out from the sun. This collected light energy is then send into buildings through Fiber Optic cables. Now we got the lightings to our buildings at day time without spending much of our money.
There is an another advantage with which this technology binds with is: Using this technology we are providing natural sunlight to our buildings which eliminates the eye problems normally occur with peoples who works in artificial light. Also the sunlight is enriched with "Vitamin D" adds with advantage.
  

ORGANIC(But Not Green) vs INORGANIC ENERGY SOURCES

      

Advanced energy harvesting from solar using Photovoltaics

While i'm browsing about saving electricity last night, i accidentally seen a web page which says that "inorganic fuels are going to dominate the future". Suddenly an article i read about Organic fuels struck my mind and i recalled some informations from that article and i posted some of which i recalled.

       Sustainable, green, renewable, organic- the words are remembered so often while debating about energy and climate changes that they tend to sound as they were similar.But of course they don't."Nuclear reactors emit no carbon and are therefore in a sense green, but uranium is non-renewable"-this is what i read in that article but this can't be green in any sense as because they don't emit carbon. First of all we are using the word "GREEN" not only to represent energy sources that will never emit carbon into atmosphere, instead we are using this word to represent the energy sources which are not giving away any by-products that are harmful to environment.

Implementation of solar cells in a large scale

  
     Hydro power is green and renewable but may not always be sustainable; coal is inorganic but it's carbon emissions make it the very opposite of green.All that is obvious enough. But even so, it may be jarring to hear- as we have found and will describe that- organic biofuels can't possibly fuel a growing world economy in a sustainable manner, whereas, in principle, inorganic fuels could.
     Now we are entered into a biofuel boosted world and most of them were saying that biofuel is the future and already america started producing it in a huge quantity. Both the biofuel and carbon scenarios are carbon neutral by definition- solar for obvious reasons, biomass because carbon emitted is reabsorbed when plants regrow(biofuels are carbon free only if crops are planted on existing tilled fields).
     Biofuels provide around 6.5 megawatt hours per square kilometer, That's roughly enough to power 60 homes.The photovoltaic system covering the same square kilometer, with a typical commercially available system efficiency of 15.5%, could power up to 12,000 homes. Also, in cars which are powered by the internal combustion engines are replaced with electric vehicles that are three times as efficient-a direct result of losses in the thermal cycle of the combustion engine.
     There exists a lengthy list which describes the advantages of inorganic over organic and i don't have much time to post them all. Instead, I can say that "Forget biofuels- only inorganic energy sources can provide prosperity   for all and forever".