Did you know that the web page that you are staring at right now can produce as much CO2 as an SUV? Well, not science buzz itself but, the internet as a whole is a major contributer to the greenhouse gas, equaling the amount produced by the entire aviation industry. When you think about it, its not as amazing of a fact as it first appears to be. Just imagine the amount of electricity that is used to power all of the computers used in businesses and homes. Add to that the real culprit, all of the servers in data centers that store pictures, videos, and websites.
The data centers run 24/7
Data Center
Courtesy Gregory Maxwell saving and processing information for internet users around the world. The amount of energy needed to run the servers is large but that is not the only consumer of electricity. The cooling systems for the rows and rows of buzzing machines eat electrons like popcorn. All of this electricity needs to come from somewhere and that is where the CO2 comes into play. Its the coal burning plants that add the gases to the environment.
Making more energy efficient cooling systems, better software, and using recycled water are some of the steps companies have made to create a greener internet. Although it is hard to measure how much CO2 each internet action adds and a direct comparison to cars is not available, this is something to think about when watching the latest youtube video. Its not only your computer you're powering.
Tags : Nikola Tesla, inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical genius was born on this day in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, Croatia. We had a recent posting about Tesla here on the Buzz if you want to learn more about him. And you should want to learn more. Life today just wouldn't be the same without his ideas and inventions. And I can't think of a more fitting way to honor his genius than this video of two Tesla coils playing the Super Mario Brothers theme song. Happy birthday Nikola!
Turn the arrows around, and you've got the right idea!: Feels like clean energy, doesn't it?
Courtesy bre pettisJust kidding! The burning sensation is probably just one of the many symptoms you’ll experience during your bout with gonorrhea. It may feel like electric fire, but, really, it’s only inflammation somewhere in your urinary tract.
But while we’re on the subjects of urine, electric fire, and the future, check this out: your bladder is full of rich, savory hydrogen fuel, and some Ohio scientists have found a great way to get at it.
Using urine in power storage/production devices has been explored before, and, naturally, Science Buzz has been all over it. The story that was on Buzz before, however, was about using urine as an electrolyte medium in batteries, so it’s just there to allow the passage of electrons from one material to another. (That’s how I understood it, anyway—I couldn’t get to the original article.)
What we have here is something entirely different. With this technology, it’s the urine itself that could supply power, instead of just activating a chemical reaction in other materials.
Hydrogen, as we all know, is awesome. It’s easy to remember where it is on the periodic table (somewhere near the beginning, I think), it’s light, so it can lift stuff like zeppelins up in the air, it’s super flammable, so it can run the internal combustion engines we love so much, and it can be made to undergo a chemical reaction in a fuel cell, producing electricity. Unfortunately, hydrogen is also kind of... not awesome. Its otherwise delightful explosiveness also means that riding a hydrogen-filled zeppelin isn’t a great idea, it’s tricky to store, and despite being the most common element in the universe, it’s a pain to get a hold of.
We can get hydrogen out of water, because every molecule of water has two hydrogen atoms for each oxygen atom. But those hydrogen and oxygen atoms don’t like splitting apart, so we have to run electricity through water to get them to break up, and depending on how we produced that electricity, it sort of defeats the purpose; we’re using a lot of some other kind of fuel to make hydrogen fuel.
These clever Ohio scientists, however, realized that by using the right materials, they could get hydrogen and nitrogen to split apart from each other with a lot less electricity. (It takes them .037 volts to split hydrogen and nitrogen, compared to 1.23 volts for hydrogen and oxygen.) Where, then, is a cheap plentiful source of nitrogen bound with hydrogen? Where indeed…
You know where this is going: urine, or as I call it, yellow gold. Urea, one of the main components of urine, has four hydrogen atoms bound to two nitrogen atoms. If you put a nickel electrode into some urine and run electricity through it, that hydrogen gets released, and you can do with it what you will.
One cow, claim the scientists, could produce enough hydrogen to supply hot water for 19 houses. A gallon of urine could theoretically power a car with a hydrogen fuel cell for 90 miles. A refrigerator-sized unit, they say, “could produce one kilowatt of energy for about $5,000.” Someone might have to help me out on that last one. That can’t be per kilowatt, or “kilowatt-hour” (how we usually measure electricity usage), because a kilowatt-hour costs about 10 cents these days. I’m assuming that it would cost about $5,000 to build a unit like that, and the cost to run it would largely fall upon your kidneys. (Maybe?) Commercial farms, required to pool their animal waste anyhow, could power themselves with all the spare hydrogen.
It’s a pretty neat idea, and one that I actually had a long time ago. I have to give it to the scientists, though—they definitely advanced on my original idea. See I was just trying to burn urine straight up, and, frankly, it wasn’t working. Nothing about it was working.
I’m wondering, also, what the byproduct of urine-produced hydrogen would be. Fuel cells should just produce water vapor, but what’s happening when the hydrogen is separated from the urea? The chemical formula for urea is (NH2)2CO, so after the hydrogen leaves you’ve got two leftover nitrogen atoms, a carbon atom, and an oxygen atom. Laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, is N2O, but what about that carbon? We don’t like carbon just wandering around unsupervised these days.
Can anyone help me out here? When we remove the hydrogen from (NH2)2CO, what’s left over?
Wind turbines surfin' the deep blue sea
Courtesy FlickrLast week, I was lucky enough to partake in a fun-filled road trip to Colorado. Though the Rocky Mountains are a spectacular site, I found myself more excited to see all of the wind turbines on the 15-hour drive from Minneapolis to Colorado Springs. This ultimately resulted in a research extravaganza, as I wanted to know more about how wind energy works and what the US was doing to improve renewable energy.
Lets start with a few Minnesota wind facts :
• Total installed wind energy capacity is currently 1752.16 megawatts
• Total wind energy potential is 657 billions of kWh/year
• Currently ranked at 4th in US for current wind energy output (Go Minnesota!)
On average, one household will consume around 4,250 kilowatt-hours per year , so think of how many homes can be powered if Minnesota was reaching its wind energy potential.
I also came across this article that came out today in Scientific American that discusses the great steps that Hawaii is taking towards renewable energy. Recently, Hawaii signed an agreement with the US Department of Energy (DoE) that outlines a plan to obtain 70 percent of its power from clean energy by 2030, in which 40 percent will be from renewables like wind farms.
As of right now, the state relies on imported oil for 90 percent of its power. If a man-made or natural disaster were to occur that would prevent shipment of oil, Hawaii cannot plug into the mainland’s electrical grid, making them extremely vulnerable. So not only will they gain energy security, but the cost of electricity will also lower by reducing the amount of money spent on shipping money to foreign countries for oil (10% GDP).
The largest source of renewable energy will be makani, or wind. There are currently two proposed farms for Lanai and Molokai islands that will together generate a total of 400 megawatts of electricity, which will provide 25 percent of Oahu’s total generation capacity. Considering that over 70 percent of the stat’s population lives in Oahu, that’s a lot of energy! Solar water heating, geothermal energy, and the novel technologies in ocean thermal plants will also be used to provide the Hawaiian islands with clean, renewable energy.
For more information on what you can do here in Minnesota, check out this blog post from ARTiFactor that describes Windsource, a great program through Xcel Energy.
Wardenclyffe tower and building c. 1903
Courtesy Public domainIn 1901, inventor and electrical visionary Nikola Tesla began building a laboratory near New York’s Long Island Sound complete with a gigantic 18-story radio tower that he hoped would not only broadcast wireless communications to the world but also supply free electricity for everyone. His grand schemes, however, never really got off the ground. Before the year was out Guglielmo Marconi (using seventeen of Tesla’s patents) would claim to send the first radio signal across the Atlantic, and soon after, Tesla’s investors - including steel magnate J. P. Morgan - began to lose faith in the project and withheld further funding. Eventually mounting debts, lawsuits and loss of patent income began to take their toll on Tesla and his visionary plans.
Known as Wardenclyffe, the site was designed by noted architect Stanford White. It operated for a few years in the early 1900s, even serving as the inventor’s main laboratory for a time. But by mid-decade Tesla himself abandoned the site, and for years it sat unoccupied falling to ruin. Inner machinery and equipment were salvaged and sold to satisfy monetary obligations, and the massive tower was dismantled for scrap during World War I leaving only its foundation. But the main building still stands today and, despite its dilapidated state, has the distinction of being the only remaining worksite of the brilliant Gilded Age inventor.
Now a group of Tesla devotees are pushing for the site to be preserved and designated as a historical site and memorial to a man they say is worthy of a monument.
Nikola Tesla
Courtesy WikipediaTesla contributions were certainly monumental. The Serbian-born inventor held over 700 patents and introduced to the world such things as fluorescent lighting, the first remote controlled robot, x-ray photographs, and wireless communications. One invention, the Tesla coil, is still used in today’s radios and television sets and other electrical devices. One of his greatest contributions, the development of alternating electrical current (AC) technology, went against his former employer Thomas Edison's big push for direct current (DC). The threatened Edison went so far as to hire a man to electrocute dogs, old horses, and even a rogue elephant(!) to show the public the dangers of AC current. But AC’s superior technology proved more efficient and cheaper, and near the end of his life, Edison admitted Tesla had been right.
Tesla in his element: Typical promotional photo of the inventor
Courtesy Public domainTesla was a bit of a showman when it came to promoting his inventions and theories, often portraying himself in composite photographs sitting peacefully in a display of electric current. During the height of his career he was a wealthy and dapper household name who hobnobbed with the scientific, artistic, and political elite of his day, and had several laboratories in the New York area. In the late 1890s he set up a lab in Colorado Springs to supposedly “transmit a radio signal from Pikes Peak to Paris”. With funding from Colonel John Jacob Astor (who later went down with the Titanic), Tesla built an 80-foot tower on the prairie for that very purpose. Whether or not he achieved his objective remains a mystery, but he and his assistant did manage to put on quite a lightshow for Colorado Springs residents. Reportedly, the tower discharged a high-voltage flurry of 145-foot sparks in every direction that subsequently blew out the power for the entire town. After nine months of experiments, he abandoned the lab and returned to New York to continue his experiments at Wardenclyffe. The Colorado Springs facility was eventually torn down and sold for scrap and no sign of it remains today,
A consortium of science enthusiasts, preservationists, and plain old fans of Tesla’s genius want the Wardenclyffe facilities preserved as a national monument and museum. The group includes Tesla biographer Marc Siefer who helped pen a letter to President Obama asking for the necessary funds to purchase the 10,000-square foot brownstone structure and surrounding acres from the Belgium-based Agfa Corp, which is eager to sell the property to soften the effects of the present economy.
But Siefer and his colleagues think Tesla’s many accomplishments warrant its preservations. For one thing the group contends it was Tesla - not Marconi - who was the true inventor of wireless radio. The issue of who owned the patents for radio broadcast has gone back and forth since the early 20th Century. In 1904 the US Patent Office ruled in favor of Marconi for the patents even though it had ruled in Tesla’s favor in the prior year. Marconi’s many powerful investors may have been the reason for this. After Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1909 the furious Tesla sued him for infringement and lost again. But in 1943, the US Supreme court proclaimed Tesla was the inventor (probably because the Marconi Company was suing the US government for infringement of the same patents). Unfortunately, for Tesla, this final designation came two months after his death.
Even today, Tesla still seems to elude proper recognition, but Marc Seifer and his colleagues hope to change that by acquiring and preserving Wardenclyffe, a site they say has great historic significance as the last remaining trace of the eccentric inventor’s once grand vision.
“It’s hugely important to protect this site,” Seifer said. “He’s an icon. He stands for what humans are supposed to do — honor nature while using high technology to harness its powers.”
Watch a YouTube video detailing Tesla's life and accomplishments.
LINKS
Tesla Memorial Society of New York website
NY Times Wardenclyffe story
PBS Tesla site
War of the Currents
1899 Tesla interview
Belgrade Tesla museum
Zipingpu Dam: Upriver from the town of Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China.
Courtesy TaylorMilesScientists suspect that last year’s devastating earthquake in China may not have been a natural disaster. A nearby dam may have weakened fault lines and spurred the magnitude-7.9 quake.
The Zipingpu Dam is only 3.4 miles from the epicenter of the May 12, 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province. This quake killed 80,000 people and left 5 million homeless. Although the area exhibits a lot of seismic activity, an earthquake of this magnitude is unusual.
Water in the Zipingpu Dam
The Zipingpu Dam is one of nearly 400 hydroelectric dams in the area. It rises 511 feet high and holds 315 million tons of water. US and Chinese scientists believe that the weight of the water increased the direct pressure on the fault line below. This volume of water would exert 25 times more pressure annually than is natural. Additionally, water seeping into the rock acted as a lubricant and relaxed the tension between the two sides of the fault line. Since the reservoir was filled in 2004, the water caused a chain of ruptures culminating in this massive earthquake.
Worldwide impact on green energy
Sichuan province is the epicenter for more than just a powerful earthquake. It is here that most of China’s hydroelectric power is generated, an integral component of its renewable power plans. The area also produces much of the world’s wind turbine equipment. The infrastructure will take months or years to repair.
Before the quake, China admitted to major flaws in the country’s 87,000 dams. The earthquake damaged other dams and power stations and several major reservoirs were drained to prevent their dams from failing.
Windpower leader
Courtesy ecstaticist
The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday. Wind accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation installed last year in the U.S.
Another interesting change:
The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States. (click links in red to learn more).
Proposed power grid for wind and solar: clipped from American Electric Power document
Courtesy U. S. Dept. of Energy
Is our power grid ready for wind and solar?
Renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal show promise for breaking our addiction to oil. One big problem, though, is moving this new energy to energy users. According to a recent New York Times article,
many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them.
The grid today is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Upgrading our power grid faces multiple obstacles
Our power grid, with about 200,000 miles of power lines, is divided among about 500 owners. Upgrading transmission lines often involves multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Property owners often fight new power lines saying "not in my back yard".
"Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
Dept. of Energy recommendation
I recommend reading the Department of Energy report titled, "20% wind energy by 2030" (30 pg pdf). The United Sates plans to add 300 GW of wind power by 2030 (I figure that equals about 200,000 1.5 MW wind generators). They recommend an interstate power grid to carry electricity similar to how our interstate highway system carries cars and trucks.
American Electric Power also has recommendations
In an 8 page pdf document titled, "Interstate Transmission Vision for Wind Integration" American Electric Power, working at the request of, and in partnership with, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), presents a "high-level, conceptual interstate transmission plan that could provide a basis for discussion to expand industry infrastructure needs in the future".
Wind energy roundup
in The Water Cycle, Weather and Climate, Energy Transformations, Scientific Enterprise, and Forces of Nature
Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is building the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, hoping to produce enough energy to light 1.3 million homes.
If you ever wanted to live like a billionaire, now's your chance – technological advance are making home wind power much more common and affordable.
How do you power your home when the wind isn’t blowing? Through compressed air energy storage. The process is complicated and inefficient, but power companies are working on ways to improve it.
You'd be blue, too: Compact fluorescent light bulbs save energy, but come with a number of problems.
Courtesy Tiago Daniel
We’ve written before about compact fluorescent light bulbs – a new type of bulb you can buy for your home that uses a lot less electricity than standard bulbs, and thus reduces pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But are they all they’re cracked up to be?
Some environmental groups warn that the bulbs contain mercury, which can be toxic and difficult to clean up in the event of a broken bulb.
Researchers in England claim the bulbs can trigger migraines, epilepsy and lupus.
And a review panel assembled by the New York Times concluded that most CFL bulbs do not give off attractive light.
Though a step in the right direction, clearly there are still some bugs to work out of the bulbs.
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