DIY Air Powered Scooter

There are several air powered small vehicles making the rounds of the eco-blogs. Some have novel engines that claim 100% greater efficiency other companies have been “just about” to release their air powered cars for nearly a decade.

From Wikipedia:

Various companies are investing in the research, development and deployment of Compressed air cars. Overoptimistic reports of impending production date back to at least May 1999. For instance, the MDI Air Car made its public debut in South Africa in 2002,^[13] and was predicted to be in production “within six months” in January 2004.^[14] Most of the cars under development also rely on using similar technology to Low-energy vehicles in order to increase the range and performance of their cars.

As you can see, I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to Air Powered Vehicles -but…

This DIY scooter doesn’t rely on inflated claims (sorry) of super efficiency. Rather it is a simple design using recycled materials and easily available parts. No magic - sorry. Just a really cool bike that runs for free if you can find a gas station that still has free air. The range of this scooter is about 7 miles and the top speed is under 20 mph. While this may seem pretty wimpy by motorcycle standards, 18 mph or so on a bicycle is pretty fast, and 7 miles would get me to work and back twice. For free.

From Motorcycle News:

An inventor has created what he claims is the world’s first motorcycle powered by fresh air.

Jem Stansfield says his converted Puch moped produces cleaner air than found in many town and city centres and so can actually reduce pollution.

“It actually fires out cleaner air,” said 37-year-old Stansfield, who used to be a sheep herder.

The University of Bristol aeronautics graduate fitted the Puch with high pressure carbon fibre air cylinders used by fire fighters as breathing apparatus in burning buildings.

The cylinders power two rotary air engines which in turn drive the chain to the rear wheel.

Unlike electric scooters, it takes just seconds to recharge from larger air tanks filled by a diving compressor.

With a top speed of 18mph and a range of just seven miles between air top-ups, Stansfield admits it’s never going to be good for trans-continental touring. But hesaid: “You could definitely run a fleet of delivery bikes on it.”

Via: Sustainable Design Update

New Wind Turbine

FloDesign Schematic for New Wind Turbine

EcoGeek has an interview with one of the engineers at Flow Design about their new wind turbine design.

If you think this looks more like a jet engine you’re right. The engineers at FloDesign have experience in designing components for turbine engines.

The features that make this wind turbine design innovative (I will add the word “potentially” to this, they have yet to produce a working prototype) is that they use a shroud and nozzle combination to decrease pressure and suck more wind into turbine blades. They also use a stator (stationary set of turbine blades) to aim the air at the moving blades to extract the maximum amount of energy from the wind stream.

This may all prove not to work when they actually build a prototype, but I have hope that FloDesign can get this very innovative wind turbine up and running and that it will produce energy more efficiently than what is currently on the market.

Check out the interview over at EcoGeek

Via: Sustainable Design Update

Save Energy With Kill-A-Watt

Kill A Watt

Want to make your home more energy efficient? Want to find the real energy hogs in your house? Then the Kill A Watt is the Tech-Tool for you.

Professionally, I have used a variety of power monitoring tools and the Kill A Watt is the best balance for price and quality.

How it works:

You just plug the Kill A Watt in a standard power outlet and then plug into it whatever it is that you want to test. That’s it. You can forceast your costs with a little data from your electric bill.

At home we are energy geeks to begin with and yet we still found hidden energy hogs using the Kill A Watt.

(BTW – our oven has a built in analog clock that drew an unusual amount of current. It must have been defective. We never look at the oven clock so I opened the back of the oven and disconnected the clock. One small step for energy efficiency.)

Kill A Watt is available at Edmund Scientifics - type in “Kill A Watt” in the search field on the left side of the page after the jump.

Check out Kill-A-Watt and more sustainable tools at: Access to Tools

You can purchase a Kill-A-Watt at Edmund Scientific, just write Kill a Watt in the search box on the left side of the page after the jump.

Edmund Scientific

The Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation was originated by friends of the Lindberghs at The Explorers Club in New York City. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is “Supporting Great Innovations that Foster the Environment for a Planet in Balance”.

One of the programs of the Foundation is the Lindbergh Grant program where each year grants are made in support of research that promotes a balance between technology and the environment.

From the Lindbergh Foundation Website:

Each year, The Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation provides grants of up to $10,580 (a symbolic amount representing the cost of the Spirit of St. Louis) to men and women whose individual initiative and work in a wide spectrum of disciplines furthers the Lindberghs’ vision of a balance between the advance of technology and the preservation of the natural/human environment.

To date, 270 men and women in the United States and abroad have received more than $2.6 million to support their work.

“The concept of a technology/nature balance, in which Charles and Anne Lindbergh so firmly believed, is now coming to the forefront as the answer to some of our global problems,” said Clare Hallward, Chairman of the Lindbergh Foundation Grants Selection Committee. “The projects of our grant recipients have, since 1978, made significant contributions to such a balance. Because of the standards employed by the Foundation’s grants program, it has earned international credibility which enables many Lindbergh Grant recipients to secure additional funding to continue their important work.”

The value of the Lindbergh Grants program as a provider of seed money and credibility for pilot projects that subsequently receive larger sums from other sources to continue and expand the work has again been confirmed. Seventy-four percent of Lindbergh Grant recipients responding to a recent survey by the Foundation said they had received additional funding for their research or educational project earlier supported by a Lindbergh Grant, with 34% receiving funds ranging from $50,001 up to $500,000 in supplementary support.

SDU will be posting on Lindbergh Grant recipients over the next several weeks leading up to the announcement of the 2008 Lindbergh Grants.

If you have a research or educational project that promotes a balance between technology and the environment you may want to apply for a 2009 Lindbergh Grant.

While no official announcement about the 2008 Lindbergh Grant Recipients has been made, check out This Link.

Via: Sustainable Design Update

Open Source Block Maker

Blocks Made From Compressed Earth

Schematics for the machine that made these blocks is going to be available free to anyone who wants to make inexpensive construction blocks.

The Liberator Project, the design for a Compressed Earth Block (CEB) machine is an online collaboration, with the final design to be available to all.

The tech. literature for CEBs should show somewhere that working with CEBs is a little tricky. The blocks don’t do well in tension. When the wind blows on an exterior wall it causes the wall to want to bend, possibly making one face of the wall “stretch”. CEBs are a brittle material and they don’t really stretch, instead the walls crack. Designers must overcome this tendency by designing CEB walls and their applied loads heavy enough to keep the inside face from stretching.

You should check out some of the following cool links:

BoingBoing

CEB Press

Sustainable Design Update

Greenhouse Gas or Fuel Source?

Cow Expressing Displeasure With Photographer

What can we do with cow emissions and animal waste emissions? Animal waste can be collected in a biodigester to make methane gas. Small farms can make enough gas to cook their meals, and larger farms can run their equipment and/or run generators that feed power into the grid. Farm animals belch and otherwise emit copious amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Near New Zealand scientists have discovered a bug that eats only methane. The bug can live in extreme conditions, and I hope it can be safely added to cattle feed to reduce the gas generated by our bovine friends.

From National Geographic:

The reason VOCs are a concern at all is because they're one of the components that contributes to the formation of ozone, which is the primary ingredient of smog," Malay said.

But VOCs aren't the only worrisome gases that emanate from livestock. Scientists say animals such as cattle and sheep are responsible for around 20 percent of global methane emissions.

Methane, a greenhouse gas, is believed to be a major driver of climate change, because it traps 21 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

"In more rural communities as much as 50 percent of the methane comes from livestock," said Jamie Newbold, professor at the Institute of Rural Sciences in Aberystwyth, Wales.

Newbold is among a growing number of scientists now investigating how farm animals influence atmospheric pollution. The field is sometimes dismissed by critics as "fart science."

Via: Practical Environmentalist

Photo: Outdooralex Via Flickr

Cadbury Chooses Sustainable Cocoa

Cadbury Chocolate Shows Their Quaker Roots

Cadbury has announced the establishment of the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership to secure the economic, social and environmental sustainability of around a million cocoa farmers and their communities in Ghana, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean.

This ground-breaking initiative, which will be carried out in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other partners, marks 100 years since the Cadbury brothers first began trading in Ghana and aims to holistically support the development of sustainable cocoa growing communities.

Research by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and the University of Ghana, Legon, into “Sustainable Cocoa Production in Ghana,” funded by Cadbury, showed that the average production for a cocoa farmer has dropped to only 40% of potential yield and that cocoa farming has become less attractive to the next potential generation of farmers. The Cadbury Cocoa Partnership programme aims to address some of the root causes of these issues - improving farmer productivity and helping to attract the next generation into cocoa farming.

More @ Cadbury

Via: The Jakarta Post