Ecoscraps

The SolarBee Long-Distance Circulator (LDC) is a solar-powered water mixer. One unit is reported to be able to stir 35 acres of fresh water, improving its quality by creating flow. It also can be used in waste water lagoons.

SolarBee’s LDC also is intended for use in storm water ponds for the primary purpose of blue-green algae bloom control, and claims a number of industrial uses for reservoirs and tanks.

Sources: ecofriend & SolarBee

Any one out there care to try this? The UK’s Register Hardware this week features a video in which Blake Farrow, a US “boffin” (for “eggead”), as they describe him, shows how to make a working solar cell using such odd ingredients as powdered donuts, Starbucks tea, a pencil, cellophane tape and Everclear. It might sound crazy at first, but the science behind it seems pretty sound … and Farrow actually demonstrates at the end how the offbeat device generates real electricity.

You can check out the fascinating and entertaining video here.

Image credit: Kronn at Wikimedia Commons under a GNU Free Documentation License.

The manufacturing costs of solar power — or at least for thin-film photovoltaic panels — have broken below a golden benchmark, as reported by Popular Mechanics: $1 per watt.

First Solar, based in Tempe, Ariz., has brought the costs down to $0.98 per watt. The company says that further cost reductions will be achieved as technological and manufacturing process potentials are reached.

But things are not all rosy since reaching this milestone of sorts. Popular Mechanics reported:

Despite the buck-per-watt announcement, First Solar’s share price plummeted more than 20 percent on Wednesday, thanks to warnings from CEO Mike Ahearn about the effect of the credit crisis on potential solar customers—as much as 10 to 15 percent of current orders might default. He recently told analysts in a conference call that “as good as things look for the mid-term and beyond, the short-term outlook for the solar industry in our view has never looked more difficult.”

Hilarides Dairy, in California, has converted a pair of big rigs (18-wheelers) to run on biomethane produced from cow manure. The effort is thought to be the nation’s first trucks powered by chow chips.

Hilarides plans to use manure produced by 10,000 cows, generating 226,000 cubic feet of biomethane daily — enough to reduce the company’s daily diesel fuel consumption by 650 gallons.

Source: Wired

Photo: 10-4 Magazine

Scientists are continuously looking for a way to make solar power cheaper, and they may have found it - in iron pyrite.

Iron pyrite, or fool’s gold, is just one of the alternatives to silicon that’s being researched for use in solar panels.

From BusinessGreen:

Iron pyrite, copper sulphide and copper oxide were at the top of the list of potential silicon and thin film replacements, with iron pyrite – more commonly known as fool’s gold – deemed the leading candidate in terms of both cost and abundance.

Of the 23 semiconductors studied, Berkeley scientists found that 12 of them are more plentiful than silicone and 9 would be cheaper to use.

Picture via Nojhan

The 2016 Olympic Games location will be announced in October, and a number of cities around the world are hoping to be named. Tokyo has pledged to go green if they are chosen.

According to AboutMyPlanet.com, if the Japanese city plays host, they’ve announced that they’ll power the games entirely from green energy sources, including solar and wind power. They can also produce heat power by using garbage in the Tokyo area.

To win the right to host, other countries may make similar promises.

The recent discovery that butterfly wings have tiny scales that act as solar collectors has led scientists in Japan and China to design a more efficient solar cell that could be used for power in the future.

Using natural butterfly wings as a template, the scientists were able to make copies of the solar collecting scales and transfer those to dye-sensitive solar cells.

Read the rest of this entry »

No more squeaky voices from floating balloons. No more Goodyear blimps. We may have reached peak helium levels, as this inert gas is endangered.

According to Scientific Blogging, helium is not readily renewable and is made through from uranium and thorium decaying over billions of years:

Lee Sobotka, professor of chemistry and physics at Washington University in St. Louis, says it is being depleted so rapidly in the world’s largest reserve, outside of Amarillo, Tex., that supplies are expected to be gone there within the next eight years.

Image: Goodyear Blimp

The search for alternative fuels is nothing new, but one New Zealand airline think they may have found a solution in, of all places, a poisonous plant.

This week, Air New Zealand tested fuel made from the oil of the jatropha plant as part of their search for alternatives to traditional fuel. On December 30, they flew a Boeing 747 for two hours with a combination of 50% jet fuel and 50% jatropha oil fuel.

Jatropha in an inedible shrug that grows mainly in India and Africa and has recently been grown in mass quantities for its biofuel potentials. Although it grows in arid climates and makes use of land not able to be used for food crops, it is also a labor-intensive plant with unreliable yields. So, it isn’t a miracle solution. Yet.

Air New Zealand hopes to use biofuels for about 10% of their total fuel needs by 2013.

Picture via loungefrog at sxc.hu.

Innowattech, a green energy technology company in Israel, is developing energy-generators for three main transportation methods: railroads, roads, and airport runways. The concept uses piezoelectric generators — Innowattech’s specialty — to transform kinetic energy from passing planes, trains and automobiles into electricity. From Innowattech:

The system,based on a new breed of piezoelectric generators, harvests energy that ordinarily goes to waste and can be installed without changing the habitat.

Sources: Inhabitat.com and Innowattech