31/1/2022
Cardboard
is 80% cheaper than a traditional wood or MDF set, it has a carbon footprint
that's 90% lower, and it's 100% recyclable. Every year thousands of
studio sets are built from wood and MDF, then dumped when the shoot is over.
The waste is enormous but moving over to cardboard means that although the set
is still scrapped it can be recycled. The wood used for the cardboard can be
sourced from trees that are harvested for their branches, rather than chopped
down entirely. This can provide a sustainable method that provides 100%
recyclable materials. These sets are cheaper and less environmentally harmful
than traditional sets and they also help save time during production. These
cardboard sets are much lighter than wooden ones so can easily be moved by one
or two people which can save time and money. The cardboard can also be moulded
producing all types of set and props that don’t seem to be made from cardboard.
Photo Pixabay
30/1/2022
If you are producing an amount of greenhouse
gases from a business or perhaps by flying on holiday then a website like gold
standard is a place where you can go and purchase some carbon offsets. Websites
like cool effect or gold standard allow you to purchase carbon offsets by
investing in projects in different countries. Due to the buying power of
different countries different projects are worth different amounts. So, you
could invest $18 to try and help make efficient and clean cooking for
Mozambique low-income households or you could spend $45 on the Nica Forest high
impact Reforestation program. for your journey or your project, you can work
out how many tons of carbon dioxide emissions you could produce and then you
can buy into one of these projects by investing that money per ton of
greenhouse gases. offsetting your emissions like this does mean that you are
helping needy Projects elsewhere in the world as well as doing your carbon
offsets.
Photo https://marketplace.goldstandard.org/collections/projects
29/1/2022
A team at the University of Delaware is looking
at turning some waste left over from the pulp paper industry called technical
lignin and turning this into something useful. Technical lignin is a widely
available resource about 100 million tons of technical lignin waste is
generated annually and currently is only used to be burnt for heat or sometimes
added to tyres as a filler. The team has demonstrated that it’s possible to
turn this lignin into bio-based 3-D printing resins and high-performance
plastics. Changing lignin into a useful product used to require high pressures
and the use of solvents which made the cost of doing anything with this lignin
prohibitive. Research team found that they could replace methanol which was the
traditional solvent in lignin deconstruction with cheap glycerine so the
process could be done at normal atmospheric pressure. The glycerine breaks down
the lignin into useful chemical building blocks that we can be used in many
other types of processes.
Photo courtesy of Paul Pranda
28/1/2022
A team at the University of Delaware is looking
at turning some waste left over from the pulp paper industry called technical
lignin and turning this into something useful. Technical lignin is a widely
available resource about 100 million tons of technical lignin waste is
generated annually and currently is only used to be burnt for heat or sometimes
added to tyres as a filler. The team has demonstrated that it’s possible to
turn this lignin into bio-based 3-D printing resins and high-performance
plastics. Changing lignin into a useful product used to require high pressures
and the use of solvents which made the cost of doing anything with this lignin
prohibitive. Research team found that they could replace methanol which was the
traditional solvent in lignin deconstruction with cheap glycerine so the
process could be done at normal atmospheric pressure. The glycerine breaks down
the lignin into useful chemical building blocks that we can be used in many
other types of processes.
Photo courtesy of Paul Pranda
27/1/2022
Each year individual countries report their
methane emissions by sector to the UN in accordance with the UN framework
Convention on climate change a recent funding by NASAs carbon monitoring system
has allowed scientists to build up a new series of maps detailing the geography
of methane emissions from these fossil fuel productions. Using all the publicly
available data from 2016 the research team has plotted a fuel exploitation
emission map which you can see below. The maps show where all the emissions
have occurred based on the location of coal mines oil and gas wells as well as
pipelines and refineries and fuel storage. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas
trapping in about 35 times more heat than carbon dioxide. Showing this map may
give countries a good idea who needs to do some work.
Photo NASA
26/1/2022
Until very recently DHL has been charging for its
go green option for delivering mail but now it’s going to offer this to all its
customers four letter mail transport at no extra charge. Any of the unavoidable
carbon dioxide emissions will be offset. The company has set climate protection
at the core focus and they already have the largest fleet of electric delivery
vans and electric powered bicycles providing the industry’s most climate
friendly mail and parcel delivery service. In 2020 DHL managed to deliver 6.5
billion letters which translated to an offset of over 300,000 tons of carbon
dioxide emissions.
Photo Pixabay
25/1/2022
Several major investment companies re telling the
companies that they invest with to step up on sustainability or face the consequences
of inaction. Aviva Investors, which has £262bn of assets under management, is setting
out its expectations in a letter that will be sent to 1,500 firms in 30
countries this week that it does or might invest in. Last year 280 firms
changed their practices after pressure from Aviva Investors, it is hoped
that more will be forced to focus on issues such as biodiversity and human
rights, alongside existing priorities like climate change and executive pay.
The investment companies believe that this move makes good business sense at a
time when the public is increasingly expecting companies to behave ethically.
Photo Royal Dutch Shell plc
24/1/2022
Several major investment companies are telling the
companies that they invest with, to step up on sustainability or face the consequences
of inaction. Aviva Investors, which has £262bn of assets under management, is setting
out its expectations in a letter that will be sent to 1,500 firms in 30
countries this week that it does or might invest in. Last year 280 firms
changed their practices after pressure from Aviva Investors, it is hoped
that more will be forced to focus on issues such as biodiversity and human
rights, alongside existing priorities like climate change and executive pay.
The investment companies believe that this move makes good business sense at a
time when the public is increasingly expecting companies to behave ethically.
Photo Pixabay
23/1/2022
Japan
is now importing liquefied hydrogen in an aid to boost their carbon dioxide
free and greenhouse three economy. Especially design ship called the Susio
Frontier is now shipping liquefied hydrogen made in Australia to Japan. The
Australian government is healing their hydrogen industry as a means of lowering
emissions and producing greater energy and producing more local jobs. Japan has
limited options for onshore wind projects and has been looking for many years
for ways to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. In previous articles with
shown that burning ammonia which is made with hydrogen can reduce the emissions
of Japan is called fired power plants. Using this system Japan would slash its
emissions while shifting them to Australia. The hydrogen Australia is using
steel made from coal. There is no policy pressure or economic reasons why Japan
would buy low emission expensive hydrogen when it gets the same benefits by
buying cheap high emission hydrogen. Looking at the carbon economics of this the
system is mad. Far more carbon dioxide emissions are made in this way than
there was before.
Photo Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI)
22/1/2022
A micro plastic is defined as a tiny piece of
plastic less than 5 mm in diameter. These particles have previously been found
in the lower region of the troposphere called the boundary layer where the
friction between the air and the air surface has been relatively low. Now it’s
just been discovered that these micro plastics can travel in a higher altitude
of the trough of fear but doesn’t have any of these friction affects called the
three troposphere. The very high wind speeds allow these micro plastics to
travel very long distances. These tiny particles of plastic are excellent at
collecting viruses and other pollutants as they move. Scientist have collected
samples of micro plastics in the Pyrenees which is 3000 m above sea level and a
found that this contains amounts of these micro plastics. Some of these micro
plastics were from the ocean picked up by winds. Many of these particles were
between five and 20 µm in diameter. This size of particles can easily be
inhaled and potentially cause severe breathing problems. Many countries burn
their plastic waste find that small particles will make it into the
troposphere.
Photo Pixabay
21/1/2022
Hydrogen
can be made from solar energy splitting water and this is CO2 free however the
Sun doesn’t shine all day and most systems to produce hydrogen involve some
carbon dioxide emissions in some processes 1 kg of hydrogen would produce
almost 30 kg of carbon oxide. A Kyoto University led team are developing a
novel hydrogen plant design that can use biomass and solar energy and produce
very low carbon dioxide emissions. They capture sunlight using special mirrors
called heliostats that focus light onto receiver at the top of the tower
structure this can reach up to 1000°C. This heat is transferred from the
receiver into a gasifier where wood chips are intensely heated in the absence
of oxygen. Rather than burning by combustion the wood chips are converted into
a mixture of gases that contain a large proportion of hydrogen. The residue is
solid carbon.
Photo KyotoU/Shutaro Takeda
20/1/2022
Investment firms are buying up Welsh
Farms to grow trees on. Climeworks in Iceland is grabbing Carbon Dioxide from
the Air and sequestering it under ground. New research is coming out almost by
the day with new ideas and projects on how to store Carbon dioxide or grab it
from this process or that process. The big money is here in these Carbon Capture
Technology projects where huge amounts of money is to be won. Soon everyone
will need carbon capture credits to offset their business and with an ordinary
person needing several tens of hundreds of trees per year and companies needing
far, far more, the race is one for the investment companies to make their
millions making everyone else pay for their Carbon Capture Credits.
Photo Planting New Trees Philip M Russell
19/1/2022
To be fit for recycling plastic must be
at least 96% pure by its polymer type. This means that the plastic has to be
separated to an almost pure product in terms of chemical composition and only
then can it be recycled. Current systems are not as effective as one might
think. In collaboration with Vestforbrænding, Dansk Affaldsminimering Aps, and
PLASTIX, researchers from the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering
at Aarhus University have now developed a new camera technology that can see
the difference between 12 different types of plastics. The technology makes it
possible to separate plastics based on a purer chemical composition than is
possible today, and this opens up for completely new opportunities to recycle
plastics. The technology has been tested at pilot scale and is planned to be
implemented at PLASTIX and Dansk Affaldsminimering Aps in spring 2022.
Martin L. Henriksen et al.; "Plastic classification via in-line
hyperspectral camera analysis and unsupervised machine learning";
Vibrational Spectroscopy; Volume 118, January 2022, 103329
18/1/2022
Port of Newcastle is regional
Australia’s global gateway, north of Sydney, and has the deep channel and the
road and rail landside capacity to manage super-sized container ships.
With 4,400 ship movements per year, the Port of Newcastle is also rated as the
largest coal port in the world, exporting an average of 165 megatons of coal a
year. The Port of Newcastle has signed a deal with Iberdrola for a
retail power purchase agreement (PPA) that provides the port with large-scale
generation certificates (LGCs) linked to the 113 MW Bodangora wind farm near
Dubbo, New South Wales. Iberdrola additionally has the 190 MW Avonlie Solar Farm project near
Narrandera, in southern New South Wales, and is developing the 320 MW Port
Augusta Renewable Energy Park (PAREP) in South Australia. The AUD 500
million project will combine 210 MW of wind with 107 MW of solar to generate an
estimated 900 GWh of renewable energy annually, enough to power about 180,000
Australian households each year. Iberdrola also operates the 25 MW/52 MWh Lake Bonney battery energy
storage system in South Australia.
Photo https://www.portofnewcastle.com.au/
17/1/2022
Out
in Western Australia there are two laws. These are state laws and aboriginal
laws. One of the gas companies operating in Western Australia uses this
loophole to pay only a small amount of money to the national government and
because it’s oilfield and gas field is on aboriginal land it pays the natives
there to work for them to have facilities set up for them and this costs the
gas company millions of pounds less in Australian dollars. It’s a loophole that
they use so that they can produce large amounts of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases but not have to pay for these omissions. And the aboriginal
people are complaining because they are still laughing all the way to the bank.
It seems to Australia thinks it’s in a different situation for the rest of the
world when it comes to the future of energy production.
Photo Philip M Russell
16/1/2022
Could you manage on Refills? #justonebottle is a campaign to just try to use one bottle of something per year. Each time you run out then you take the bottle to the shop and refill from their large container. Does it work? Well you have to find somewhere near you that does this - I can’t. I can travel 5-10 miles to do this but the petrol expenditure and the carbon dioxide used would far far out weigh the savings. The cost of refills also seems to be higher than buying the original goods in their container. So until the cost of the container can be removed from the cost of the goods and there are lots more outlets doing this for a reasonable cost, then this idea is going to have limited take up.
Photo Philip M Russell
15/1/2022
Researchers at the University of
Sheffield have proposed a new scalable process to take calcium carbonate and
reacting it with aqueous sodium hydroxide at room temperature and pressure is
producing calcium hydroxide and sodium carbonate and no production of carbon
dioxide gas. This means of creating calcium hydroxide and by generating sodium
carbonate doesn’t produce any carbon dioxide gas. This system may be beneficial
for the decarbonisation of limestone but whether it can be adapted to cement
production on a large scale still waiting to be seen. The technology to produce
sodium hydroxide by electrolysis of seawater uses quite a lot of electricity.
But, this also generates a significant amount of toxic chlorine gas although
this is used in the chemical industry primary studies show that there may be a
significant surplus of chlorine produced. But one of the benefits of producing
sodium hydroxide in this way is the production of pure hydrogen.
Photo Pixabay
14/1/2022
The photodegradation of carbon-based
organic substances has been known for a long time but it’s been limited by very
long treatment times. Now students at KAUST have demonstrated that this
photodegradation treatment can be dramatically accelerated by the use of high
intensity light pulses generated from a xenon flash lamp. Organic micro
pollutants (OMP’s)which can be pharmaceutical chemicals hormones compounds in
personal care products and industrial chemical additives can be harmful with as
little as a few nanograms per litre and these have been continually released into
waterways by wastewater treatment plants the researchers have found that high
intensity pulse light allowed many of these OMPs to be decomposed at
extraordinary degradation rates the team is working to improve the systems
efficiency and throughput so that it can be scaled up for a full size treatment
works.
Photo KAUST; Hassan Tahini
13/1/2022
When
you don’t have much space for wind and solar and you have water which means
that you can’t bring in cables from other countries then countries like Japan
have turned to other means of trying to bolster their coal-fired power
stations. Japan is using ammonia mixed with the coal at power stations produce
a more efficient system. Burning ammonia produces no carbon dioxide however it
does produce large amounts of nitrogen oxides which is 298 times more powerful
a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The system uses ammonia which is made
from hydrogen and nitrogen. Most of the hydrogen comes from oil or gas and
requires a large amount of electricity to produce it. Used in steam turbines
which are only 38% efficient, this is probably one of the best green washing
explanations we have seen so far.
Photo JERA
12/1/2022
An
American company Rye Development, are intending to build a long duration
electrical storage project using a closed loop pumped hydropower system. This
is in Kentucky which is not known for its renewable energy generation. It has a
low amount of wind and solar power. One of the big problems with renewables is
energy storage and this company is proposing a water battery whereby large
volumes of water can easily be stored in a high-level reservoir and then
released into a low-level reservoir. When electricity is made and not used then
the extra electricity can be used to pump the water from the lower reservoir
into the higher reservoir typically at night wind the wind is blowing and the
demand is low. The company also plan to install significantly more solar and
wind farms. This is probably a good sign since Kentucky is one of those great
call orientated American states.
Image Rye Development
11/1/2022
The
Adani Group, owned by India's second richest man, has started to export high
quality, low sulfur coal form the
Carmichael mine, which it owns in Australia after successfully winning a
seven-year campaign to stop it exporting coal. The company hope to export 10
million tonnes of coal per year to India to feed its need for Coal, providing
up to 70% of the country's electricity. Australia will do well from the deal in
collecting significant taxes from the sales of the coal.
Photo David Maurice Smith/The New York Times/Redux
10/1/2022
On a windy day sea wind farms produced
more energy than can be used. On a calm day the demand is greater than the
supply. There is a need to somehow store the excess energy when it is produced
and store it so that it can be used on days when the demand is greater than the
supply. There are many projects working on this and ocean grazer is feasible
one. The Ocean Battery is a scalable, modular solution for utility
scale energy storage that is produced by renewable sources such as wind
turbines and floating solar farms at sea. Ocean Battery is a pumped hydro
system in a box that provides eco-friendly utility scale energy storage up to
GWh scale. The mechanism is based on hydro dam technology, that has proven
itself for over a century as highly reliable and efficient.
To store energy, the system pumps water
from the rigid reservoirs into the flexible bladders on the seabed. Now the
energy is stored as potential energy in the form of water under high pressure.
When there is demand for power, water flows back from the flexible bladders to
the low pressure rigid reservoirs. Driving multiple hydro turbines to generate
electricity. Photo Ocean Grazer BV
9/1/2022
Vattenfall
and Feenstra have launched a simple and affordable heat pump system that could
be an easy replacement for traditional gas central heating boilers. The
all-electric solution will first be rolled out in the Netherlands this year,
with the aim of introducing it to countries with a need for this type of
solution in the future. The similarities
between Dutch and British gas central heating mean these high temperature heat
pumps could be suitable for UK housing in suburban and rural areas. They could
enable households to swap out their existing gas boilers without needing to go
to the additional expense and disruption of changing the rest of their heating
system or installing additional insulation at the same time. Many homes in the
UK and the Netherlands are currently heated using a central heating boiler,
that uses natural gas to heat the water, which then flows through a network of
pipes and radiators. Alternatives such as an electric heat pump use electricity
to pump heat in from the outside air. The drawback with these devices is the
cooler water temperature, which usually sits between 45 and 55 degrees Celsius.
To allow these heat pumps to work at their most efficient, houses need to have
their insulation improved, underfloor heating fitted or the radiators adapted.
Gas boilers and the high temperature heat pump sit between 60 to 80 degrees
Celsius, meaning that these additional works are not required. This is the best
and most sensible solution that I have seen. Sign me up.
Photo Vattenhall
8/1/2022
There
is a well-known chemical reaction that has rocks are weathered or as water
erodes rocks that carbon dioxide is absorbed and it’s estimated that
approximately 1 Gt of carbon dioxide is absorbed every year by this natural
weathering process. Man-made pollution generates about 35 Gt of carbon dioxide
every year. Some researchers have proposed that if pulverised rock were put
into the sea this would simulate the natural weathering process and if this
process was scaled up significantly approximately hundred giga tons of carbon
dioxide could be sequestered every year. This could significantly reduce the
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and reverse global warming. But there
are problems. Although the initial chemical process is straightforward what is
unknown is about all the other factors. How would biodiversity be impacted
where would these minerals be deployed? How much would this process cost? Would
there be any unintended consequences to this action? And possibly the most
important question who would be responsible and pay for this project?
Photo Pixabay
7/1/2022
Researchers at the University of Wollongong (UOW) in New
South Wales, in collaboration with scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and the Australian National Fabrication Facility, have discovered a form of graphene, known as Edge
Functionalized Graphene (EFG), which is both highly conductive and processable,
and promises that it could improve both the cost and efficiency of lithium-ion
batteries. EFG which is found as nano-sized platelets could be used as a
valuable carbon additive for a variety of electrochemical devices. EFG
was initially discovered back in 2017, but researchers subsequently had to
determine what the material “actually is” in order to simplify the
manufacturing process. The new material should enable companies to
improve their battery materials’ electrical conductivity, and therefore improve
the quality. EFG is made by a simple and highly scalable production process
that yields this unique material.
Photo Pixabay
6/1/2022
Researchers at Oregon State University
have found that a new metal organic framework, that can be loaded with a common
industrial chemical propylene oxide can catalyse the production of cyclic
carbonates from the CO2 produced from factory flu gases. In this way carbon
dioxide can be harvested from many industrial chimneys. This new
three-dimensional lanthanide based metal organic framework produces these cyclic
carbonates from biogas, a mixture of carbon dioxide methane and other gases
which are found in the decomposition of organic matter. The material is in
organic - inorganic hybrid material made up from positively charged metal ions
surrounded by lanthanide metals and tetra carboxylate linkers. These linkers form a repeating structure that look
something like a cage and these nano-sized particles absorb gases like a
sponge. The new substance is very stable in water and at high temperatures
which makes it ideal for use in chemical chimneys. The carbonates that are
produced have a broad range of industrial applications including making polar
solvents and the precursors for making polycarbonate contact lenses and the
electrolytes in found in lithium batteries. So as well as removing the carbon
dioxide from the chimney useful products can be made. Photo Pixabay
5/1/2022
Most
of the countries are talking about or even starting to get rid of the coal
fired power stations China has just completed its first thousand megawatt power
station which is the biggest of its kind in China. The central government run
China energy investment Corporation said that this new power station is the
worlds most efficient with the lowest rates of coal and water consumption. This
is just the first of for such generating units that are being produced in the
Shandong province and will power various cities by long distance ultra high
voltage grids. Beijing has pledged to start reducing coal consumption after
2025 which will allow all their plans to considerably raise capacity further in
the next four years. China is expecting to see a 9% year-on-year increase and
China is responsible for more than half of the global coal-fired power
generation. So by 2025 China is expected to have added 150 GW of new coal fired
power stations bringing the total to 1230 GW power.
Photo Pixabay
4/1/2022
New
studies funded by NASA have found that emissions of carbon dioxide are being
absorbed by the southern ocean. In this process there is an up welding of cold
water from the deep ocean once at the surface this much colder but nutrient
rich water absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with the help of millions
of phytoplankton before sinking again and taking the carbon dioxide with it.
Computer model suggest that up to 40% of the human produced carbon dioxide in
the ocean worldwide is absorbed from the atmosphere into the southern ocean
making it one of the largest and most important carbon sinks on our planet. The
NASA studies have used airborne measurements since 2012 and over this time they
have seen a drop in carbon dioxide concentrations as the planes have descended
through the atmosphere. They have also detected high turbulence near the ocean
surface suggesting the exchange of gases. From the data they have worked out
more than 530 million metric tons of carbon is being absorbed by the southern
ocean.
Photo NASA
3/1/2022
Plans
are well underway for several rewilding projects in 2022. One of the most
interesting of these is to introduce some bison into Kent. Already too bison
Rangers have been appointed and four bison are due to be delivered early this
year. Plans are well underway for several rewilding projects in 2022. One of
the most interesting of these is to introduce some bison into Kent. Already two
bison Rangers have been appointed and the bison are due to be delivered early
this year. It is hoped that these large herbivores will knock down trees and
clear space for new plant growth and will aid the return of other species. Pigs
will also be brought in to turn over the ground to root up seeds which will
also bring in other endangered species. The introduction of the bison is
headline news since these creatures have not been in the UK for the best part
of 1000 years but there are other rewilding project going on such as
introducing wild oysters, and many farms are turning over less productive areas
into areas that can be restored to their natural state and attract more local
wildlife.
Photo Pixabay
2/1/2022
New research from Oxford Brookes University has found that the vertical
turbine design is far more efficient than traditional turbines in large scale
wind farms, and when set in pairs the vertical turbines increase each other’s
performance by up to 15%, unlike horizontal wind turbines that disrupt each
other if placed too close.
A research team from Oxford Brookes University led by Professor Iakovos
Tzanakis have undertaken an in-depth study using more than 11,500 hours of
computer simulations to show that wind farms can perform more efficiently by
substituting the traditional propeller type Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines
(HAWTs), for compact Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs).
This study shows that future wind farms should be vertical which
will increase the efficiency of the wind farm and also produce more
electricity. Using computational methods
they have shown that vertical wind turbines put together in an array the
front row facing the wind can convert 50% of the power of the wind and the back
row can successfully convert 25-30%
Photo Oxford Brookes University
1/1/2022
After a year on year rise, 2021 was the worst year for solar we have experienced since we started using Solar Panels 10 years ago. The 3 year moving poit average graph shows that the solar output took a dramatic dip this year. The weather was generally very cloudy here for much of the summer and we recorded the lowest sunshine figures for several months, only April being an above and well above month. But the point of the 3 year moving point average does still show an upward trend albeit with a dip or two which is expected with weather.
Photo Philip M Russell
Not the best year in this part of England View Data
New ways, New technology