Category Energy & Environment

January 27, 2013This is one of the items which sees a future with very little spare time in households, where everything will have to be faster. Also, it foresees the tendency of the urban gardens where people grow their food in the city they live in. It also saves water, which is a serious problem in many countries right now.

Believe it or not, but there is a growing problem with getting clean, drinkable freshwater in many parts of the world. Through a combination of human activities and climate change, many predict that a serious global water crisis will soon be upon us.For this reason, researchers are looking for solutions to create freshwater artificially.

Are you passionate about protecting the environment? Then a career in environmental engineering might be your calling.Read on to find out what environmental engineers do, how the field is linked to sustainability, and how to become one.What is environmental engineering?Environmental engineering is a branch of civil engineering primarily concerned with managing the supply of water and mitigating the adverse effects of environmental issues, like pollution.

December 28, 2013 Image Source: Youtube The modern world is starving for energy which drives many scientists to widen the search of energy sources, including and unusual ones. Lei Zuo from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University discovered some sort of unusual energy source while traveling on a train.

A Microgrid is a group of energy sources located in the same local area that is in turn connected into the national grid while also being able to disconnect from it and operate independently, for example in the event of an electricity outage. Microgrids usually consist of distributed generation sources, particularly renewable energy generators such as solar panels and wind turbines, usually accompanied by some form of energy storage device, invariably a battery or bank of batteries.

The Smog-Free Tower filters out the smog in the surrounding air to create a healthier cities. The dutch designed tower has already been used in cities across the globe.January 27, 2018Smog and air pollution are notorious problems in various cities around the world. Just to name a few, places like Mexico City, Beijing, Cairo, and Krakow suffer from a large blanket smog.

In a bid to increase efficiency and reduce costs, wind turbine developers have produced a number of interesting, and perhaps radical, designs for new turbines, as well as further developed the capabilities of conventional models. This pattern of innovation has examined areas such as materials design, aerodynamics, rotor size and form, and durability.

Smart meters will increasingly replace conventional gas and electricity meters as national grids become more flexible, efficient and adaptable to renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar. They offer a wealth of intelligent functions including the ability to inform consumers how much energy they are using, via a display installed in their home.

By Robin WhitlockNovember 29, 2015Bioethanol plant at Seal Sands, Teeside, UK Image source:Nick Bramhall, Flickr Renewable energy from biomass is now a key component of renewable energy development worldwide. The fuel used for this process, known as feedstocks, consist of lignocellulosic biomass, that is to say plants with a complex structure containing polymers of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin.

Over the last 50 years or so our homes have increasingly been stuffed with all manner of updated technological gadgets and appliances, ranging from smartphones and tablets through to Hi-Fi systems, gaming consoles and computers and laptops as well as smarter models of everyday appliances such as ovens, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers.

EU flag Image source:Yanni Koutsomitis, Flickr The European Energy Unionis a plan to bring about a transition, in Europe, to a low-carbon economy. At present, ageing infrastructure, poorly integrated markets and uncoordinated policies are holding back this aim, denying important benefits, such as increased choice or lower energy prices, to consumers, households and businesses.

Solar hot air balloon at the 2015 Bristol Balloon Fiesta Image source:Bristol Balloon Fiesta Solar power isn& 39;t only being used for solar farms, solar PV arrays and solar thermal heating systems. There are an amazing number of uses solar power can serve, so here is just a few of them.Air conditioningAir conditioning systems can be operated by solar power through passive solar, solar thermal energy and solar PV.

Printable electric circuits Image source:Wikimedia Commons The US solar cells manufacturer, Triton Solar, has just signed a $100 million agreement to open a manufacturing facility in the Indian state of Karnataka, aiming to start production at the site from August 2016. The company announced the decision on 14th December, having already, in April, planned to construct a facility in Madhya Pradesh.

Wind energy engineer Kurt Myers Image source:Idaho National Laboratory As many people around the world now know, the British government is currently involved in a ‘demolition job’, dismantling its renewable energy sector. For a government that has expressed its desire to generate prosperity in the country and resolve the deficit, this is bizarre, for the simple reason that, compared to fossil fuels, renewable energy generation creates more jobs, and that means greater prosperity, higher levels of consumption and generally all-round good news for the economy.

By Robin WhitlockDecember 29, 2015A year ago, in November 2014, a consortium of companies and organisations in The Netherlands constructed a ‘solar cycle path’ called SolaRoad in Krommenie, in the province of North Holland. Thus far, some countries in the world have focused mostly on installing solar panels along the sides of roads or, in the case of one South Korean highway, over the top of a cycle path running between the two carriageways.

According to an article published by Fire Safety Science, the peer-reviewed publication of the International Association of Fire Safety Science, one of the major challenges faced by the global wind energy industry is the tendency of wind turbines to catch fire, a problem that the article claims is not being fully reported.

Image source:Flickr Renewable energy is expensiveMany critics claim that clean energy technologies are too expensive, some of them pointing to subsidies as the main cause. For example, an article in The Economist magazine in January 2014 claimed that countries with large amounts of renewable energy, such as Denmark and Germany, endure the highest electricity bills in the world and that in Britain electricity from wind farms costs twice as much as that from conventional sources.

Providing baseload power from renewable sources to further increase renewable energy is challenging but it can be achieved. This is how.A common criticism of renewable energy is that because it is intermittent it requires backup power from conventional energy technologies based on fossil fuels such as natural gas.

The Tyseley waste-to-energy plant in Birmingham Image source:Elliott Brown, Flickr In many countries around the world, including several western states, the electricity grid is antiquated, with technology that goes back to the time of Thomas Edison. This means that the global electricity sector has to find new ways in which to supply power, particularly in a way that avoids the emission of harmful greenhouse gases that cause climate change or causes harmful air pollution or other adverse environmental impacts.

PC desktop Image source:Sarah, Flickr ComputersFor many people, energy efficiency has become a particularly important consideration when buying a new computer, but how much energy do computers actually use and what can you do to reduce consumption?If you leave your computer temporarily, for 20 minutes or more, switching off the monitor will really help to save energy.