Discovery News: Sustainable

Unblocking the Chi...In Your Computer Screen

One of the sharp minds behind the $100 Laptop is now turning her sights to uber-efficient computer screens, coming to a laptop near you next year. Mary Lou Jepsen spoke with MIT's Technology Review this week about why she left the One Laptop per Child project and how to pronounce her new for-profit startup, Pixel Qi. She also explains that the screens use a reflector behind the LCD grid to reflect ambient light, reducing the need for backlighting.

Curious about the promise of a much more efficient laptop screen--the typical laptop uses about 145 kilowatt hours annually in standby mode alone--I asked Jepsen what we can expect from Pixel Qi's LCD screens, which will go into low-power laptops.

"The energy efficiency for the screens is dramatic," she writes. "Using these screens we can lower the power consumption of the laptop by as much as 10 times. Alternatively, the battery life between charges can be prolonged by as much as 10 times." No wonder she's smiling--that's some serious energy savings.

Image: A sunny outlook: Mary Lou Jepsen (right) demonstrates how a sunlight readable screen compares to a normal laptop screen at left. Credit: Courtesy Pixel Qi.

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

A nice green lawn: it says, "We're OK, really," it helps sell houses, and it can be a doozie to maintain. If you're seeing leaves fall and have already put the heat on, save this post for spring. You might want it when a local government offers to buy your lawn to conserve water.

Suburban glory is tough stuff. A recent article on Cleantechblog looks at how home lawn care is becoming everybody's business because of the environmental toll. Fresno, California, is offering to pay around $10 a square foot for lawns in exchange for signed promises not to waste water on them. A new law in Minnesota restricts fertilizer use on lawns to prevent the chemicals from wreaking havoc with local water ecosystems and similar legislation is being considered in Canada. Article author Paul O'Callaghan, a cleantech consultant, also points to the boom in sales of genetically-modified grass, which does address several key problems. But it's also deeply controversial.

Scouring the news didn't turn up much in terms of clear advancements or solutions. Instead, while I keep looking, here's an oldie but goodie from organic lawn care enthusiast Paul Wheaton called Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy. Maybe it is possible to be green and have green grass, too. As many of you already know, I don't have a lawn, but Wheaton's classic how-to is still an entertaining and useful read for those who do. Which reminds me, the house plants could use some water...

Photo Credit: Frédéric Dupont.

Charge It: What Goes Around Comes Around

While not technically a new idea, the effort to create a system that enables electric vehicles to be a useful part of the grid is getting traction at the University of Michigan. If all goes according to plan, cars will give back energy instead of just guzzling it.

Power plants tend to be solid when it comes to generating juice, but they're not so great at storing the stuff. The UMich approach is called "vehicle-to-grid integration" and the plan is something like this: plug-in hybrid vehicles (which hit the market within the next few years) with specialized powertrain systems will be plugged into the grid, providing useful storage during excess electricity production. Then, during peak periods, the vehicles will put power back into the system.

The scientists plan for the vehicle-to-grid arrangement to work with renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. With a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, I'll expect them to come up with gold. (For more on cleaner power, check out my fellow bloggers Andy and Chris over at PowrTalk.) Meanwhile, the University of Delaware has also been doing vehicle-to-grid research and development through a dedicated consortium. Here's a short video that shows what they've been able to do (warning: for mega-geeks only and, yes, that's a compliment):

Image Credit: Ed Tarwinski.

The Air Scrubber: Better Than Trees?

Oooh Canada! First they introduce us to Mounties, Hockey Night, and Dan Aykroyd. Now they bring us a giant machine that promises to get sneaky carbon dioxide out of the air. You might be thinking, "Hey, isn't that called a tree?" Sadly, we're beyond trees. Fortunately, University of Calgary professor David Keith and his fellow researchers are on the case.

The machine is fairly simple, using a system that captures CO2 with sodium hydroxide, better known as lye. The CO2 can then be extracted and from there, stored--an approach that isn't without its problems--but it's a start. Capturing carbon dioxide from the air is crucial because that's where the majority of greenhouse gases produced from transportation sources end up. Keith's machine isn't the only one in development, but it was tested successfully.

Keith says that the tower captured 20 tons of CO2 on a square meter of the scrubbing material during the course of a year, which is about how much an American produces in the same amount of time. The machine is also necessarily energy-efficient. For more on Keith's work, check out the Discovery Channel's Project Earth series, which features the project. The researchers emphasize that they're still working on the machine, although I'm not sure the Asthma Alley where I live can wait much longer for the commercial version.

Image: "Hey CO2, need a ride?" David Keith with the 2008 air scrubber tower. Credit: David Keith's homepage.

String Cheese to the Rescue!

What serendipity. It's not every day that I get to write about two of my favorite things: green technology and cheese. That's right: Kraft is converting two cheese plants in New York state so that they can make energy out of leftover whey.

Plants in Lowville and Campbell will employ "digesters" (a system that uses bacteria, not actual people...or cows) to turn whey into biogas. Prior to this, Kraft had consolidated the extra whey and carted it offsite so that it could be used for things like animal feed or fertilizer. But that's still expensive to do and requires fuel. Making energy onsite is pretty smart. The Environmental News Network reports that the move is part of an overall effort by Kraft to reduce waste and energy use in their facilities.

Now, before you accuse me of getting swept up in something that could be viewed as green-washing (or, cheese-washing?), I'm not letting Kraft off the hook entirely. The company has long used milk from cows that have been injected with growth hormone--a controversial practice. Although, to its credit, the company has been making moves to produce hormone-free cheese, which would definitely give me something to smile about.

Photo: A Kraft classic. Credit: Stephen Boisvert.

Giving Trash-Talk A Good Name

In recent months I've strayed from covering tech art, but a recent artistic project in New York deserves recognition for trying to engage normally-jaded New Yorkers like myself in environmental protection. As a Discovery Channel video reported recently, an artist named Adrian recently set about putting curbside trash in giant colorful and biodegradable bags.

Usually I find myself recoiling in horror from the trash piles lining the streets on a regular basis -- stinky mountains of who knows what that make perfect homes for rat families and freakishly large bugs. Not only are the trash bags colorful and labeled with the project's website, but they are naturally scented and contain natural bug-repellent as well. The idea being if we suddenly notice all these trash piles and stop recoiling, we can do something about them.

Image: Discovery

Glaciers Melting? Rubber Duckies To the Rescue!

Scientists wondering exactly what's going on with glaciers melting in Greenland recently decided to enlist some help from familiar bathtime toys and strangers. Alberto Behar, an engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and specializing in arctic ice research, has sent rubber duckies on an important mission.

Last month, according to Reuters, Behar flew in a helicopter to Greenland's fastest moving glacier, the Jakobshavn Glacier, set a probe into a watery tunnel in the glacier (similar to the one at left) and released 90 ducks. Each duck has an email address and "reward" in several languages printed on it. Rather than containing sophisticated equipment, the ducks will hopefully tell Behar and his fellow scientists how melting water moves through the ice, depending on where they are found. The Jakobshavn Glacier could end up causing significant increases in the ocean's level as it melts. The more scientists know about how these land-based glaciers work, especially as they move out to the sea during the summer, the more they can figure out what to expect in the future.

While Behar has yet to hear from someone who has come across a yellow duckie, which might end up in Baffin Bay, the probe might be more instructive. The probe is equipped with sensors to track the glacier's location, speed, and temperature. I'd feel better about the ducks if they had tracking devices (see SnoMotes), but here's hoping they're all found. In the meantime, the Jakobshavn won't be traveling alone.

Image: A NASA glacial probe goes into an arctic tunnel. Credit: NASA/JPL.

More Adventures With Plastic-Eating Bacteria

When it comes to bacteria, there's the good, the bad, and the ugh. Fortunately, scientists around the world are working on ways to enlist bacterial help in green technology. A crew from University College Dublin in Ireland has devised a way to put bacteria to use in recycling plastic into better quality versions than the lowly PET we're used to.

You might remember the astute Canadian student who got bacteria to eat plastic, although the jury is still out on how much the bugs will truly chug. Using a different approach, New Zealander Matthew Darby made the mother of all toasty machines to recycle previously-unrecyclable plastic.

One of the big problems with plastic recycling is that the end result is polyethylene terephthalate--a fairly low-grade plastic that isn't as desired as polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA, a biodegradable plastic that's kind of the Prius of the plastic world. But PHA is expensive to make. Microbiologist Kevin O’Connor and his team came up with a process that sounds a little like alchemy at first, but should work.

O'Connor's group heated PET to break it down into a gas, a liquid, and a solid. From there, they grabbed some Pseudomonas putida, which were partial to the plastic at a local bottling plant in Dublin. Sure enough, the bacteria took a liking to O'Connor's snack and turned the solid--terephthalic acid--into PHA. The other byproducts will be burned as a heat source to make more of the stuff. While it won't outright solve our plastic problems, this process should encourage more recycling and open up new markets. Give that bacteria some props along with the PET.

Photo: An igloo of plastic bottles in Seattle. Credit: Flickr user P.C. Loadletter.

Stocking the Noah's Ark of Seeds and Beyond

Economic tremors, natural disasters, international tensions, and global warming all make me wish I lived closer to Norway. It's not just because I love the cold, but that's where a doomsday seed vault has been built to store millions of seeds from around the world so the last humans standing have a chance at growing food.

Now the same folks behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which I first read about in the New Yorker last year, are turning their attention to crop resilience and diversity. After all, what good are seeds if they aren't hearty enough to make it? The Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international organization based in Rome and dedicated to preserving crop diversity, is now setting out on what has to be a fascinating journey around the world to identify the Marines of the seed world.

As crop diversity declines, so do the ready reserves of genebanks, which are supposed to preserve seed samples. The Trust aims to replenish at-risk collections and, while they're at it, identify seeds that exhibit desired traits, such as resistance to drought, high temperatures, and salty conditions. "We seek, as a matter of urgency, to rescue threatened crop collections and better understand and conserve crop diversity," executive director Cary Fowler, said in a release about the endeavor. Whatever strong seeds the Trust finds, I just hope they seal them up well...and preferably in something waterproof.

Photo: Seed pods. Credit: Flickr user ms.Tea.

A Farming System Worth Its Salt

With horrible news hitting my screen every day (Wall Street--hello? Houston, you still there?), I am increasingly grateful for hopeful developments. One recent find is an innovative approach to farming in salty areas from Associate Professor Greg Leslie at the University of New South Wales.

Around the world, clean fresh water is quickly becoming a precious commodity. Farmers attempting to grow crops in drought-prone regions, especially in areas that abut salt water, frequently struggle with brackish water as their only ready irrigation source.

Leslie, who works with membrane technology and science, came up with a system that employs reverse osmosis membrane "windows" around plant roots. These windows prevent salt from damaging the roots while letting water in, providing irrigation from otherwise unusable water. The plant roots do all the work by sucking the water through, eliminating the need for an energy-intensive desalination process. So far, the system has been successfully employed with common plants and Leslie expects it to be commercialized in the next few years.

UNSW has a video that shows exactly how the process works. The music is a bit much, but it doesn't take away from the membrane's potential:

Photo: A farm in New South Wales. Credit: Flickr user Fastskybus.