What a Great Vintage of Hydrogen You Have

October 09, 2009

Over the summer, Penn State scientists developed a microbial fuel cell in the lab that uses bacteria to desalinate waste water and generate electricity, methane, or hydrogen. Now the method is taking root in wine country.

When the Napa Wine Company heard about environmental engineering professor Bruce Logan's research, they thought the waste water from their operations could be ideal for a larger-scale experiment. Logan's impressive reactor arrived at their winery last month (video), was inoculated, and is now in the preliminary stages of hydrogen production.

"The nice thing about hydrogen is it's a very clean fuel," Logan told me. "You can put it in a fuel cell." Ultimately he thinks the hydrogen could even be used to power machinery at the winery, although for now it's simply being vented. If all goes well, imagine waste water treatment plants becoming super-efficient power plants that make commercially-processed hydrogen. Being such a fan of useful bacteria, my hope is that Logan's method opens new doors for energy production at agricultural sites. Cheers, little guys!

Photo: Professor Logan with the reactor. Credit: Courtesy of Bruce Logan.

Superscanner is Superfast and Superfriendly

October 02, 2009

About a month ago, the University of Nottingham got the world's most advanced CT scanner with X-ray and 3-D imaging capabilities. Since then, scientists there have been loading all kinds of things into the machine.

Sacha Mooney, an associate professor in soil physics at the 
University of Nottingham, engaged an interdisciplinary group at the university to get the Nanotom scanner made by General Electric's Sensing and Inspection Technologies. I wondered why this was such a big deal. Can't you just put soil and other materials in a hospital scanner?

Mooney says that's exactly what he used to do earlier in his career, when the local hospital let him scan soil after hours. But the resolution wasn't high enough to see microstructures. Meanwhile, high-res scanners require small samples, meaning the materials have to be cut apart first. Larger-scale 3-D scanners exist but can take hours per scan, Mooney says. The Nanotom can do the two-stage scanning process in mere minutes.

The photobooth-sized scanner has enough space to accommodate a sample up to about the size of a one-liter bottle. Mooney says that one of the chaps from the Built Environment school is planning to scan sustainable materials to find out how well they perform, including heat retention.

The scanner can also illuminate how different soils and seeds bred to be drought-resistant interact. "We can actually see the water inside the plant," Mooney says. "We can almost watch roots growing in the soil."

The scientists are even working with a chocolate company that's interested in what causes their product to shrink and crack. Soil is great and all, but if you ask me what merits a superscanner, it's definitely chocolate science.

Images: The scanner shows a worm's eye view of a root (top) and the inside of a candy bar (bottom). Courtesy of Sacha Mooney.

Eating Dinner From the Future

September 30, 2009

I joked about becoming a stowaway when the Waterpod, an eco-art-science barge touring New York City this summer, came to Queens. Turns out the crew was serious about hospitality, and it included a taste of the future.

This week, on the Waterpod's final day open to the public, I went to find out how the project had gone. My plan was to meet Waterpod mastermind Mary Mattingly, look around, take notes, and peace out. Then she kindly invited me to stay for dinner with the remaining crew. It's hard to say no to ripe vegetables from vines at your fingertips.

Gathered in the well-used kitchen, co-curator Ian Daniel and graywater specialist Andrew Carter contemplated post-barge living. Mattingly prepared a giant yellow squash to go on the rocket stove and reflected on how she'd adjusted the experimental ecosystem.

"I think there's a confidence about [the] ability to be self-sustaining that I have now, and a lot of people who come on board do," she said before we all dug into brown rice, seasoned cooked squash, and spicy marinated eggplant, tomato, and green pepper salad. If rising ocean levels force us to figure out how to float, it might not be an entirely bad thing. Especially if the food tastes like this.

For more, check out the audio slideshow:

Photo: Mary Mattingly rocks the rocket stove. Credit: Alyssa Danigelis.

ADDITIONAL COVERAGE

Waterpod Project Website

Blog: Waterpod People Take Manhattan

TreeHugger: Waterpod Demonstrates Self-Sufficient, Sustainable Living

New York Times: Life, Art and Chickens, Afloat in the Harbor

Wide Angle: Arming Soybeans Against Pests

September 28, 2009

To a soybean plant, an aphid is a lot like a mosquito. What if we could help soybean plants fight back...and win? Scientists in Iowa might have found a way that doesn't involve pesticides.

W. Allen Miller, a professor of plant pathology at Iowa State University, and his colleague, entomology professor Bryony Bonning, have been studying a plant virus that aphids eat but just passes through them. The scientists are working on adding a gene to soybeans with the protein coat from the virus attached to an aphid toxin, so that when aphids feed on the plant, they die. The gene wouldn't affect humans.

"Something else could feed on the plant and they would not be targeted by this," Miller says. "It would be a very specific resistance approach." The scientists have preliminary data but need to do more control experiments to prove that their technique works.

In Iowa, soybean crops lost to aphids could top $250 million if nothing is done, according to research from the university. Iowa's soybean growers already shell out more than $65 million annually for pesticides, which can also kill aphids' natural predators.

"The last few years there have been crop dusters flying around," Miller says. "The only reason is the soybean aphids. If you had plants that are resistant, you wouldn’t have to do this."

Photo: Beyond bug spray--Students get swarmed with soybean aphids on the ISU campus. Credit: Logan Gaedke for Iowa State Daily.

GET MORE OF THE WIDE ANGLE
It's all about the genes:

News: Genetic Science Hub

Video: Genetic Test for Embryos

Top 10: Promising Gene Therapies

Blog: Engineering Law-Friendly Hemp

HowStuffWorks: Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Wipe Out Malaria?

Chicken Surprise: Feather Meal Biodiesel

July 22, 2009

You already know that Americans eat a lot of chicken, but what are we doing with the 11 billion pounds of poultry waste we produce? Scientists from the University of Nevada have developed a new process to turn some of it into biodiesel.

Professor Mano Misra and his team at the University of Nevada took chicken feather meal, extracted fat from it at high temperatures, and turned that into biodiesel. Usually the meal--an appetizing mixture of feathers, blood, and innards--is used for nitrogen-rich fertilizer and animal feed. By removing the fat for biodiesel first, the researchers say that the leftovers are even more valuable for feed and fertilizer.

Based on America's collective appetite for chicken, the researchers estimate in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that the meal has the potential to produce 153 million gallons of biodiesel annually, 593 million globally. It's a drop in the barrel compared to the amount of crude oil we import daily, but if we're going to eat so much chicken we might as well use every last piece.

Photo Credit: Noël Zia Lee.

Is It Toxic? Bio-Strips Could Tell Us Now

July 13, 2009

Most planet-minded folks are used to saving electronic versions instead of printing or, better yet, using an application that makes a chainsaw sound for every print job. But Canadian researchers just developed a potentially life-saving kind of printout.

Chemist John Brennan and his colleagues at McMaster University in Ontario came up with a way to print toxin-detecting biosensors on paper. Designed almost like a pregnancy test, a thin film of the enzyme--deep breath--acetylcholinesterase is deposited over a layer of ink made from silica nanoparticles. Put a drop of questionable toxins on the paper and, presto, the color changes depending on how toxic the sample is.

A bio-sensitive strip can be made for around 25 cents now, according to Brennan, although he hopes the price will go even lower. He also estimates that it could take between two to three years for the strips to be commercialized. The sensors could be a fast and inexpensive way to detect food-based toxins, poisons, and some insecticides, especially in areas of the world that don't have ready access to bio assays for involved testing. While the eco-freak in me ponders paper alternatives, this is clearly not something you'd want to recycle. However, Brennan does report that the strips can be incinerated.

Photo: Printing paper-based biosensors sound the alarm. Credit: McMaster University.

Wide Angle: Dumb Appliances Get Schooled

July 08, 2009

General Electric, with help from energy management startup Tendril, just announced that it will start selling smart appliances this year. This heralds an end to paying overtime for appliances that already clocked out.

What in the name of microwave lasagna does this actually mean? It means that the world's largest company is going to make refrigerators, washers, water heaters, dishwashers, and microwaves embedded with technology that allows utility companies to communicate with them. Your refrigerator will be able to talk to a smart electric meter that's also in touch with the local utility.

To avoid brownouts, or even blackouts during peak hours, utilities will be able to ask your appliances to power down slightly or even delay a wash cycle for a little while. Mindful that this might freak some people out, the appliances have override options. According to Tendril, these demand response appliances will save consumers hundreds of millions of dollars yearly. Now if they could just build a fridge that shouts warnings about eating too much ice cream.

Photo: Prepare for cheaper electric bills. Credit: Mike DelGaudio.

Agribike Sends Seeds to Spinning Class

June 26, 2009

Just when I thought I'd seen one of the best bike inventions ever--the bicilavadora--another group of students has come up with one that turns agricultural labor into a fun ride.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, drought-resistant sorghum and millet are choice food staples. The problem: threshing the seeds from the stalk or "panicle" is a work-intensive process, requiring women and children to beat the grains with a giant mortar and pestle for hours every day in order to produce just enough to eat. A team of home-schooled high school students from Bridgewater, New Jersey, created a better way.

The Teen Technology Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam--a 501(c)(3)--worked with Jeff Dahlberg, a research director for the National Sorghum Producers to build a simple human-powered threshing machine that beats the stick hands down. The students were inspired by the rotating brushes inside a vacuum cleaner. A stationary bike component rotates a thresher drum, which is dotted with pegs that effectively shear the seeds from the panicle. Air blows through, sending the lighter material up and the heavier seeds down through a chute into a bucket.

Initial results were great: the bike produced 13 kilograms per hour compared to the traditional method's five. And it required far less energy to operate, too. Eleventh-grader David Schmidt told me at EurekaFest that the team is thinking about how the bike, which cost roughly $100 to build, could be made from indigenous materials. "You don't need [these] pedals," he says. "You could use wood."

Here's a short video I shot that shows it in action:

Photo: Pedals Pass the Pestle. Credit: Alyssa Danigelis.

Wide Angle: Meet the Captain

June 24, 2009

The microbiologist Dickson Despommier has been called a trailblazer in the medical ecology field. You might know this soon-to-be emeritus professor best for his work on vertical urban farm planning--an idea that grew 10 years ago from his students' frustration with the limits of rooftop gardening to feed city-dwellers.

Despommier spoke to me about his cool job from Portland, Oregon, where he's speaking at the city's Summer Sustainability Series. Here are the highlights:

What are you working on now?

The Vertical Farm Project has grown to the point now where it’s consuming every waking moment of my life. I’m in the process now of trying to build one. We’ve been invited by Jordan and Qatar to explore the possibility of establishing an experimental versions of vertical farming in both of those countries, and I’m going over there in another week.

Wheat Lovers Declare War on Plant Plague

March 17, 2009

While many are tippling beer today--in honor of St. Patrick's Day or just because--wheat producers and agricultural experts around the world are engaged in a fight to the finish against an insidious opponent.

Stem rust, specifically the mutating Ug99 variety first discovered in Uganda in 1999, is a nasty fungus that binds to wheat plants and kills them. Ug99 has spread quickly in the wind and now affects many countries in Africa and parts of southwest Asia. Unless something is done, it is likely to wreak more havoc.

Scientists from 40 countries are gathering in Mexico City this week to collaborate on containing and defeating the fungus. "A global food crisis is still a distinct possibility if governments and international institutions fail to support this rescue mission," warns 94-year-old agronomist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, who spearheaded the conference. Hope for hops is on the horizon: An international group of scientists has been deploying an Ug99-resistant crossbred wheat variety to farmers through a global shuttling program. Farmers in India are already planting resistant wheat as a precaution. Cheers to that.

Photo: Stem rust on a plant. Credit: Borlaug Global Rust Initiative.