Gizmodo Australia » clean

Grope the Medigenic Keyboard All You Want, This Sucker’s Built to Get Dirty

Andi Wang — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:00:13 +0000

Designed to withstand hospital-grade disinfectants, extreme wipe-downs and an array of killer diseases, these Medigenic infection-control keyboards are equipped with a few tricks for simple sanitary lockdowns.

If you’ve ever looked under or between the keys of your keyboard, you’d probably find a collection of sunflower seed shells, hair, toenail clippings and boogers—just think of all the bacteria those can trap. Now just imagine all the semen, blood, urine, excrement, vomit, mucus and chemicals a hospital keyboard could be hiding. The $US140 Medigenc comes with a completely sealed body and tough exterior that won’t trap bacteria and will allow you to clean it with super strong disinfectants. There’s also a single button you can push that will “lockdown” all the keys so you can rub the keyboard down without sending out any e-mails that say, “SKDFJ#$%^&(@&#;@SDFJOIQOIERY(!I)_*&#;YUHEJFKDNFKJAOID OPO{PKLSF!!!!” Moreover, for those who are nostalgic for old hospital technology, the Medigenic outfitted with a silk-screened 3D keyboard design that is sure to give you that vintage, older-than-life feel. [Medigenic via OhGizmo via BBG]

Solvatten Solar Jerrycan Purifies Water Using Nothing But Sunshine

Elaine Chow — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Providing clean water is an integral part to any effort to raise third-world living standards. Solvatten, a Swedish-designed water purifier, does its job using nothing but a couple of hours in the sun.

The Solvatten looks like a standard jerrycan sliced in half and divided into two 5 liter compartments, each of which has a clear face. The two chambers are exposed to sunlight, which naturally heats the water to a pathogen-killing temperature of roughly 54° C. An indicator changes from red to green when the water is safe to drink.

The whole process takes about 3 to 4 hours when its sunny, and 5 to 6 when it’s cloudy. While that’s not perhaps the fastest way to cure water, the amount of resources it saves compared to boiling over gas stoves makes it ideal for making sure some clean H2O will be on hand later. [Treehugger]

WaterMill Automagically Pulls Clean Drinking Water from Thin Air

Kit Eaton — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:47:00 +0000

A bit like Dean Kamen’s miraculous water distiller, only not quite so fancy or miraculous, is the WaterMill drinking water collector. It’s basically a clever dehumidifier that collects airborne water and filters and purifies it with an ultraviolet steriliser, providing you with up to 12 litres of water per day. And before you start thinking your home air is going to be all dry and uncomfy, it is actually designed to hang outside your house and inhale water from there, streaming it to where it’s needed inside: like your in-fridge chilled water dispenser. It’s due out February 2009, and though unit pricing’s not known, it’ll cost you about 11 cents per day to run. Or you can just drink tap water. [Product via Geekologie]

‘Clean Coal’ No Longer Oxymoron at New Power Plant

Wilson Rothman — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:30:00 +0000

Maybe you’ve heard the plans for “clean coal” (aka carbon capture and storage), a technology that collects carbon-dioxide exhaust from formerly high-polluting power plants, condensing and freezing it for storage in depleted natural-gas fields. This month, energy provider Vattenfall fired up the CO2 collection process at a plant in Spremberg (”Call Us ‘Spermberg’ and Die”) Germany. The plant’s transition is making green-energy history, but as you can imagine, some kinks still need to be worked out.

The Spremberg plant is tiny by most standards, pumping out just 30 megawatts while many plants can pull off 10 times that output. Even so, compressing and chilling the CO2 can be a real energy drain in and of itself, so the efficiency of the plant is seriously compromised by the green initiative.

Still it is worth tweaking the basic system for enhanced efficiency, as Vattenfall says that the system can theoretically gather up to 98% of the CO2 produced by the plant, making it nearly pollutant free.

Critics say that this is just a diversion from investing resources in truly non-polluting technologies. While I tend to lean with those critics, I am a fan of clean coal because the US uses so much coal to produce electricity for cities. Still, I’m not 100% clear on the whole pumping-greenhouse-gases-into-the-earth thing. I know it gets sealed away in places that previously contained massive amounts of natural gas, but still, isn’t anyone concerned that this is just set up for massive CO2 geysers in decades or centuries to come? There, I said it—science nerds, please feel free to bludgeon me with the Stick of Enlightenment. [Technology Review; Vattenfall]