In Barcelona, anyone passing by is invited to lend some stationary bike exertion to a cause—lighting a tree to create a true Christmas miracle. It’s a neat idea, if you believe it.
A new hydropower prototype from the University of Michigan could end up using even slower river and ocean currents to generate energy. VIVACE, which stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy, can generate power from as little as 2 knots, making it more useful than most turbine and water mill systems out there, which need an average of 5 to 6 knots to operate efficiently.
While energy issues tend to get a lot more media play, a perhaps even bigger challenge we’ll need to collectively deal with soon is the problem of potable water. Israeli company EWA is hoping to help nations with less fresh water resources get it inexpensively by turning humidity in the air into drinkable fluids. EWA, which stands for Extraction of Water from Air, uses a heat-based absorption system and a special energy saving condenser to suck moisture from the atmosphere and into reservoirs cleanly and efficiently.
Environmentalists who say we shouldn’t cut down the rainforest as it harbours potentially useful lifeforms are finally right: there’s an amazing fungus that can produce biodiesel better than any current methods. Gliocladium roseum was found in the Patagonian rainforest, as a by-product of antibiotics experiments. The scientists were amazed that the fungus was putting out a mist of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives. “This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances,” according to one professor, who added that G.roseum can even make fuels from cellulose. With a little genetic tweaking, the team think it’s possible the fungus could become an important green fuel source. [Physorg]
In another attempt to shrink our global footprint, the ECO Showerdrop encourages you to quit your bad habit of taking girly showers (a.k.a. unnecessarily long showers). Unlike the Eco_Drop Shower, which made you physically uncomfortable until you removed yourself from the shower, the ECO Showerdrop will beep, time you, and measure your water usage—basically guilt you—until you finally switch off that water. However, this device only begins the guilting process after you’ve hit the time limit you’ve set for yourself, which could make the saving water aspect to this gadget pointless if you set the limit to, let’s say, forever. [Nigel Eco Store via TreeHugger via Smart Planet]
My old office used to have those irritating IR-sensor lights, so if you were working late and popped out—say to the loo—for more than a few minutes, you’d be welcomed back to uninviting darkness: now you can have the same facility in your home thanks to Black&Decker’s LightsOut. Well, actually it’s quite a neat gizmo—it’s battery powered, and simply mounts directly over a light switch, which it then throws for you if it doesn’t detect movement in front of its sensor. Plus it turns the lights on when you enter. You can even change the “off” preset delay time, up to 30 minutes. Handy if you forget to switch the light off in your garage—like I often do. No word on pricing yet. [NewLaunches]
You would think that making your own Bio Diesel at home would be a tough, multi-stepped procedure that has a few dangerous spots to misstep. Well before the BioBot, a system that makes Bio Diesel from old cooking oil, you would have been right. Unfortunately, after the BioBot, you would have been right, too. Here is their simple, 8+ step process to make gas at home. And don’t worry, that chemistry beaker is just for show!
Winter is just around the corner and, with gas prices still unstable, it’s now even more important to monitor your thermostat. That’s tough and annoying though, which is why gadgets like Ecobee are coming out on the market. Ecobee has an integrated programmable smart thermostat with a WiFi-enabled touchscreen that automatically sets your household to conserve energy at the press of a button. galleryPost('ecobee', 3, '');
Look, I’m no engineer. That’s just not what I do. But these rough schematics of a high five power generator, which we see could fuel an entire sandwich shop, look pretty solid to me. After all, who couldn’t use an extra high five to get them through the day? And who doesn’t like a delicious sandwich? This one-two punch of sustainable happiness could usher in a better tomorrow. Though if such high fiving technology were to fall into the wrong hands…may God help us all. Concept by [Cunning] .
University of Calgary scientists are working on a machine that would pull carbon dioxide from the air in an attempt to scrub out emissions from diffuse sources, such as car exhaust and home heating. These “diffuse emissions” account for roughly half of the CO2 that goes up into the sky every day, contributing to global warming.
