A team of chemical engineers at the University of Arkansas has developed a method for converting common algae into butanol, a renewable fuel that can be used in existing combustible engines. The green technology benefits from and adds greater value to a process being used now to clean and oxygenate U.S. waterways by removing excess nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer in runoff.

Algae growth is enhanced by delivering high concentrations of carbon dioxide through hollow fiber membranes that look like long strands of spaghetti. The algae are grown on trough screens.

The researchers harvest the algae every five to eight days by vacuuming or scraping it off the screens. After waiting for it to dry, they crush and grind the algae into a fine powder as the means to extract carbohydrates from the plant cells. Carbohydrates are made of sugars and starches. For this project, Hestekin’s team works with starches. They treat the carbohydrates with acid and then heat them to break apart the starches and convert them into simple, natural sugars. They then begin a unique, two-step fermentation process in which organisms turn the sugars into organic acids — butyric, lactic and acetic.

The second stage of the fermentation process focuses on butyric acid and its conversion into butanol. The researchers use a unique process called electrodeionization, a technique developed by one of Hestekin’s doctoral students. This technique involves the use of a special membrane that rapidly and efficiently separates the acids during the application of electrical charges. By quickly isolating butyric acid, the process increases productivity, which makes the conversion process easier and less expensive.

Butanol has several significant advantages over ethanol, the current primary additive in gasoline. Butanol releases more energy per unit mass and can be mixed in higher concentrations than ethanol. It is less corrosive than ethanol and can be shipped through existing pipelines. These attributes are in addition to the advantages gleaned from butanol’s source. Unlike corn, algae are not in demand by the food industry. Furthermore, it can be grown virtually anywhere and thus does not require large tracts of valuable farmland.

Source: Science Daily

Photo Jaime Brown

The Latro lamp is another product out of Netherlands design school Eindhoven from industrial designer Mike Thompson. Using living algae, Thompson is utilizing the technology developed by scientists from Yonsei University & Stanford University to power his lamp. A small electric current is drawn from chloroplasts of algal cells during its photosynthesis.

The Latro requires only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to provide  its glow. When placed in the sun, the lamp stores its excess energy  in in its own battery for later use.

via Design Boom

Federal agencies will work with western leaders to designate tracts of U.S. public lands in the West as prime zones for utility-scale solar energy development.

Under the zoning portion of the initiative, 24 tracts of Bureau of Land Management land located in six western states, known as Solar Energy Study Areas, would be evaluated for their environmental and resource suitability for commercial-scale solar energy production. Those areas selected would be available for projects capable of producing 10 or more megawatts of electricity. The Solar Energy Study Areas (maps) located in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah encompass about 670,000 acres.

The goal is to produce a total of 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity. The plan would streamline the entire development process; coordinate zoning and environmental studies, and; prioritize the processing of the projects. The new plan will tap resources made available in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law by President Obama.

via RGB

The slider phone is made from bio-plastics which is produced from corn and is PVC-free. The phone features a 2MP camera, stereo Bluetooth and can support a speculated microSD card up to 32GB. The packaging of the device will be green as well, as it’s made from 70% recycled materials and printed with soy-based ink. The phone was launched by Sprint, who will offer it in “Earth Green” and “Ocean Blue” colors for $50 with a two-year contract.

Its great that Samsung has adopted bio plastics, but I would like to make a plea to all other designers out there to embrace this plant based alternative as well. Here is some history:

Face the facts: plastic is choking the planet. The molecular bonds that make the material extremely durable also make it ex-cruciatingly slow to degrade, so it hangs around for a long, long time. Americans currently recycle only 12 percent of plastic containers and packaging—most of it ends up in landfills or, worse, in the natural environment. There, it breaks down into smaller bits, picks up oily pollutants, and gets ingested by birds and fish. (The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a stew of plastic junk northeast of Hawaii that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas—is one of the more egregious examples of this phenomenon.)

Luckily, there is a viable alternative: plastics made from plants—bioplastics—have several key advantages over their synthetic cousins. They aren’t derived from petroleum, a dwindling, nonrenewable resource, they won’t stick around forever; and in the right conditions, they can degrade in a matter of months. And the carbon dioxide released when they do degrade is offset by the carbon sequestered by the next crop of plastic-making plants. The bad news: bioplastics currently make up just a tiny portion of global plastic production, and they face significant hurdles to more widespread adoption.

Bioplastics are not new. In the 1850s, a British chemist created plastics from cellulose, a derivative of wood pulp. Later, in the early 20th century, Henry Ford experimented with soy-based plastics in his automobiles, even going so far as to unveil a complete prototype plastic car in 1941. But by that time petroleum had emerged as a source for synthetic polymers, which possessed more favorable properties than plant-based versions. World War II cemented the dominance of synthetic plastics, and in the 70 years since we’ve not looked back.

Only in the last decade, in response to the rising cost and shrinking supply of oil, have bioplastics reemerged in consumer applications. In 2003, NatureWorks—a joint venture of Cargill, the largest agricultural business in the United States, and Dow Che ical, the country’s biggest chemical company—began producing Ingeo bioplastics, which can be extruded into containers for food packaging and into fibers for apparel, furnishings, and disposable products such as baby wipes. Ingeo is a PLA, or polylactic acid, derived from corn—the most common and fully developed of the current crop of bioplastics. But alternatives are also being made from castor beans, sugarcane, algae, and even chicken feathers. In theory, you could make plastic out of thin air by extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Cell-phone casings are one such example. Last year, the Japanese company NEC unveiled a phone with a corn-based-plastic body before Samsung. Other companies have added strengthening fibers to PLA—creating what’s called a biocomposite—but that tends to tarnish the material’s appearance and make it less desirable for industrial-design applications.

There are still some obstacles to sort out, even though bioplastics have a net-zero carbon footprint as a material, their production still creates CO². Plus, bioplastics pose a recycling problem. While they could be recycled in theory, the infrastructure to do so is not in place.

More here.