Every few months, some company or another claims to have come up with the perfect energy source. Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but I need some proof before I believe. The last time this happened, it was ethanol, and we all know what happened there. Still, if Cella manages to pull this off, I'll be as happy as anybody.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Quick Thought
I'll elaborate on this idea more later, I just wanted to get the idea officially down on paper (figuratively) before class started. They have relatively inexpensive robots that can vacuum homes. Surely, if we build upon that idea, a robot could be manufactured that mows lawns? Perhaps sensors could be placed in the ground to tell it where to go. Safety is a clear issue, but failsafes could be included in the design that automatically shut it off if anything goes wrong.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Popular Science Inspires
Some of the more interesting articles I've found in my years of browsing Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com) have been related to the very subject I'm discussing on An Alternative Approach. One of my favorites is the design of bacteria to produce fuel: http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-04/breeding-oil-bug.
Expanding on that article allowed me to find what I consider to be an even better alternative. Instead of sugar, these bacteria convert carbon dioxide into isobutanol, an alternative to gasoline. It seems to be the perfect solution. Carbon dioxide emissions will always be involved with fossil fuels, and yet they are a hazard to our environment. As an environmental geoscientist, I'm concerned not only with finding a limitless energy resource, but finding one that helps the environment. The article in which I viewed this alternative is posted below.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210162222.htm
Expanding on that article allowed me to find what I consider to be an even better alternative. Instead of sugar, these bacteria convert carbon dioxide into isobutanol, an alternative to gasoline. It seems to be the perfect solution. Carbon dioxide emissions will always be involved with fossil fuels, and yet they are a hazard to our environment. As an environmental geoscientist, I'm concerned not only with finding a limitless energy resource, but finding one that helps the environment. The article in which I viewed this alternative is posted below.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210162222.htm
Idea 1
One thing that has always bothered me is that refrigeration systems use up so much energy. Think about it. The purpose of a refrigerator is to remove heat from food. Heat is energy. Therefore, if you were to follow the train of logic, a refrigerator uses energy in order to remove energy from food and drink. This seems to be a tremendous waste to me. Surely there is some way that a refrigerator could be redesigned so that it saves the energy it removes from food. The same applies to freezers and air conditioning units - both are machines that remove energy in the form of heat at the cost of large amounts of energy. I know it's not as simple as that, but consider the logistics. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2005, 91.4 million U.S. household utilized a sort of air-conditioning system (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2005/c&e/detailed_tables2005c&e.html). Even if it is assumed that each of these households has only a single, medium-sized window unit, the cost of KiloWatts/hour is stabilized at 15 cents, and the unit is run for 16 hours a day, each household is still paying $804 per year. Multiply that number by 91.4 million, and you have an extremely conservative $73,485,600,000 per year spent by households on air conditioning. That's air-conditioning alone, not counting heating, refrigerators, or freezers. This number also doesn't include the amount spent on cooling businesses or public places.
A Brief Introduction
Howdy!
My name is Donnie Berthelot. I'm a freshman at Texas A&M University. As stated above, this blog was created for my Environmental Design class, which is taught by Professor Jorge Vanegas.
The primary purpose of An Alternative Approach is to discuss what seems to be the cause of most of the world's problems today: energy. Take, for example, the Middle East. Arguably, every conflict in the Middle East stems from two sources: religion and energy. I'm not even going to touch on the subject of religion, but the energy aspect of the problem is of great interest to me. Because of this, I am going to use this blog to document both my thoughts on solutions proposed by others and anything I can come up with that could possibly be utilized to alleviate some of the difficulties that arise when fossil fuels begin to dwindle.
My name is Donnie Berthelot. I'm a freshman at Texas A&M University. As stated above, this blog was created for my Environmental Design class, which is taught by Professor Jorge Vanegas.
The primary purpose of An Alternative Approach is to discuss what seems to be the cause of most of the world's problems today: energy. Take, for example, the Middle East. Arguably, every conflict in the Middle East stems from two sources: religion and energy. I'm not even going to touch on the subject of religion, but the energy aspect of the problem is of great interest to me. Because of this, I am going to use this blog to document both my thoughts on solutions proposed by others and anything I can come up with that could possibly be utilized to alleviate some of the difficulties that arise when fossil fuels begin to dwindle.
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