MakeHeat

Michael Davis is a true DIY’er.  He’s built everything from solar panels to wind turbines, and this is a remarkably ambitious project that’s still a work in progress, though it does work. Good words of warning here – be well aware of the following before attempting this project: “… A word of warning here. This project is dangerous. Metal working and welding are involved in the construction, so all the usual dangers of laceration, burns and electrocution that go along with them are present. Use all necessary precautions. Also, the operation of a biomass gasifier produces lots of heat, flammable and poisonous gasses. Never operate the gasifier indoors. The gasses produced are flammable and potentially explosive if allowed to accumulate in an enclosed space, like a building. Also, the Carbon Monoxide the gasifier produces is lethal! Only operate the gasifier outdoors and try to stay up wind of the unit when it is running. Treat the gas coming out of the gasifier with the same respect as you would for the natural gas that you may have piped into your house. It is just as potentially explosive and deadly. …”

via My Home-Made Biomass Gasifier.

Great hopes for this technology, here’s to hoping that it comes to fruition and not a research piece that gets shelved.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n&tag=api

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/02/valley_buzz_energy_nirvana_twe.html

The food-scrap project “hasn’t been a cakewalk,” Williams says.

Waste haulers, who pay the utility district to take the waste, collect the food scraps from restaurants and hotels as part of their normal garbage pickups.

Some of the haulers weed out big items, such as cardboard boxes used for produce. Other haulers have restaurants and grocers do more of the separation so that the waste is cleaner.

Upon arrival via truck at the plant, the food scraps look like mounds of wet dirt. They’re dumped into 20,000-gallon underground tanks. There, grinders turn the scraps into a mud-like substance. Bigger items, such as rocks and utensils, fall out.

via San Francisco area utility turns food waste into green energy – USATODAY.com.

It does turn out though, that renewable energy funding is amply available for the farm and dairy industry!  Solar milking machines anyone?   “…For example, Schmack Biomass-OARDC, LLC received a $1.3 million rural development loan/grant combination which they will use to install an anaerobic digester.

“The digester will process organic biomass to generate more than 3 million kWh of electricity per year.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture also selected Ridge View Farms in Seneca County, Ohio, to receive a $42,750 grant to replace an inefficient grain dryer with a more efficient unit.

“The new dryer will reduce the farm’s energy consumption by more than 32 percent. …”

Millions available for renewable energy and energy efficiency loans, grants | Farm and Dairy – The Auction Guide and Rural Marketplace.

Watermelon juice can be a valuable source of biofuel. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Biotechnology for Biofuels have shown that the juice of reject watermelons can be efficiently fermented into ethanol.

via Reject Watermelons — The Newest Renewable Energy Source.

Okay, so a typical stirling engine of this size won’t move you too fast, but if you can pick up some trash from the roadside and put it in the combustion chamber?  How about some of the wood chips they’re leaving along the roadside (wait I already use those – forget the last sentence!)?

If Dean Kamen can dream it and bring it into the real world, it just might make our roads cleaner and get us to where we’re going.  Hmm: wonder how far I could ride on a dollar meal – packaging included?

Hybrid Electric Scooter Runs On Anything That Burns : Gas 2.0.

More MPG from bioelectricity than from biofuels. An edge for plugins? via Treehugger

I'm going to eat on the lower east side.

Not ready for prime time, or even prime locations – yet.  Four architects were asked to draw up plans for the house of the future without regard to cost, but the end result had to be attainable (no “entropy-vortex-reverse-plasma-rediculum-bizbah er, engine that runs everything, kinda”)  The results?  A “Tree House”, a “Reptile House”, and “Edible House”, and more.

The Green House of the Future – WSJ.com.

Sounds like a job for kudzu!  Cutting down and grinding up invasive species, then using them for heat and power.  Now that’s turning lemons into lemonade (and selling it).

Belwin: Solving Climate Change by Restoring the Land .

via MetaEfficient. So – we have a bit of a dilemma, here: to save the birds, we can either ban the windmills (which are currently killing 30,000 birds annually), put all our transportation underground (ah, the big dig – we’re still paying for that leaky hole in the ground), saving one MILLION birds, or – kill the cats, saving 55,000,000 birds, keeping untold tons of kitty litter out of our landfills, and never cutting our thumbs on those blasted little one serving cans of smelly – er – material that doesn’t seem to change much from one end of the cat to the other anyway… Maybe some vegetarian videos for Binky and Fluffy and keep them inside instead. Hmmm. Well, those are MY views of it – but read “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air” –  A sobering look at where we are, what we’re doing and where we’re going. A good bit of myth busting in there too: did you know that you should be able to get about four times the energy BACK from that solar panel (provided it stays up for 20 years, no baseballs, hailstorms, etc. taking it out of commission)? http://www.withouthotair.com/Contents.html