Wind and ethanol power, hydrogen, heaters, shoes, jobs, biogas and water recycling

China leads way with wind turbines

China installed more new wind turbines than Europe or the US last year, nearly doubling its wind capacity with 13 gigawatts (GW) of new generation. According to a Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) report, wind power globally could produce 2600 terawatts (TW) of electricity and save 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2020.
Compared to China’s 13 GW, Europe added 10.5 GW last year and the US some 9.9 GW. The best wind energy country in the EU was Spain, which installed the most new turbines at 2.5GW, followed by Germany, Italy, France and Britain. However, Spain's lead may be eroded this year when it reviews its system of subsidies.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) remains upbeat about the sector’s competitive positioning.

“The prospect of fossil fuel prices soaring as industry hauls itself out of the current economic crisis has indeed bolstered the investment case for wind energy,” said EWEA chief executive Christian Kjaer. He adds, “With oil in the US$70-80 range, new onshore wind power is roughly cost-competitive with new gas-fired power stations, and just marginally more costly than new coal.”
More on this story at: http://www.environmentalmanagementnews.net/StoryView.asp?StoryID=1035489

Brazil goes to Ethanol Power

Brazil has opened the world's first ethanol-fuelled power plant in an effort by the South American biofuels giant to increase the global use of ethanol and boost its clean power generation.
Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, with the help of GE upgraded the 87-megawatt power plant to switch between running on natural gas or ethanol instantaneously. Brazil primarily relies on hydroelectric power but needs backup thermoelectric generation during the dry season. Brazil is expected to produce a record 27.8 billion litres of ethanol in the 2009/2010 season. It began its biofuels program 30 years ago and now mandates a minimum 20 per cent of ethanol in gasoline.
Petrobras itself is only starting to enter the ethanol market. Brazil's ethanol production comes from sugar cane milled by companies such as Cosan or commodities giants including Cargill Inc, Bunge and ADM Co.
Domestic demand for ethanol is being driven by the popularity of the flex-fuel car technology that was launched in 2003 and now makes up around 90 per cent of new vehicle sales.
Story sourced through the Resource Recovery Forum:  www.resourcesnotwaste.org
I & I Comment: Ethanol production from sugar cane would only seem to make global sense if it comes from sugar cane wastes and other organic wastes and does not replace food production.

Hydrogen from water at University of Wollongong

UOW has obtained granted patent status in Australia and has received a Notice of Entitlement from the US Patent Office in relation to novel hydrogen production (titled ‘Novel catalysts and processes for their preparation’), which can be packaged with complementary IP to develop efficient water splitting technology. The inventors are researchers Gordon Wallace, Jun Chen, Chee Too and Gerard Swiegers.
Put together, these technologies offer a highly efficient process for splitting of water into its component parts, hydrogen and oxygen, and also the reverse process, i.e. the production of an electrical current from the combination of the elemental hydrogen and oxygen to form water. The combination of these technologies offers a means of efficiently creating hydrogen gas (as a fuel) and then converting it into a powerful electric current via its use in a H2/O2 fuel cell.
The water-splitting application has been demonstrated in simple ‘proof of concept’ devices within the laboratory. The research teams are currently performing studies to obtain efficiency data and are working towards engineering a prototype device. The ultimate aim is to develop commercial devices able to spontaneously convert water into hydrogen and oxygen under sunlight.
For more on this development go to: http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@raid/documents/doc/uow073183.pdf#page=7

Electric water heaters on way out?

Australia's energy ministers have issued a consultation Regulatory Impact Statement about the phase-out of greenhouse-intensive domestic water heaters. It would begin this year, while a second stage would begin in 2012. The move would equate to banning – in most circumstances – the installation of electric water heaters, which account for nearly 80%  of water heater greenhouse gases.
Water heating accounted for 23% of the energy used in Australian households in 2008 and more than 5% of total stationary energy sector emissions. Submissions close on March 12, while a series of consultation forums will be held around Australia.
This story sourced from: www.environmentalmanagementnews.net

Trucking tyres into shoes

Old truck tyres never die, they just turn into sandals. The UK Guardian reported that for decades this has been the tradition in Ethiopia, where everyone from farmers to guerrilla fighters has fashioned worn-out road rubber into cheap, long-lasting footwear.
But now, thanks to a young woman entrepreneur who has combined the internet's selling power with nimble business practices more often associated with Asian countries, the idea has been turned into an unlikely international hit. By adding funky cotton and leather uppers to recycled tyre soles, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu has sold many thousands of pairs of handmade flip-flops, boat shoes, loafers and Converse-style trainers to foreign customers.
In the run-up to Christmas, workers at the soleRebels ‘factory’ - a small house on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital - were frantically cutting, sewing and gluing to fulfil internet purchases from customers as far away as Canada and Australia. Alemu's brother packed pairs of cotton and suede trainers into a box about to be couriered to Amazon.com, the company's main customer, which receives the shoes in the US three to five days after placing its bulk order. "We are sitting in Addis Ababa but acting like an American company," said Alemu, an excitable 30-year-old former accountant who is fond of reeling off the numbers that illustrate her firm's rapid growth.
Just five years after start-up, soleRebels employs 45 full-time staff who can produce up to 500 pairs of shoes a day. More will be hired after next month once the footwear range, priced between £21 and £40, goes on sale online in the UK and Japan on Amazon's new footwear website javari.co.uk.
For more on this story go to the UK Guardian at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/ethiopia-internet-shoe-firm-solerebels

Avoid being overqualified for that job

How do you avoid the ‘overqualified’ label? If you’re worried a prospective employer will find you overqualified, use these hints to help make your case.
Read Overqualified? 6 Tips to Shed the Label at: http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-overqualified_6_tips_to_shed_the_label-1083?WT.mc_id=EM4605M&WT.dcsvid=1930024308 
Article sourced via American Society for Quality (www.asq.org) 

Turning food waste into biogas

McCain Foods will boost its conversion of food waste to biogas, saving on energy use and reducing landfill over the next year, says Graham Harvey, the Australia/New Zealand Operations Director.  Harvey said: “McCain Foods has been a pioneer of this process (since the eighties), and we are now looking at replacing 10 per cent of the natural gas use at the plant with biogas.”
McCain Foods operates two deep covered lagoons at the Ballarat site:      a 6m deep - 11 ML, and a 10m deep 28 ML lagoon, undergoing anaerobic treatment of food wastewater. The anaerobic decomposition of food wastewater produces biogas, which is 65% methane, and when blended with natural gas replaces the use of fossil fuels.
The on-site anaerobic process now produces 6500 m2 of biogas daily from wastewater from the plant. After anaerobic fermentation of the wastewater, its strength is reduced by 90% before it’s sent to the municipal plant.
Over 80% of the biogas is used to produce steam to heat water at the plant, which is up from the 50% a year ago. McCain Foods expects to improve its systems over the next year to use around 95% of the biogas produced.
McCain Foods was one of the first food companies to blend biogas with natural gas in a three-megawatt boiler to produce steam. Harvey said that increased use of biogas could be achieved with the conversion of around 30% of the 3000 tonnes of food waste, which is currently going directly to landfill. He said plant engineers were also looking at the potential conversion of some of the potato solid waste now sold for stock feed, which could also produce Biogas.
For more on this story go to: http://www.sustainabilitymatters.net.au/articles/35758?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_content=423947345&utm_campaign=sm_0909+_+kknhl&utm_term=readmore

Water Recycling by Australian Vinyls

PVC manufacturer Australian Vinyls is one of the highest water users in Melbourne, some 640ML a year, putting it firmly in the sights of City West Water when it comes to finding system savings. PVC manufacturer Australian Vinyls is one of the highest water users in Melbourne, some 640ML a year, putting it firmly in the sights of City West Water when it comes to finding system savings.

The water treatment is a three stage process - the treatment can be likened to a clothes washer where clothes are spun around so they don’t come out dripping wet.
“In the centrifuging we make a slurry consisting of 30% solid, 70% water and before we dry the powder to make PVC the water spun off from the centrifuge is captured. This is the feed water and goes into pre-treatment,” process engineer Genevieve Petch said.
“Hydrocyclones remove the larger 100 micron particles that are in the water. Then we are in the next step in the process with 20 micron particles in the water, and that’s removed through microfiltration.
“Microfiltration basically removes all suspended solids from the water; we reuse the concentrate from microfiltration elsewhere in the plant so we recover that stream. The permeate, the clean water from microfiltration, then goes through to reverse osmosis which removes dissolved salts from the water, the same as desalination technology.”
Finally, the water is neutralized, because it is pH 3, and then stored in a tank before being distributed through the plant for reuse.
For more on this story go to: http://www.environmentalmanagementnews.net/StoryView.asp?StoryID=1035498

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