Just the other day I was talking with a colleague at work about how it would be nice to recycle everything in a tiny building that we were tearing down at school. We lamented about how hard it is to do this. I then made some random comment about a plasma technology that I had read about a few years ago that would melt almost any garbage into a usable strong building material. I had never heard anything more about it so I assumed it was still in the prototype phase. Then today I read at CBC an article about a plasma recycling plant that can convert 1 tonne of garbage into: 1.4 MWh of power, 300 litres of clean drinkable water, 5-10 kg of commercial salt, 150 kg of durable construction aggregate, and 5 kg of sulfur based fertilizer. It does all of this while producing almost no greenhouse gases.
The company is called PlascoEnergy Group and they have started their first prototype plant in Ottawa. It is going to divert 85 tonnes of garbage from the landfill each day. Since this is the prototype they do not quite get all the results that they expect. It turns out that the plant will produce a constant 4 MW so only 96MWh instead of the expected 119 from the above list. The rest of the products are still expected. So I started to wonder how long it would take before this plant paid for itself.
This prototype plant cost 27 million they said. Assuming that they can sell the power at the Saskatchewan cost of 9.38 cents per kWh. This is a little higher then the rates in Ottawa but it is green power and many people are willing to pay those few cents extra for green power. They should be able to make $9,004/day from power alone. They will probably also be paid a certain amount per tonne of garbage that they handle for the city. They can also sell the water, aggregate, salt and fertilizer. Lets assume that they make about 15,000/day They need to pay for their employees at the facility. Lets assume 20 guys at 20.00/hour after all it is a fairly small facility. That means 3,200 in wages. Maintenance costs of about 2,000 a day on average (obviously some days will be much higher and some much lower). Also the plant only runs 340 days a year. (25 maintenance days) That means that each year they will gross about 5.1 million and have costs of about 1.9 million. So they will make about 3.2 million a year. This means that it will take about 9 years to pay it off. This is a fairly good turn around time as I expect that the plant lifetime will be anywhere from 20 - 40 years.
So who wants one? Well that is kinda the whole point of this project. They hope to show that it works and then they can shop it around. They apparently have a potential customer in L.A. who produces about 11,000 metric tons of garbage. If all of this were converted to power that is a potential power supply of 12,423MWhs or a constant output of 517MW. That is a decent size power plant. It won't provide all of the power for LA. which once set a record of 22, 622MW required but it would at least provide power for about 336,000 homes.
I think that this technology will have a huge future. Let me know what you think.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Human Power: The new renewable power
There is an interesting invention that has come out of Simon Frasier University. If you want a video clip check this out. It is basically a knee brace that generates power as you walk. I will try to explain this for everyone that might read this.
When you step forward your body swings your calf forward. You can think of this like a swinging weight. If the energy of your swinging forward calf had to be completely stopped by your knee you would quickly wear your knees out. To stop that from happening our bodies have muscles that slow our leg down as it straightens out. You can imagine these muscles as the brakes for our legs. Again, without these muscles your knee would have to do all the stopping of the leg. This would be similar to always stopping your car with the emergency brake.
So why did I explain the way your leg works and not the device? Well you need to understand that your leg already has a brake built into it. What this new knee brace generator does is help slow your leg down at the end of the step. (This is similar to a hybrid car using the forward energy given off by a car as it brakes to charge the battery) It does this by having your leg turn a small generator ( the reverse of an electric motor). This does not create any extra effort to walk. It will not be like trying to walk in knee high water or anything like that. The only extra work your body does is carry around a few extra pounds, and that will diminish as future versions get even lighter.
Some other quick details that the article listed:
1) It generates about 5 watts of power while at a normal walk. According to my quick research on Duracell's website, a regular AA can generate about 1 watt of power for about 75 minutes. That means that this is as good as about 5 continually new AA batteries. This is actually a lot of power. According to the article 1 minute of walking could power 30 minutes of cell phone use.
2) It weighs about 1.6 kilograms (3 1/2 pounds)
So with all of this in mind what can we use it for?
The first application suggested in the article is that it could power electric prosthesis so that amputees would not have to wear battery packs. There are also a wide range of other similar medical suggestions. For example any sort of monitoring unit that a person might wear or any sort of device like a pacemaker that might require power.
Another application is of course military in nature. Soldiers could use it to power their GPS units and other handheld devices. This would mean that they would have virtually unlimited battery life and would be in less danger of falling out of contact.
The exciting applications are when you start to think about every day use. The reason many portable devices are so bulky and limited in there abilities is that they require enough battery life to be practical. Once you improve the battery life they can add many more applications.
A classic example is the IPhone. When it came out everyone complained that it could not use the internet and talk at the same time. This is something that is not possible for second generation GSM edge technology. That is why almost all new phones being offered by AT&T (the company selling the IPhone) use third generation GSM umts technology. It allows the user to surf the internet or send a video from their camera while still talking on the phone via their bluetooth. It also allows the internet to be faster. It is like going from dial-up internet to broadband. So why would Apple release a phone that is clearly inferior in its internet and data usage? The official reason is that the computer chip for umts is a power hog and it would shorten the battery life unacceptably. Until they can resolve this battery problem Apple won't release a 3G umts IPhone.
No imagine if battery life were not a problem for portable devices. The displays may be thinner, storage may be a little higher, screen size a little bigger for watching video, internet a little faster. There are also a variety of other things that may eventually be possible that will require a power source like this one. One is a shirt that has a tv built in. It is flexible screen technology and it would be like having the ipod screen built into a patch on your sleeve. If that is a little too weird for you then maybe just a shirt that can change its colour using electricity. You may also have shoes that track your running and workout stats. That would be cool.
I'd like to hear what other people think about this.
When you step forward your body swings your calf forward. You can think of this like a swinging weight. If the energy of your swinging forward calf had to be completely stopped by your knee you would quickly wear your knees out. To stop that from happening our bodies have muscles that slow our leg down as it straightens out. You can imagine these muscles as the brakes for our legs. Again, without these muscles your knee would have to do all the stopping of the leg. This would be similar to always stopping your car with the emergency brake.
So why did I explain the way your leg works and not the device? Well you need to understand that your leg already has a brake built into it. What this new knee brace generator does is help slow your leg down at the end of the step. (This is similar to a hybrid car using the forward energy given off by a car as it brakes to charge the battery) It does this by having your leg turn a small generator ( the reverse of an electric motor). This does not create any extra effort to walk. It will not be like trying to walk in knee high water or anything like that. The only extra work your body does is carry around a few extra pounds, and that will diminish as future versions get even lighter.
Some other quick details that the article listed:
1) It generates about 5 watts of power while at a normal walk. According to my quick research on Duracell's website, a regular AA can generate about 1 watt of power for about 75 minutes. That means that this is as good as about 5 continually new AA batteries. This is actually a lot of power. According to the article 1 minute of walking could power 30 minutes of cell phone use.
2) It weighs about 1.6 kilograms (3 1/2 pounds)
So with all of this in mind what can we use it for?
The first application suggested in the article is that it could power electric prosthesis so that amputees would not have to wear battery packs. There are also a wide range of other similar medical suggestions. For example any sort of monitoring unit that a person might wear or any sort of device like a pacemaker that might require power.
Another application is of course military in nature. Soldiers could use it to power their GPS units and other handheld devices. This would mean that they would have virtually unlimited battery life and would be in less danger of falling out of contact.
The exciting applications are when you start to think about every day use. The reason many portable devices are so bulky and limited in there abilities is that they require enough battery life to be practical. Once you improve the battery life they can add many more applications.
A classic example is the IPhone. When it came out everyone complained that it could not use the internet and talk at the same time. This is something that is not possible for second generation GSM edge technology. That is why almost all new phones being offered by AT&T (the company selling the IPhone) use third generation GSM umts technology. It allows the user to surf the internet or send a video from their camera while still talking on the phone via their bluetooth. It also allows the internet to be faster. It is like going from dial-up internet to broadband. So why would Apple release a phone that is clearly inferior in its internet and data usage? The official reason is that the computer chip for umts is a power hog and it would shorten the battery life unacceptably. Until they can resolve this battery problem Apple won't release a 3G umts IPhone.
No imagine if battery life were not a problem for portable devices. The displays may be thinner, storage may be a little higher, screen size a little bigger for watching video, internet a little faster. There are also a variety of other things that may eventually be possible that will require a power source like this one. One is a shirt that has a tv built in. It is flexible screen technology and it would be like having the ipod screen built into a patch on your sleeve. If that is a little too weird for you then maybe just a shirt that can change its colour using electricity. You may also have shoes that track your running and workout stats. That would be cool.
I'd like to hear what other people think about this.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Robot Club (K-3) Pictures
Hi everyone. Robot club finally happened this week for the little guys in kindergarten to grade 3. The older kids still didn't because they had a symphony field trip but I'll get them next week. I though rather then make everyone wait for the bigger kids I would share some of the pictures from the little kids. I picked a variety that I thought everyone would like and I have a few comments about each one.
Name: Sarpiner
This one is a paper work ninja! It fills out tax forms faster than if they were grade 1 math!
Name: Angel
This one reminds me off the fat angels that Mom always prayed would sit on the car, to give us good traction, when we were driving in blizzards growing up.
Name: Flying Dutchman
The kid that drew this told me that what made this an awesome robot is that it can fly even though it is a boat. I agree with him. That does make it awesome
Name: Fudgicle
Name: Ih.
This robot apparently has the ability to talk backwards. When I first saw it I thought the image soaked through the paper, but her name that I blurred out was spelled correctly so she really did write it backwards.
Name: SarpinerThis one is a paper work ninja! It fills out tax forms faster than if they were grade 1 math!
Name: AngelThis one reminds me off the fat angels that Mom always prayed would sit on the car, to give us good traction, when we were driving in blizzards growing up.
Name: Flying DutchmanThe kid that drew this told me that what made this an awesome robot is that it can fly even though it is a boat. I agree with him. That does make it awesome
Name: FudgicleThis robot looks like a fudgicle to me. I like to think that it makes fudgicles and gives them out to good boys and girls.
Name: Ih.This robot apparently has the ability to talk backwards. When I first saw it I thought the image soaked through the paper, but her name that I blurred out was spelled correctly so she really did write it backwards.
Well everyone. Let me know what you think. Next week (3 days or so from now) we should have some pictures of lego "robots". Have a great night everyone.
Chris
Chris
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