Aerogels finding new applications

Silica aerogels are extremely low-density solids nicknamed "frozen smoke" that hold the record for being the best insulators known. Their widespread adoption could dramatically increase energy efficiency in many areas of technology. While their production costs are still prohibitive for everyday uses, their potential is being realized more and more within industrial applications.

Wired News: A Solid That's Light as Air
Wikipedia - Aerogels

Aerogels made out of carbon can store an incredible amount of electricity for their size and are generating interest especially among those developing hybrid cars.
Aerogel Composite Announces ENERGel(TM) Ultracapacitor

Algae remove CO2 and NOx from flue gas

Greenfuel Technologies has developed a method to use algae to remove CO2 (50-80%) and NOx (80-90 %) from flue gas. The algae can then be used as biofuels thereby replacing fossils.

a solid idea

A smart solution to the problem of tree roots uplifting and breaking sidewalks: rubber sidewalks made from 100% recycled car tires. Air and water can pass to the root structure, and the material’s flexibility allows the tree to grow more freely. (Truck sold separately.)

Publishing LCA data

This year's International LCA Conference (InLCA/LCM 2006, held in Washington DC, October 4-6) will focus on building and supporting the US LCI Database. We are sponsoring a contest to increase awareness of the US LCI Database and to encourage university professors and students to provide new data to it. This contest will continue into future years. There will be a prize for the best submission. Criteria and guidelines are posted at: http://lcacenter.org/InLCA2006/Student-Competition.pdf Please pass this along to any colleagues who may be interested, and we hope to see you in October.

The definition of industrial ecology

Maybe this blog can come up with a good definition of industrial ecology.

First, let's agree on some principles of a definition here.
1. A definition should be clear and unambiguous. Thus "the science of sustainablity" is not a good definition, because it introduces this nasty and vague term sustainability.
2. A definition should at the same time be open enough to accommodate unorthodox methods and analyses. Thus, a term like "quantitative" should not be part of it, as it would rule out all non-quantitative approaches.
3. IE is primarily a science, a field of research. In that way, it is similar to ecology, economics, astronomy or history. Next to it, people may connect it with strategies, but this should not be part of the definition. When economics is "the study of the choices people make to cope with scarcity", there is no mentioning of using economic theory to become rich. Thus, IE should not be defined as "the shifting of industrial process from open loop systems, in which resource and capital investments move through the system to become waste, to a closed loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes" (Wikipedia), just becauses it mixes up theory and action.
4. ...
5. ...
6. ...
Other principles will come in an interaction. Shall we agree to discuss principles by way of such enumerated points?

Then, back to IE. As always, ecology provides a useful analogue here. Three useful definitions on the web for ecology are
a) The science of the relationships between organisms and their environments
b) The study of the relationship between plants and animals (including humans) and their environment
c) The study of how organisms interact with each other and their physical environment.
Each of these three can be easily changed to fit IE:
a) The science of the relationships between industrial activities and their environments
b) The study of the relationship between economic actors (including humans) and their environment
c) The study of how industries interact with each other and their physical environment.

I would appreciate to get some comments on these trials.

gmail account

I've created a gmail account to have some disk space to exchange files related to weblog stuff. You can get the usna and pw with me if you need it.

lunch lecture on power systems

Lunch lecture network sustainable development

The crucial integration of power systems: combining fossil and sustainable energy using fuel cells. Dr. Kas Hemmes

21st of February 06, 12:30 Mekelweg 10 @ the Cultural Center

Hurry! its a late post.

US energy use to 2030: Business as Usual

The Energy Information Administration published two reports: one with forecasts of US energy use and one for world wide energy use. The main message: business as usual rules !

Everything about green cars

News on every aspect of green cars, from plug in hybrids to FC vehicles etc at green car congress.

Government energy R&D (still) mainly to fission

The International Energy Agency recently prublished a report on government R&D spending on renewable energy. One graph shows total government R&D spending on energy with a division over different types of energy. Some striking facts: by far the largest share (about 30%) still goes to nuclear fission ! only about 10% goes to renewables, less than to fossils. Since research into fossils is of course heavily supported by private R&D funds it seems to me that governments are spending our tax euros in the wrong place !

habitat for humanity

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architects developed the ultimate tree house—a very unique home that is built from 100% living nutrients including soy-based plastic windows. The building utilizes gray water biological filtration and solar driven ventilation and water heating.

resilience versus adaptiveness....

sorry, yet another question...
resilience it the ability of a system to recuperate from distrubances. I understand it then as the ability to fall back into the old state after a certain schock or change. so in that sence it is very different from its adaptiveness, the ability of adapting to changes in the enviroment.
Or are both terms related and similar? Who can help me out? Thanks in advance

efficiency versus effectiveness - what a mess!

In some of the IE literature the authors stress the point that people should rather look at EFFECTIVENESS and not only at EFFICIENCY as done in practice.
but ofteh we said first companies have to optimise internallt (which I understand as efficiency in that sense) before IE should be apllied (using the so far not used streams effectively).
does that mean then effectiveness OVER efficiency or effectiveness NEXT to efficiency?
I would also suppose that from a systems perspective an effective industrial park is at the same time (or leads to) an effiecient system. Do you agree?

Shell opts for sequestration

Shell CEO Jeroen van de Veer accepts the evidence that humans are creating climate change and that action is needed. He wants to focus on carbon sequestration and labels further steps in the direction of renewables "long term" on the WBCSD website. He also states that peak oil is not close because the boundaries between conventional and non-conventional oil is starting to blur. His last speech (Feb 13) can be found at the shell website mainly focussed on how to find more oil.

Collection of LCA links

Tom Gloria has a great collection of LCA weblinks at life-cycle.org.

the terminator

Arnold fights global warming in California.

Workshop on complexity in Industrial Ecology

The Faculty TBM of TU Delft is the organiser of workshop in April in Ann Arbor, USA on the complexity of Industrial ecology, interesting stuff !

Osiris Lunch lecture on sustainable product design

Osiris lunch lecture

Date: Tuesday 7 maart
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Sustainable product design, second generation
Location: Faculteit Industrieel Ontwerpen TU Delft, Landbergstraat 15
Speaker: Harry te Riele
Entrance fee: for free
Language English

Lovelock rejects Biofuels

In his recent book "The revenge of Gaia" James Lovelock, founding father of the Gaia Hypothesis, has an interesting different perspective on the (lack of) possibilities for biofuels to replace fossil fuels: "even if these natural products were used only for transport,...,it would require us to burn every year about two to three gigatons of carbon as bio fuel. Compare this quantity with our yearly food consumption of half a gigagton; to grow this much already uses more than may be safe"

Fuel Cell in music players

Toshiba announced that it has developed two prototype direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) units and begun tests to validate their operation with mobile audio players. These are cool gadgets ! But what about this: would this technology add a substantial amount to current VOC emissions ?

LCI data at NREL

The NREL has a website which contains unit process LCI data. Useful for case studies and MSc projects.

SETAC Globe LCA Student Forum

The SETAC Globe LCA Student Forum is included in the SETAC Globe journal as a separate student section of the LCA news .This section showcases student contributions to science and practice of LCA. Graduate and Ph.D. students are invited to give a short overview about their LCA project in order to inform the LCA community and to intensify scientific exchanges. With this, an interface for students has been created to share their ideas, discuss topics of interest, and address issues of concern related to their LCA projects.Students interested in publishing a brief project report in the next issues are asked to submit a project summary (800-1000 words, 1 table or figure) through March 10, 2006.For further information on the Student Forum and to submit a project summary (as an email-attachment), please contact: annette.koehler@empa.ch.

Short description of MSc studentprojects

On the CML website you can find short descriptions of the MSc projects of the second year MSc IE students. Look under "Education" and "Student Projects". If yours is not there and you want it published, send the info and we will put it on the web.

Hydrogen in remote areas

The Japanese island of Yakushima proves to be a good example of the possibilities to use remote areas as niche markets for the introduction of a hydrogen economy (Koen !). Like Iceland, Yakushima has a renewable energy source that exceeds local electricty demands. In Iceland this is geothermal energy and in the case Yakushima it is hydropower. Electricity cannot easily be stored and a transformation to hydrogen is one way of making use of this surplus. Read more at the BBC newssite

Coal Ash Pavement Technology to Mitigate Heat Island Effect

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) announced on October 4, 2005, that it has developed what it calls "Heat Island Effect Inhibiting Pavement" technology, a first in Japan. Coal ash produced by coal thermal power plants is recycled as paving material, and this new technology helps keep roads cool, ameliorating the urban heat island effect. Read more at Japan For Sustainability
Via triplepundit.

UK Report on climate change

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published a comprehensive book about climate change, edited by some of the world leading experts in the field: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wolfgang Cramer, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom Wigley, Gary Yohe. It is available as pdf (over 16 MB) and can be downloaded for free.

The quote and checking this system

"The general public does not understand what the term Industrial Ecology means which makes its worldwide implementation impossible".
Understanging and implementating are two different things.
Tonight I had conversations on literature; about who studies it and who produces it.
Also, in Japan we don't have IE education programme, but still there are lots of people concerened with IE without noticing the meaning of it.
Does IE have emotional aspects like literature or other arts?
If so, why do human try to analyze this emotion?
Do we really feel other's emotion?; their pains are not your pain as long as you share it or you have experienced it before.

GRC conference August 2006

Every two years there is a Gordon Research conference on IE. This year it will in Oxford, UK, 6-11 August. Check out the programme on the GRC website. Like always there will be a poster session in which specifically students are encouraged to present their work. The chairs of the conference have a limited budget for support of travel etc. I am not sure how much is left !

The first (?) Industrial Ecology blog !

Hi guys,

I made this blog in order to have a space for some informal communication about Industrial Ecology. For a start I invite all 1st and 2nd year students and all teachers of the Interuniverstity MSc IE programme to participate.

The idea is that everybody can post anything (preferably relevant to Industrial Ecology) on this blog. Opinions, news items, pictures anything goes.

First let me ask you to react on the following quote:

"The general public does not understand what the term Industrial Ecology means which makes its worldwide implementation impossible".

Rene