Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
Clean coal … Greens say Australia should be investing in renewable energy sources. (Reuters) Australian coal companies have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in further funding over the next decade into research for combating climate change. Australian Coal Association executive director Mark O’Neill says the $300 million COAL21 fund announced last year would now Continue Reading →
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1921194.htm
A Canberra scientist has warned that recycled drinking water poses a disease risk (ABC News) |
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A Canberra microbiologist says recycling water for drinking purposes carries the risk of a major outbreak of disease.
Both Canberra and Brisbane are considering recycling waste water as dam levels reach critically low levels.
Professor Peter Collignon from Canberra Hospital says he supports the use of recycled water for industry or to irrigate lawns but it should only be used for drinking as a last resort.
Prof Collignon, the director of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Canberra Hospital, says if something goes wrong with the filtering technology there is a risk large numbers of people could get sick.
"You just have to have it go wrong one day in every three or five years and you could have potentially tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people exposed to a germ," he said.
Manure: In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before commercial fertilizer’s invention, so large shipments of manure were common. It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not Continue Reading →
The Monash Energy Project involves the gasification of coal fom Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley for conversion into transport fuels, while sequestering the waste CO2, reported The Australian (28/4/2007, p.4). "All of the components of the technology are available," said Scott Hargreaves of Monash Energy, the project operator.
60,000bpd target: "It’s a matter of putting them into a package that is cost-effective and environmentally sound. Brown coal has some unique properties – it needs to be dried before gasification, for example. But so far the technical studies have not found any showstoppers in the process design. That said, it’s important that we get it right, so we are not rushing the project. I would say that it is not less than a decade to development. The project would produce about 60,000 barrels a day, which would be a significant contribution to Australia’s liquid fuel needs."
Flow batteries are more complex than conventional batteries. In a lead-acid battery, the electrical energy that charges it up is stored as chemical energy inside the battery. Flow batteries, in contrast, use two electrolyte solutions, each with a different "redox potential" – a measure of the electrolyte molecules’ affinity for electrons. What’s more, the electrolytes are stored in tanks outside the battery. When electricity is needed the two electrolytes are pumped into separate halves of a reaction chamber, where they are kept apart by a thin membrane. The difference in the redox potential of the two electrolytes drives electric charges through the dividing membrane, generating a current that can be collected by electrodes. The flow of charge tends to even up the redox potentials of the two electrolytes, so a constant flow of electrolyte is needed to maintain the current. However, the electrolytes can be recharged. A current driven by an outside source will reverse the electrochemical reaction and regenerate the electrolytes, which can be pumped back into the tanks.
The installation at King Island has its origins in the 1980s when Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, a young Australian chemical engineer, started a research programme on flow batteries at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. This focused on one of the big weaknesses of these devices. The membranes separating the two electrolytes allowed molecules of electrolyte to leak across. As a result, each solution became increasingly contaminated with the other, reducing the battery’s output.
Cheap plastic solar cells are now closer to becoming a reality thanks to a team of U.S. scientists at the Wake Forest University Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials. The researchers announced last month they had pushed the efficiency of plastic solar cells to more than 6 percent.
"I fully expect to see higher numbers within the next two years, which may make plastic devices the photovoltaic of choice." — David Carroll, Wake Forest University, director of the nanotechnology center.
That percentage may not seem like a huge landmark compared to a photovoltaic (PV) cell achieving an efficiency rating of say 40.7 percent, which was the milestone attained by Spectrolab, Inc. in December 2006. But until two years ago, the highest efficiency ever achieved for plastic solar cells was just three percent.
In 2005, David Carroll, director of the Wake Forest nanotechnology center, and his research group announced they had come close to reaching 5 percent efficiency. Now, a little more than a year later, Carroll said his group has surpassed the 6 percent mark.
"Within only two years we have more than doubled the 3 percent mark," Carroll said. "I fully expect to see higher numbers within the next two years, which may make plastic devices the photovoltaic of choice."