(Credit:
Crave Asia)
Shake your booty, lads and lassies. If Club4Climate founder Andrew Charalambous realizes his vision of expanding his environmentally sustainable style of dance club into every country, the world could be a much better place.
The Club4Climate project not only preaches eco-clubbing, it practices what it preaches. Besides the usual organic beverages, waterless urinals, and automatic taps, the London outlet features a piezoelectric dance floor. This uses quartz crystals and ceramics to turn all that gyrating energy into electricity. So the more you jump up and down, the more you charge those batteries to power the club.
(Credit:
Crave Asia)
Before you thumb your nose at what might seem to be a self-serving agenda behind the self-sustaining intentions, the surplus power from a wind turbine and solar energy system used at the club will also apparently be used to power homes in the area.
And thumbs up to the U.K. project for offering free entry to those who can prove they have walked or cycled to the venue. A Club4Climate island is also in the pipeline for 2010, though where this will be and how one "walks" there remains a mystery. But if eco-clubbing takes off globally, talk about a dance dance revolution!
(Via Crave Asia)
Eco Media Player
(Credit: Crave UK)Thanks to modern technology, we can waste time in ways our ancestors could only dream of, while they were working down the mine, in black and white. Unfortunately our world of gizmos and gimmicks, doodahs and doofers isn't entirely free: Just ask the polar bears.
One way to save money and the planet simultaneously is to ditch the fossil fuels and electrical leash and seek alternative sources of power. That's where our new sister site SmartPlanet comes in: It reviews products on their quality, value, ethics, and greenness, so inconvenient truths are balanced by conveniently thrifty products. We've picked you out an elite bunch of the best money- and power-saving gadgets our eco-expert buddies have rated. Click here for a sampling.
(Source: Crave UK)
(Credit:
Crave Asia)
Japan's NEC has unveiled a wireless camera that can be powered by something as frugal as fluorescent light, which provides an indoor version of solar power. The magic lies in a ring-shaped component attached to the bulb, which then generates a magnetic field of power.
Tech-On reports that the wireless camera can automatically adjust its video-shooting frequency according to the power supply from the fluorescent light. It can be set to shoot images every 10 seconds and supports VGA (640x480), QVGA (320x240) and QQVGA (160x120) resolutions.
(Source: Crave Asia)
(Credit:
Crave Asia)
The next Tour de France winner may very well be the tech nerd from your IT department if MIT's new invention makes it to the mainstream. Taking a page out of the "GZ PC-Sport and Power Stepper" book, students modified an exercise bike so it can power your laptop.
The device works with a bicycle wheel attached to a generator, which in turn charges a conventional car battery. A 12-volt cigarette-lighter adapter is then used to hook up with your laptop. This prevents overcharge and fluctuating current damaging your PC.
This also begs the question: Does one have to pedal like a madman just to check e-mail? Not really, as these researchers discovered that only 30 watts are required to charge a notebook battery, and the average person can generate up to 75 watts continuously.
(Source: Crave Asia)
(Credit:
Crave Asia)
Fujitsu Siemens may not be a brand typically associated with LCD monitors, and its latest project is equally unusual. The companies have developed a prototype 22-inch LCD monitor that incorporates solar panels working with a capacitor and special relay to cut power usage when on standby.
In fact, according to Personal Computer World, it can operate in zero consumption mode for five days on standby and, when active, sips just 0.6-0.9W of electricity. That certainly wouldn't do much pocketbook damage when the utility bills arrive. Word is the company's also looking to use its green tech in TVs, with the monitors slated to be come out first by the second quarter of 2008.
(Source: Crave Asia)
(Credit:
Discovery Communications)
We hope it's clear by now that Crave is dedicated to the use of alternative energy, especially if it means an alternative to expending our own. But we feel that too much green development has been focused on terrestrial pursuits and mundane commuter topics.
Here's an example of what we'd like to see more of: a hydrogen-fuel toy rocket. All it takes, according to GadgetGrid, is some ordinary tap water to be converted into clean-burning fuel for a projectile that can reach 200 feet.
Now that's what we call a useful green technology. If we can just get a camera and a few pumpkins involved, we could really have some fun.
(Credit:
Kite For Sail)
The winds of change are apparently upon us, quite literally, where alternative means of transportation are concerned. Just yesterday we wrote of a flying boat to come out of Brazil, for example, and now we learn of a trimaran that runs on kite power off the shores of Hawaii.
We're not talking about ordinary sails here, but high-tech kites that "harness higher winds above the water, reduce wetted surface with a lifting force, and improve hull stability," according to Maui-based Kite For Sail. The system, which provides far more propulsion than conventional sails, is meant to supplement engine power to lessen the need for fossil fuels.
To prove the technology's worth, the company's founders plan to employ their technology on trip around the world for the next five years. We just hope that global warming doesn't ruin the journey first.
GM's hydrogen fuel cell Volt, shown at the Shanghai Auto Show.
(Credit: General Motors Photo/ Natalie Behring)Hydrogen is lightweight and efficient as a fuel. When it burns, you get water as the exhaust, and the fuel cell technology that burns the gas is well developed. The major hang-up has been how to produce hydrogen without needing lots of fossil-derived energy.
Apparently, the way to cheap hydrogen is through aluminum. Purdue researchers earlier this year announced they'd found a way to use aluminum to get hydrogen from water. Today a Chinese ceramicist who did graduate work in Portugal says there's an even simpler way to derive hydrogen. This process uses powdered aluminum at room temperature, under normal atmospheric pressure. This use of modified aluminum powder could promise a cheap way to produce hydrogen for fuel cells.
It's long been engineers' hope to power everything from portable devices to cars with power cells. We have video of experimental hydrogen-powered cars here.
One often-cited alternative to gasoline-powered cars is hydrogen. Editors Michael Kanellos and Brian Cooley took a look at one example of a hydrogen-powered test car, a small Mercedes. To keep Kanellos from endangering himself and said vehicle, they set the top speed on this hydro-chariot at only 85 miles per hour. Take a look.
Traditional open fire cooking
(Credit: University of Nottingham)Two billion people around the globe still depend on open wood fires for cooking. That method is 5 percent efficient in using energy. The smoke is unhealthy for all those who must breathe it. And in some areas it's depleting forests that can't grow fast enough.
Now the University of Nottingham is going to try to build a thermoacoustic kitchen. And that's my new word for the day. No, not "kitchen," but "thermoacoustic." Instead of using the usual wood fire, this device would generate "sound waves through the nonuniform heating of gas." Los Alamos Laboratory has pioneered thermoacoustic reasearch: "In intense sound waves in pressurized gases, thermoacoustics can be harnessed to produce powerful engines, pulsating combustion, heat pumps, refrigerators, and mixture separators." You can tell those scientists at Los Alamos know what they're talking about.
So now Nottingham is hoping to build on Los Alamos' pioneering efforts and build a wood fire-powered kitchen device. It would release less smoke:good. It would be far more energy efficient:good. It would both cook and refrigerate for those without electricity: very good. And would be easily maintained as it has almost no moving parts: too good to be true? I don't think the oil companies are going to like this.
