Green Tech

Renew Blue's Seadog pump, which uses wave and tidal power to produce electricity and can be harnessed for desalination, is about to be put to the commercial test off the coast of Texas.

Earlier this month, Renew Blue, a subsidiary of the Minneapolis-based Independent Natural Resources, was granted the first-ever state off-shore wave energy lease from the Texas General Land Office. On Thursday, Renew Blue announced that it has licensed its technology to Texas Natural Resources and that they will partner to develop an off-shore facility for 18 Seadog pumps that will both produce power and desalinate seawater for drinking.

A Renew Blue sketch demonstrating how an 18-pump Seadog plant could work.

(Credit: Independent Natural Resources)

Texas Natural Resources plans to build the facility one mile off the coast of Freeport, Texas.

Water produced from the off-shore plant will initially be bottled in compostable plastic bottles produced from corn byproducts. It will be sold under the brand Renew Blue and marketed as "environmentally friendly bottled water."

"However, the greater goal of the Seadog pump field is to demonstrate what the technology can do in providing electricity and clean water at a municipal level to regions all over the world that lack fresh water and energy but have an abundance of ocean waves along their coastline," the companies said.

The project will be a test to see how scalable the technology is for widespread use.

In addition to providing electricity, the plant will initially desalinate 3,000 gallons of water per day and hold 30,000 gallons of fresh water at a time to be transported for bottling. But the plant could be designed to eventually desalinate millions of gallons per day for municipal use, according to statistics provided by both companies.

Researchers at Purdue University have had a breakthrough that may completely change how engineers design cooling systems in everything from computers to electric and hybrid cars.

Using special computer chips from Delphi Electronics, Suresh Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, and doctoral student Tannaz Harirchia, have developed and tested new mathematical formulas concerning the properties of boiling liquids in "microchannels."

Purdue University doctoral student Tannaz Harirchia holding up the computer chip she and professor Suresh Garimella (right) used to develop new formulas concerning 'microchannels.'

(Credit: Purdue University)

It's no secret that engineers, particularly chipmakers and computer manufacturers, have been striving for years to design cooling systems with highly efficient heat-transfer rates.

Microchannels are tiny channels through which fluid is directed in some types of high-power electronic cooling systems. Purdue University researchers have been working on the idea of microchannel heat sinks, as well as liquid-filled chips, for some time. IBM has also been developing a liquid-based chip-cooling concept.

Garimella and Harirchia have now determined that "allowing a liquid to boil in cooling systems dramatically increases how much heat can be removed, compared to simply heating a liquid to below its boiling point," according to their report.

"Boiling occurs differently in tiny channels than it does in ordinary size tubing used in conventional cooling systems," Garimella said in a statement.

Details of the breakthrough will be presented on October 8 in Belgium at Therminic 2009, an annual conference on thermal research and technology for microelectronics.

Having come up with a new way to assess fluid boiling in microchannels, Garimella and Harirchia now plan to concentrate on developing heat-transfer models engineers can use when designing cooling systems for high-power electronics.

Conducted in conjunction with Delphi Electronics, the research was funded by Indiana's 21st Century Research and Technology Fund, and Purdue-based National Science Foundation Cooling Technologies Research Center, a consortium of corporate, academic, and government laboratories.

Contraception would be the cheapest and most effective way to reduce carbon emissions worldwide between 2010 and 2050, according to a study by the London School of Economics.

The report, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost," (PDF) determined that if contraception was made widely available between 2010 and 2050 to women and men around the world who wished to use it, the reduction in unwanted births could result in saving 34 gigatonnes (one billion tonnes) of carbon emissions. That's roughly 60 years worth of U.K. emissions or 6 years worth of U.S. emissions.

The cost for supplying, and distributing contraception over those 40 years would cost an estimated $220 billion, or $7 for each tonne of carbon emissions avoided. It's cheaper than the next most efficient low-carbon technology, wind power, which would cost $24 per tonne or $1 trillion to prevent the same amount (one billion tonnes) of carbon emissions from being produced, according to the report.

In its per-tonne cost analysis, the report also calculated $51 for solar, $57 to $83 for coal plants with carbon capture and storage, $92 for plug-in hybrid vehicles, and $131 for electric vehicles.

The contraception as carbon reduction conclusion was based on United Nations statistics that 40 percent of worldwide pregnancies are unintentional. If contraception was made available to people who wanted it, those unintentional births could be reduced by as much as 72 percent. Between 2010 and 2050, that would result in curbing the world population growth by half a billion people, according to the UN statistics.

That is a conservative estimate, according to the report, since the UN figures are based solely on the lack of contraception access for married couples, and did not include unintended pregnancy statistics for unmarried women.

The study was funded by the U.K. environmental group Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which has argued that a more responsible attitude toward reproduction could be the answer to many environmental issues such oil, food, and water shortages.

The group has said that family planning programs in poor countries should qualify for environmental aid, since fewer people result in less energy use and fewer emissions.

"It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions--the carbon tonnage can't shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up," Roger Martin, chair of OPT, said in a statement.

Is the practical idea too controversial to be considered because of moral reservations, or will countries warm up to it as not only climate change, but world water supplies become an issue?

"The taboo on mentioning this fact has made the whole climate change debate so far somewhat unreal. Stabilising (sic) population levels has always been essential ecologically, and this study shows it's economically sensible too," said Martin.

Even as billions of dollars are being spent around the world to modernize the electricity grid, the systems to delivery fresh water are also in desperate need of a 21st century upgrade.

IBM is developing a portfolio of IT-related water management technologies, a business that it estimates can total $20 billion within five years. At a water conference next week, IBM and Intel will be forming a working group to study how information and technology can be used to improve water management, according to IBM.

The goal is to sketch out the technical architecture required to more efficiently use fresh water, only one percent of the available water on Earth.

Water systems even in developed countries like the U.S. are notoriously outdated, with faulty pipes--some of them still made of wood--result in 25 percent to 45 percent lost water. That means high-tech approaches, such as using sensors to gauge water quality, are a tough sell to cash-strapped municipalities, most of which are more concerned with maintaining the basic infrastructure.

IBM is betting, though, that fresh water will have more value attached to it from the public, governments, and corporations.

"The hard truth is that most of the countries in the developing world are outgrowing the amount of water that is available to them," said Peter Williams, the chief technology officer of IBM's Big Green Innovations program, who representing IBM at a conference organized by the Water Innovations Alliance industry association next week. "Certainly, it's the case that water is the great sleeping crisis and it is most definitely starting to wake up."

IBM launched Big Green Innovations two and a half years ago to capitalize on constraints in energy generation, carbon emissions, energy in the data center, and water. For the past 18 months, IBM has focused more of its attention on water, said Williams, who characterized the business as "incredibly nascent."

Reservoirs of data
Upgrading the water utility infrastructure is analogous to the many smart-grid technologies now being tested to make the grid run more efficiently and use more renewable energy.

Gathering and processing information on the status of delivery allows water agencies to better manage their operations. For example, if a water authority can use meters or sensors to locate problems, such as leaks or sewage overflows, they can cut their maintenance costs, Williams explained.

IBM has already had a number of water-related deals. In a partnership with the Nature Conservancy, it's gathering data on various environmental factors to measure the health of river ecosystems. In the Netherlands, IBM is involved in the design of levies to understand potential breaking points.

In these cases, IBM is building the software and networks to handle incoming data from sensors and to provide tools to let people analyze the information. It's also testing smart water meters that would provide more accurate consumption data and alert customer if there's a problem, such as a leak. It's also looking at new sensors being developed to track the level of pathogens or chemical contaminants that come from use of pharmaceuticals.

Big Blue's Maximo "asset management" software is used by many water utilities to keep track and maintain their equipment of pumps, plants, and filtration equipment.

Still, water utilities are a generally low-tech bunch when it comes to IT. Most water authority executives don't consider technology options beyond basic SCADA control systems, Williams said. "They are where (electricity) utilities were five or 10 years ago," he said.

Corporate risk
IBM is pushing into water because the trends on water point to the need for greater conservation for social and economic reasons.

In poor countries, billions of people don't have regular access to clean water. Meanwhile, high-profile droughts in Australia and the western U.S. served by the Colorado River are causing severe financial problems for different industries, notably agriculture.

The high energy cost of delivering water helps makes the economic case for better monitoring and data analysis. In the U.S., between 3 percent and 4 percent of the entire electricity output is used to pump water. In California, it's almost 20 percent. Meanwhile, low water levels in rivers and reservoirs forced the shut down of nuclear reactors in France a few years ago.

Industries that rely on water, such as semiconductors, agriculture, or beverages, are susceptible to disruptions of supply. There's also "reputational risk" when consumers perceive that businesses are profligate with water, Williams said.

"It's something like greenhouse gases. Ten years ago in this country, few people were talking about them but now they are," he said. "The same will happen with water."

The Oyster in open position.

(Credit: Aquamarine)

A new approach to harnessing the ocean's power for energy is getting some positive attention.

The Oyster, a giant oscillating device developed by Aquamarine Power that uses hydraulic technology to convert wave power into electricity, won the "Innovator of 2009" award from Britain's Renewable Energy Association in June.

Then on July 15 the Edinburgh, Scotland-based company was awarded 60 million pounds (over $101 million) by the U.K.'s Department of Energy and Climate Change to further develop its device.

Now comes the that the Oyster is set to be installed and working at a test site by this fall, according Aquamarine Power.

Unlike other attempts at ocean power, the Oyster does not use the waves themselves as the force to turn turbines and generate electricity directly with an underwater generator. Instead, the wave power is harnessed to activate a series of pistons in the Oyster to vigorously pump ocean water to shore through an underwater pipeline. A conventional hydro-electric generator is then used to convert what has become a high-pressure water source into electricity.

The simple approach, which has been tried in other forms by projects like the Seadog Pump, is thought to be more scalable.

The Oyster will be installed at European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) by Fugro Seacore in the waters of the Orkney Islands, the series of islands off northern Scotland where the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean come together.

Preliminary studies on the device conducted in wave pools showed that 10 Oysters could supply power to about 3,000 homes, according to statistics provided by Aquamarine Power.

A new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has found that Greenland's melting ice may have a greater effect on sea level rise on the northeastern coasts of the U.S. and Canada than previously hypothesized.

"If Greenland's ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 may shift and cause sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches (about 30 to 50 centimeters) more than in other coastal areas. The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed," NCAR said in its preliminary report.

Additional sea level rise from Greenland ice melt in centimeters.

(Credit: Graphic courtesy Geophysical Research Letters, modified by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR))

The group of researchers on the project, which was led by NCAR's Aixue Hu, included scientists from NCAR, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Florida State University. The report research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Greenland ice has been melting at a rate of about 7 percent per year within the last few years. But Hu and his group modeled several different scenarios based on different melting rates using NCAR's Community Climate System Model, which simulates global climate change. They did not include overall global sea level rise by other factors such as Arctic ice melt, but sea level rise based on Greenland ice melt alone.

The group wants to educate the public on the misconception that the oceans of the world spread out evenly.

"The oceans will not rise uniformly as the world warms. Ocean dynamics will push water in certain directions, so some locations will experience sea level rise that is larger than the global average," NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, co-author of the paper, said in a statement.

If Greenland's ice melt rate slows to 1 percent per year, northeastern sea levels would, at most, rise 8 inches (20 cm) by 2100.

If Greenland's ice melt rate slows to 3 percent per year, it could raise world sea level by 21 inches (54 cm) by 2100.

Most interesting may be the group's predictions in the unlikely event that Greenland's ice melt rate were to continue its 7 percent increase per year.

In that scenario, the increased drain of freshwater into the North Atlantic would change oceanic circulation of warm water pumping into the Arctic, which would in turn lead to a temporary recovery of Arctic sea ice.

A full report of NCAR's findings will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this Friday.

The worst of the global-warming effects can still be reversed, if proper steps are taken fairly quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to an analysis by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

A team led by Warren Washington, a senior scientist at NCAR's Climate and Global Dynamics Division, ran various climate-predicting scenarios with a Community Climate System Model run through a global supercomputer. Most notable is the simulation of what would happen in a world continuing on a path of unchecked human-made emissions of greenhouse gases versus one in which emissions are cut globally by 70 percent.

Supercomputer simulates how average Earth surface air temperatures could warm by the years 2080 through 2099, compared to the years 1980 through 1999, depending on whether greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb (top) or are reduced by 70 percent (bottom). Unchecked emissions could lead to an increase of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit or more for parts of North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

(Credit: Geophysical Research Letters/modified by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.)

The results by the year 2100 are a difference between the global temperature rising an average of 1 degree versus 4 degrees Fahrenheit; the sea level rising 5.5 inches versus 8.7 inches; and Arctic ice stabilizing versus having its thin seasonal layer melt away completely.

"The threat of global warming can still be greatly diminished, if nations cut emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 70 percent this century, according to a new analysis," according to an NCAR statement. "While global temperatures would rise, the most dangerous potential aspects of climate change, including massive losses of Arctic sea ice and permafrost and significant sea level rise, could be partially avoided."

The levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have already risen from 284 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to more than 380 ppm this year, according to NCAR.

The computer simulation showed that if greenhouse gas emissions can be held at 450ppm--the target labeled as reasonably achievable by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, if the world reduces emissions by 70 percent--the global temperature would rise by about .6 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. If human-made emissions are left unchecked, the model predicted that greenhouse gas levels would rise to 750ppm by 2100, causing a global temperature increase of 2.2 Celsius (about 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

In the unchecked world, the model found that increasingly warm water temperatures would lead to a greater rise in sea levels, which, in turn, would lead to a negative impact on fisheries, sea bird populations, and mammals living in areas such as the northern Bering Sea. The simulation showed Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America as the areas that would see the greatest increase in average temperature.

It also simulated the U.S. climate specifically. In the world with 70 percent reduced emissions, for example, the U.S. Southwest would see double the amount of annual precipitation by the year 2100.

NCAR, which is funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, will publish a full report on its findings next week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. NCAR's report comes just as the U.S. Congress is about to debate the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, an energy and climate bill that would (among other things) impose a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions permits and mandate increased use of renewable-energy resources for utilities.

"Our goal is to provide policymakers with appropriate research so they can make informed decisions," NCAR's Washington said in a statement. "This study provides some hope that we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change--if society can cut emissions substantially over the next several decades and continue major cuts through the century."

Arctic sea ice is not only shrinking in coverage area; it's also thinning, according to a report and satellite images jointly released on Monday by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.

The Arctic basin is covered in a thick semipermanent sea ice, which is covered in thin seasonal ice caps that are built up each winter, only to melt away again each summer.

The 2009 Arctic summer-melting season is starting out with a substantial amount of thin seasonal ice and an unusually small amount of the thick sea ice, making it more vulnerable to melting, according to the NSIDC's report.

"Thin seasonal ice--ice that melts and refreezes every year--makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 (percent) to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 (percent) to 40 percent," according to the report from the University of Colorado team led by Charles Fowler.

At left, median image of sea ice thickness at the end of each February cycle. On right, the sea ice thickness for 2009.

(Credit: Chuck Fowler and Jim Maslanik, University of Colorado/NSIDC)

The findings should not be entirely surprising to those who have been following NASA and the NSIDC's research. In September 2008, the groups issued a joint report that the Arctic's thick permanent ice was at one of the lowest levels on record, in terms of coverage area.

A team led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is further examining sea ice data to determine if there's a correlation between the reduction in sea ice coverage area and the changes in thickness and volume.

"Sea ice thickness has been hard to measure directly, so scientists have typically used estimates of ice age to approximate its thickness. But last year, a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the first map of sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic basin," according to NASA's report.

Kwok's team is using data from NASA's IceSat (Ice, cloud, and land elevation satellite) to measure Arctic sea ice thickness and volume for 2003 to 2008, to see if there's is a correlation between sea ice coverage area and volume.

So far, the team has reached the same conclusion as Fowler's group.

"The older, thicker sea ice is declining and is being replaced with newer, thinner ice that is more vulnerable to summer melt," Kwok said in a statement.

"With these new data on both the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we will be able to better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate," he said.

Images chronicling the change in sea ice coverage area in the Arctic from NASA's QuikScat satellite taken each January 1 since 1999. NASA noticed a 40 percent decrease between 2005 and 2007. Now Kwok's team is looking at thickness and volume.

(Credit: Ron Kwok, NASA/JPL)

IBM on Friday disclosed the elements of an initiative to sell technology and services to better manage fresh water, often referred to as the "oil of the 21st century."

The company said it has technology, now being tested at the SmartBay project in Galway, Ireland, to gather and analyze data to improve water conservation. It also announced a membrane for purifying saltwater that was developed by IBM in collaboration with other researchers.

The water strategy, part of IBM's Big Green Innovations project started two years ago, is set to be officially announced at the World Water Forum, which starts Monday in Istanbul, Turkey.

Managing fresh water is increasingly becoming a concern for governments and industries around the world, with the ongoing droughts in Australia and California being prominent examples.

IBM expects that water conservation can be improved by using sensors to gather data and analyzing the data on high-end computers. It has developed a suite of water-management offerings that combine consulting services and computing, including water metering for utilities.

The SmartBay research program around Galway Bay, for example, monitors wave conditions, marine life, and pollution levels and uses IBM's "cloud" computing services to predict water conditions.

"Regardless of industry or geography, smarter water management is an issue faced by every business and government on the planet," Sharon Nunes, vice president for Big Green Innovations at IBM, said in a statement. "Without sufficient insight into near- and long-term factors affecting your water supply and usage--complex issues such as access, quality, cost and re-use--you increasingly run the risk of failure."

To date, however, there hasn't been a great deal of investment in water-related technologies. Investors and entrepreneurs have been wary of trying to sell new technology, such as purification membranes, to the cash-strapped and conservative municipalities that manage fresh water.

There is also a close tie between energy and water as pumping fresh water or purifying seawater are very energy-intensive. Twenty percent of California's energy use is said to be tied to water.

The membrane filter that IBM and collaborators designed is relatively energy efficient and resistant to degradation by chlorine, a typical problem of membrane filtration.