#108 - Sustainability + Alternate Energy Issues
Well, I will attempt to get this blog article out before typhoon Kammuri hits us in a couple of days. At least currently, it looks like it’s going to hit us almost dead on. Ah well.
These will appear disjointed and maybe they are but nonetheless onwards. 😊
On a podcast from the Knowledge Project there was an interesting datum that trust is neuro-physiologically efficient because it allows the brain to not have to waste time and energy on worrying about what the trusted person is saying. So working with people you trust is a good thing. Explains why I prefer to deal only with my tribe.
I saw a firm called WattJoule that produces something called V-Flow vanadium batteries. This may be the solution to the alternative energy off-peak storage issue. I saw on their website that they had batteries that can hold up to 500 kWh worth of electricity. [For comparison, my house, with a washer, dryer, and 4 aircons, ref and constant occupancy – 625Kwh/Month] About the size of half of a 20’ shipping container. They have a very long lifetime and can be recharged indefinitely. Wish I could have found cost data in time to write this article.
https://www.wattjoule.com/core-benefits/
Another point about vanadium-based batteries is that there is far more vanadium available on earth than lithium, and it is a far safer material to work with.
I learned about a company in San Francisco called Twist Bio Science that is working on synthesizing DNA for high density, low energy cost data storage. At the risk of using a marketing soundbite it is dense enough to store the current data contents of the Internet into something the size of a shoebox. It has extremely low energy requirements and is supposed to be almost permanent in nature. I mentioned the last because the current data storage that we have, which is essentially either hard disks or solid-state chips, is by no means a long-term (by long-term I mean hundreds of years) solution. They degrade, they break down. This is why I have multiple encrypted copies of most of my data. A trillion megabytes of data in a cubic inch. Wow! Microsoft has apparently already bought this product for data storage. The current bottleneck is the speed with which data can be written and retrieved but they are, I’m sure, working on it.
There is a plastic cooling film that can be applied to the roofs of houses that can apparently create up to a 10° differential in the inside temperature versus the outside temperature. Allows heat to escape from underneath it (the house) and reflects most sunlight. And it’s totally passive. Xiaobo Yin, a materials scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, based on research by an electrical engineer at Stanford University. The cost mentioned was $0.50 per square meter. That is very reasonable. I would pay for that for any house I had in the tropics. Two interesting points. Firstly, I couldn’t find much that was more recent on this research than about 2018, so I hope that they are working on getting a commercial product out to market. And secondly, I looked at six or seven articles on this research and the materials. Every single researcher mentioned was Chinese. All in the US, at places like University of Colorado, and Stanford. But all with Chinese names.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/cheap-plastic-film-cools-whatever-it-touches-10-c
As those who know me are aware, I don’t have a racist bone in my body. But I am extraordinarily concerned about China and its blatant theft of IP, and it’s authoritarian stance towards its own people. I can’t even claim to come to a conclusion based on what I noticed. It’s simply an observation.
A MASS Timber building in construction
MASS timber. This is the idea of using CLT (composite laminated timber) for building. I look at it and I’m really impressed. They can do buildings, at least currently, up to 18 stories, and this material beats the current fire ratings by a factor of 50%. The buildings are approximately 1/5 the weight of a concrete or steel building of the same size. This of course would reduce the foundation size and help with seismic resistance. According to industry papers, they can be erected about 25% faster than a normal steel or concrete building, with greatly reduced site traffic. Site traffic is the amount of trucks, concrete or otherwise, going in and out of the site. The idea is with MASS timber is that the majority of it is prefabricated brought site and just simply assembled.
https://www.thinkwood.com/products-and-systems/mass-timber
And of course, it’s a sustainable resource which locks up an incredible amount of carbon dioxide in the material itself as opposed to steel and concrete production which produce carbon dioxide during the manufacturing process. My primary question is, in the tropics, how well they stand up to biological hazards such as termites. I’m still researching that.
Oh, and in case it needs saying - I really love the look and feel of wood construction. :-)
Other places are looking at similar apps. Long time before they appear in Asia though I fear.
There is now an app in Helsinki, Finland called WHIM. It allows you to pay a monthly fee, and any time you wish to travel anywhere within Helsinki, it tells you what methods are available and you can take them and not have to worry about charging anything on different cards with different apps. Bicycle, train, Even a taxi at some point. Wow! That sounds amazing. I feel like going to Helsinki just to try it.
Some quotes I ran across that I like 😊
“Use only that which works and take it from anyplace you can find it ”
“It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honorably. ”