Cermak Plaza goes Green!

The newest addition to this shopping center is actually not a store. In fact, the newest addition to the shopping center Berwyn, a neighborhood in Chicago, called Cermak Plaza is actually artsy looking turbines. The plaza which already has quirky artwork outside in the parking lot has added to their collection in the form of an alternative energy source. Wind turbines that were fashioned to both reflect light and generate electricty were recently added amongside the sculpture. Tweleve wind turbines now blow in the parking lot everyday creating quick and green energy for the shopping plaza.
Here is the link to the complete article:

Cleaner Air, One Bike at a Time

With most of us being freshmen this year, we didn't have the opportunity to have a car on campus, unless we found some way to jump around the school's usual policy against allowing freshmen students to have cars on campus. However, the year is over and next year will have new opportunites, including the chance to keep a car on campus. But in recent years, Elmhurst College has offered another opportunity to students as well - the Bike Program. As part of a way for Elmhurst College to "go gree", Elmhurst College has started allowing students to reject the opportunity to keep a car on campus and recieve a free bike instead. If the student promises to not bring a motorized vehicle on campus for an entire academic year (with the exception of a temporary winter permit) they will be able to recieve free bikes, helmets and locks. Little do people know, but this opportunity is open to staff as well. For many of the staff this request may be unreasonable, but for some staff that live close enough to the school, this is a nice opportunity for them as well. Not only will riding a bike to school help reduce the amount of gas you use daily (not to mention the extremely high cost of gas these days and all the money you will save) but it will also eliminate any parking troubles and force you to get daily excerise. This was new to me, being a freshman on campus so I looked into it. Something I found out that was interesting and nice to know for us for years to come is, that if you choose to do the bike program numerous years, each additional year you will recieve a free bike tune-up and a $25.00 gift card to spend on any bike accessories you choose. So after a few years, your bike will be able to be decorated to fit your personal style completely...while making Elmhurst a greener campus and reducing the amount of gasoline used yearly. To enroll for the bike program go to this link: http://public.elmhurst.edu/bicycleprogram/43338292.html
Its a great opportunity, so if you haven't already choosen to have a car on campus, you should check it out.

Alternative Energy in Chicago

Solar power is coming to Chicago people! Invenergy, a Chicago wind and solar power company, plans on builing a solar power farm in Illinois. General Electric Co. says that they can demonstrate breakthrough solar power technology with their new thin film solar panels. The solar power farm will use the new panels from General Electric to produce power for Commonweath Edison (announced Dec 16th). They will also use a wind farm located in LaSalle county for power as well. GE said that their new thin fim panels are the most efficient panels on the market in today's society. The company called it, "a huge step toward making more solar available and affordable on a larger scale." Because these panels are so sucessful, GE plans on having a factory that will strickly make these solar panels. It is said that the new solar technology is more efficient by 13% and with each 1% increase in efficiency it inables a 10% cheaper cost. The new GE plant will make enough of these thin film panels, also know as cadmium telluride panels, to power 80,000 homes by the year 2013. The factory will also empoy 400 people in the are which will hopefully help the local economy. Because of this breakthrough, GE will become one of the lead creators of solar panels and will be comepeting against places like First Solar. This shows how involved the city of Chicago is trying to become in the idea of alternative energy, by creating many new solar panels and by using more power from solar energy farms and wind farms.

high purity hydrogen

Researchers at Eindhoven University have developed a cleaner, more efficient way of producing high purity hydrogen from natural gas. Hydrogen is useful because it is a non-polluting, relatively efficient energy carrier. The most common way of producing hydrogen from natural gas is through steam formation, which wastes a lot of energy. Researchers have now developed new technology called "sorption enhanced catalytic reforming of methane.” The process uses a Rhodium-based catalyst, and would allow for the production of hydrogen at a significantly lower temperature and pressure, which results in less wasted energy. If the temperature is between 400-500 degrees and the pressure is around 4.5 bar they “Direct production of high purity hydrogen and fuel conversion greater than 99.5%” can be achieved (Halabi). This seems good to me because it would waste less energy, produce less carbon emissions, and use fewer materials. A downside would be that Rhodium is expensive.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110512103946.htm

Biofuels in the aviation industry

I read an article about how the aviation industry is trying to switch to biofuels in an effort to cut gas prices and greenhouse gas emissions. However, researches found large variability in the greenhouse gas emissions of the different biofuels they tested. The article cited MIT, who thought they should not make the switch, at least not as quickly as the aviation industry plans to. They found that when the origins of the biofuel is taken into consideration, what might seem like a promising source of renewable energy might actually be worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Although the article seemed schizophrenic at times, the general feel I got was that the author thought more care needed to be taken when choosing renewable sources of energy, and that industries needed to be thorough and studious, and do the research so they know how green the fuels are before they start to use them.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110511134335.htm

Windfarms Of The Water

A new tecnology is currently under reasearch that will allow humans to generate energy from the waves of the sea. This technology, being named Wing Waves, can generate enough energy to power 200,000 houses with one square mile of wings. All this requires is an ocean coast, a depth of 50ft and a sand floor to be able to install. This pretty much opens up the entire coastline to this new form of alternative energy. Wing Waves as of now have no significant downside as they are very enviromentally friendly, produce electricty from the strongest to the calmest waves and have a huge area of operation. I would not be suprised to see this alternative energy begin to pop up all over the world's coast in the next few years.

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/electricity-from-wing-waves/

Algae For Energy

I found this report on some new reasearch on turning common algae into biofuel. At the University of Arkanasas chemical engineers and scientists are looking into butanol. In this process algae would be grown in long tanks from which they would be harvested every week. By drying the algae after harvesting it from the tanks, carbohydrates can be taken and fermented to create butanol. Butanol is more efficient then ethanol and they are also thinking of taking algae from dead water, where it choked the life out the wildlife, in an attempt to restore the waterways which is a plus. This process really does the potentional on making a new biofuel that will take ethanol and help relieve the food crysis as well as help restore the dead waterways.

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/common-algae-biofuel-butanol-production/

War of the Atoms comic

I thought that this cartoon was pretty clever. Since the atom has lost an electron, he is now considered a positive ion. When he says in the cartoon that he is "positive", it has two meanings. On one hand, it means that he is certain he has been hit and on the other hand it means he is now a positively charged ion.
http://www.lab-initio.com/screen_res/nz220.jpg

Acid Rain Comic

I thought that this comic by T. McCracken was pretty humorous because the woman in it has no idea how acid rain works. While in theory it would make sense to counteract acid rain with alkaline rain (in other words, basic rain), it doesn't work like that. We should definitely worry about acid rain because not only does it poison our drinking water, but it also deteriorates statues and buildings. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions in the atmosphere.
http://www.mchumor.com/chemistry3_bframe.html

Ionic Bonding Comic

I felt proud of myself for understanding the chemistry principles behind this comic. The characters inside the classroom are metals. They form positive ions. They are attracted to the non-metal negative ions outside the classroom and want to form ionic bonds with them. Enjoy!

The original comic can be found here:

http://msflynn.edublogs.org/tag/chemistry/