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Study Says More Time at the Gate Equals Less Airplane Emissions

We recently told you about how new guidelines for streamlining flight paths and landings could cut fuel use by 15 percent and result in a nice decline in emissions.  Now, researchers at MIT say that more time at the gate could also slash fuel use and emissions from aircraft.

The study, funded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, was carried out at Boston Logan International Airport where the researchers found that if planes were held at their gates for an average of four minutes and 18 seconds, runway congestion cleared up.  That lead to 20 percent less taxiing time for the planes, which reduced fuel use by 75 liters per plane.  As a bonus, even with the wait time, planes were actually up in the air more quickly without the traffic jam on the runway.

Taxiing accounts for the emission of 6 billion tons of CO2 a year in domestic U.S. flights with European flights emitting a similar amount of greenhouse gases from taxiing.  If the new flight path and landing guidelines were paired with four minutes wait time at the gate, aviation emissions could be reduced by millions of tons a year.

via New Scientist



Compact Fluorescent Bulb Wins Design Award


It's encouraging to see an efficient product win an award for design; energy efficiency and attractive design combine in a single package. The Plumen 001 compact fluorescent bulb has been named the winner of the annual Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Award from London's Design Museum.

It has taken a few years for this idea to go from the initial concept to production. The Plumen bulb provides a stylish and appealing alternative to the more familiar, coiled CFL, and makes it possible to have both efficiency and a bare-bulb aesthetic. As one juror wrote, "We felt these bulbs were neat, appealing and covetable in the right, affordable way."

The Plumen 001 is pricier than standard compact fluorescents, and Plumen bulbs are only available for Europe and the UK at present (countries with a 230 volt power system). However, a version for the US (and other countries with 110 volt power) is forthcoming.

Previously on EcoGeek.

via: Architect Magazine


Samsung Introduces Completely Solar-Powered, Transparent TV

At the CeBIT electronics show in Germany, Samsung unveiled their latest television prototype and it's the coolest one yet.  The 46-inch, 1920 x 1080 resolution LCD TV is fully solar-powered and transparent!

The prototype was designed to use only a tiny amount of energy and it gets all it needs from solar panels running off ambient light in the room -- no need for back-up power sources.  The screen is also transparent, so while you're seeing images on the screen, you're also seeing whatever is behind it.  This means that it could be used in storefronts, as digital window blinds or even in car windshields.

In addtion to your favorite TV shows, it can also project photos or any other data and features ten-finger touchscreen technology.

via ITProPortal and Inhabitat

Hybrid Generators for the Military Could Cut Fuel Use By 70 Percent






via MIT Tech Review




New Electrical Generator Could Be 40% More Efficient


Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory are developing a new gas turbine to increase the efficiency of conventional electrical power plants with a generation system that could increase the thermal-to-electric conversion efficiency by 40 to 50 percent.

Electrical generation is an especially dirty process when coal is being used as the fuel source. It's not too efficient, either, with only about 1/3 of the energy from the burned coal being turned into useful electricity. Research is currently being done on two test assemblies which use supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2), rather than water and steam as the working medium, and a system using the Brayton cycle with equipment more akin to a jet engine than a conventional steam turbine.

While most coal-fired electrical plants could see benefits from this new method, other kinds of power generation would also be able to apply these developments. Nuclear power, biomass, and solar thermal power plants also could be improved through adoption of S-CO2 Brayton generation.

The S-CO2 Brayton equipment is also much more compact than equivalent power generating conventional turbines, which helps to reduce installation costs. This should also serve to make retrofitting of existing power plants easier, since available space for the conversion would be easier to allocate. A small, 4 cubic meter (about 141 cubic feet) system could replace more than 120 cubic meters (about 4,238 cubic feet) of equipment and produce the same amount of power.

Furthermore, while special materials are needed for conventional Rankine cycle turbines, because steam is corrosive at the temperatures and pressures involved, this is not an issue with S-CO2 Brayton equipment, which can be fabricated from simple stainless steel.

With efficiency increases like that, old, outmoded coal plants could be retired, and swapping in new, more efficient equipment could replace the need for building new coal plants altogether.

image via Wikimedia

via: Solar Thermal Magazine


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