Category — Energy

The Dept. of Energy and GM engineers are developing a thermoelectric generator that converts the exhaust gas from your car into additional power. The device is attached to a car’s exhaust pipe and converts heat to electricity. Currently up to 70% of the energy created by a car’s engine is wasted. The goal is to improve fuel economy by 10 percent and save over 100 million gallons of fuel per year in GM vehicles. Ford is also working a system that converts exhaust into air conditioning. The DOE is also funding Michigan State University to develop a similar device for trucks.

It is essentially the same technology that has run space satellites for more than 30 years. A thermoelectric generator works when one side of a metallic plate is heated, exciting electrons to move to the cool side. This creates a current that electrodes collect and convert to electricity. It is very reliable because it involves no moving parts.

If it becomes cost effective, this is potentially a very big deal because these generators could be added to existing vehicles.

We have all heard of solar thermal water heaters by now, I hope. The system whereby liquid is heated inside black boxes on your roof and pumped into a heat exchanger and used to heat hot water in a tank. These solar thermal systems can also be used to heat radiant floors.

But how many people know that this kind of system can also power an HVAC system as well? Incredibly, they do, as evacuated tube solar thermal panels can be coupled with absorption chiller technology to heat and cool your house.

A company called SolarPanelsPlus has taken the two tried and tested technologies of solar thermal and absorption chiller and combined them to make an affordable, efficient, no-fossil-fuel burning HVAC.

One drawback is this type of solar thermal system will not work at night even with battery backup, so you will probably keep your other HVAC unit as a backup. But the energy savings are huge, and even on cloudy winter days this system can take enough sunlight and make heating and cooling power out of it.

This is definitely something to consider if you want to retrofit a new HVAC that will let you almost completely stop using your other fuel-burning system and begin using the free power from the sun.

Evacuated solar tube powered HVAC units by SolarPanelsPlus run on little electrical energy, and as with other appliances that run on electric, this can be offset by incorporating some solar PV.

This system does not use ozone-depleting refrigerants, and uses Lithium Bromide. This innovative HVAC option can also be set up to desalinate or distill drinking water.

—Paul McGinniss, canvas Healthy Home columnist

While you feel like you are getting fleeced every time you fill your car’s tank, you could console yourself with the fact that gasoline is still one of the cheapest liquids you can buy. The average price for a gallon of regular in the U.S. last month was $4.34. You will pay more for a gallon of spring water (over $6). Other common liquids that are more expensive include milk, beer, and the cheapest wine. Though, of course, you can’t drink gasoline.

You may also take solace in the fact that gasoline is more than twice as expensive in Europe. In Germany, which is home to such non-fuel-efficient cars as Mercedes, Porsche, and BMW, a gallon of gas now costs an average of $9.27. It tops $10 a gallon in the Netherlands, home of Shell oil. On the other hand, it costs less than a quarter in Venezuela and only 33 cents a gallon in Iran. In Saudi Arabia, gasoline is now up to 45 cents a gallon (from 39 cents last year). (See eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.html and money.cnn.com/2007/05/04/news/economy/gas_demand/index.htm)

Bio fuel (alcohol) alternatives such as ethanol made from corn are no longer so intoxicating, as the price of corn has tripled due to increased demand, resulting in higher food prices. What a relative few are saving at the pump, we are all making up for at the supermarket checkout. And ethanol is still a 90% gasoline cocktail.

The one true success story thus far is Brazil, which is using sugar cane to make ethanol instead of rum. Because more than 90% of their cars are flex-fuel, Brazil has now achieved independence from imported oil, and is anticipating exporting up to 3 billion liters of ethanol to the U.S. by next year.

Congress can help us save even more by lowering the current 54 cents a gallon tariff it imposes. Of course, we are still relying on imports, because our own domestic supply of sugar cane is being reduced dramatically. Florida is paying $1.75 billion dollars for 187,000 acres of sugar cane to restore it to swamp land as part of the revitalization of the Everglades. This will put the nation’s largest possible producer of sugar cane out of business.

We can produce more oil at home by opening up our reserves, but that is not the solution either. If the current United States proven oil reserve of 15 billion barrels had to supply our entire demand of 21 million barrels per day without resorting to foreign imports, it would last only three years. Saudi Arabia, however, has proven reserves of over 260 billion barrels and Russia may have even more, so oil and gas will continue to dominate as the world’s main sources of energy for decades, as long as we can afford to pay for it.

We need start now to convert our domestic fleet to a combination of hybrid, electric, and hydrogen-powered vehicles to reduce our need for foreign oil. We also have to increase generating electricity with solar and wind (until those fusion reactors that burn water become a reality) so we are not simply trading oil for coal. While coal has the advantage of being plentiful and domestic, it is even more costly to our environment. We need to save both our wallets and the planet before the price gets too high.

—Bryan Canniff, canvas Green Machines columnist