Waste material becomes very efficient insulation

Your next refrigerator might be sheathed in renewable rice, if a team of students from the University of Michigan have anything to do with it. With just 12.5mm of rice husk ash they reckon they can achieve the equivalent of over 100mm of conventional petroleum-based insulation.

With claims that the 11 million fridges sold annually in the US could be made 50% more efficient, the judges of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Prize obviously saw the potential in such technology. Such that they awarded the students first prize, which came with a cheque for $200,000. That will now no doubt help them as they launch a start-up company, Husk Insulation, to commercialise their product.

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Video: Greening the Empire State Building

GE’s green locomotives

General Electric has come out with its latest “green” locomotive, part of a broader push it is making in the field of fuel-efficient rail transportation. The ES44C4, the latest in GE’s “Evolution Series” locomotives, uses an alternating current motor instead of the direct current motors typical in older locomotives. That will make it 17 percent more fuel-efficient and cut greenhouse-gas emissions by about 70 percent compared to older models. The new locomotives also have fewer parts, making them easier to maintain. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has bought 25 of the new locomotives so far.

GE says that 600 of the new locomotives can do the work of about 800 older ones. That switch would lead to fuel savings of about 260 million litres per year, equivalent to taking about 115,000 cars off the road. GE is putting a lot of money into better train technologies. Last week it announced it would put $100 million into a new battery factory in New York. The factory, which GE is seeking stimulus funding to help build, will make sodium batteries aimed at, among other things, powering its upcoming line of hybrid locomotives.

Railroads are already about three times more fuel efficient than trucks for freight hauling, according to railroad company CSX. That efficiency has led some to consider railroads as a “clean” form of transportation as they stand today. But trains also present a host of potential efficiency gains, like capturing the energy used in slowing them down through regenerative braking, much as Toyota’s Prius hybrids capture braking energy. The energy used in braking a 207-ton locomotive over the course of a year is equivalent to the power used by about 160 homes. Replacing all the pre-2001 locomotives in the country with GE hybrids that use regenerative braking would lead to emissions reductions equivalent of taking a third of America’s cars off the road, GE claims.

Original article: Jeff St. John. Greentechmedia. 18 May 2009. Read more…

Greening the Empire State Building

Historically, improvements in existing buildings are made on an ad hoc basis, however, much more energy efficiency and savings can be obtained by taking a whole-building approach, when integrated solutions and blended savings bring long-term benefits. A case where this is aptly demonstrated is the iconic Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York, that is now also becoming an example of innovation in building management.

The Empire State Building Retrofit Project is a partnership between the owners, Johnson Controls as the preferred energy service company, Jones Lang LaSalle as the project manager, Rocky Mountain Institute as the peer reviewer and sustainability experts and the Clinton Climate Initiative as a resource and advisor.

The $20 million project will reduce energy consumption by more than 40%, achieve annual energy savings of $4,4 million and save 100,000 metric tons of carbon over 15 years. The work will include a layer of film added to each of the 102-storey building’s 6,500 windows, insulation behind radiators and improved lighting, ventilation and air conditioning. People working in the building will be able to use the internet to monitor how much energy is being used, and where.

A special website, esbsustainability.com, has been created to showcase the tools and processes that resulted from the project, and includes a video, interactive model, and information on best practices for future building retrofits.

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See a short video clip on the process here…