Regular PV becomes less effective as the temperature increases, making it difficult to do anything with the waste heat generated.  By using this new type of energy conversion, the collecting plate can be kept at high temperatures, providing high-temp ‘waste’ heat, which can then be used for different types of energy storage.  Generally, the bigger the temperature difference between your source (the sun) and sink (the atmosphere), the more efficient energy conversion processes are.

The article doesn’t go into much detail, but guess from the name (specifically the thermionic emission part) I’m guessing these things work similar to how light bulbs work, but in reverse.

The Vivos design is based on a spoke and hub complex, with 10 radiating wings surrounding a 2 story central dome. Vivos designed its shelters to provide as much comfort as reasonably possible for its co-owners, with a population density of 1 person per 100 square feet of floor area. FEMA recommends just 50 square feet per person for long-term shelter.

The Vivos web site has a lovely bar along the bottom which lists “Nuclear War / Bio War / Terrorism / Anarchy / Electromagnetic Pulse / Solar Flares / Pole Shift / Killer Comet / Global Tsunami / Planet X / Super Volcano” to remind you of all the horrible things that are probably JUST ABOUT TO HAPPEN!

Notice the 3 man-sized safes for the storing of loot

I’m not sure if this is for real – the renderings look like screen captures from someone’s weekend project on The Sims and the idea seems to have been borrowed from Fallout, but I have no doubt that there’s a market for this.  I wonder what other frontiers are waiting to be gentrified?

This is the second proposal I’ve seen lately which involves renovating 60′s-era missile silos (the other being for a secure data center).  What other uses could these things serve?  They would probably make great wine/cheese caves!

Here’s an Atlas-F silo for sale which has been renovated into “a 2300 sq. ft. 2-story (3 bedroom, 2 bath) luxury home with fiber optic lighting and a contemporary finished interior… Breathtaking mountain views surround this lovely, secure home.”

Designer lighting and tan carpet really set off the 2000-lb blast doors!

If you’re looking for crushed stone, a rock drill and some dynamite is all you need, but to get large usable slabs of stone requires a bit more finesse.  Cararra marble used to be quarried by drilling a series of holes on the edge of a cliff, inserting wooden ‘wedges’ and then soaking these with water – the expansion would cause the stone to crack along the line of holes and the resulting ‘bench’ was then moved to another facility to be cut to the proper sizes.

Modern methods are much cooler, and use two basic tools; gallery saws and wire saws.  A gallery saw is basically a 12-foot long chain saw for cutting stone.  They move along tracks and can cut either vertically or horizontally.  Wire saws are basically big motors attached to a huge rubber band studded with diamond discs.  The rubber band gets wrapped around the piece of rock you want to cut, then the wire saw pulls it tight and starts rotating it.  The diamond discs slowly slice the stone in half, like a cheese wire.

This video shows one of those chain saws in action.

Here’s a horizontal cut

This shows the wire saw – isn’t the space created after removing the slabs amazing?

And here’s what happens after the cutting’s finished…

The Mango Store, which opened in Austin in April, reimagines the entire banking experience for this market. Rather than treat the unbanked as transient customers, Mango aims to forge transparent, long-term relationships. Clients pay a one-time $10 fee that lets them “cash” as many checks as they want by loading the money onto debit cards (backed by a local bank). More sophisticated services, such as international money transfers and bill payment, cost extra. Even so, Mango’s operating costs — and, by extension, its fees — are significantly lower than other alt-finance outlets because it uses its own technology (developed by Mpower) and offers a multitude of services (including Web and mobile-phone apps). “It’s a smart strategy,” says Jennifer Tescher, director of the Center for Financial Services Innovation. “If Mango helps its customers grow financially, it can stick with them as they climb the ladder.”

But first, it has to get them through the door. Tescher likens the store to “a cross between an Apple Store and a high-end yogurt shop,” which could confuse patrons. Yet once customers are inside, Sosa says, the warm, spacious interior is designed “to educate customers and encourage them to stay awhile.” Here’s a look at a few notable features.

Evaporative coolers are a lower-cost alternative to A/C in dry climates that don’t get too hot or humid — say, Denver, but not Phoenix or Miami. Water flows over a mesh, and a fan blows air through the wet mesh to create humid, cool air.

In humid climes, adding water to the air creates a hot and sticky building environment. Furthermore, the air cannot absorb enough water to become cold.

In Phoenix or Tucson, the evaporative cooler can bring down the temperature, but not enough to make it pleasant inside on a 100-degree day or during the four to eight week moist period known as monsoon season. The cooling bumps up against the wet bulb temperature, the lowest temperature to which air can be cooled by evaporating without changing the pressure. The wet bulb temperature could be 75 or 80 degrees on a mid-summer Tucson day. Typically, evaporative coolers only can bring the temperatures about 85 percent of the way to the wet bulb level.

So, for most of the country, refrigeration-based air conditioning is the preferred way of keeping cool.

…

The DEVap solves that problem. It relies on the desiccants’ capacity to create dry air using heat and evaporative coolers’ capacity to take dry air and make cold air.

“By no means is the concept novel, the idea of combining the two,” Kozubal said. “But no one has been able to come up with a practical and cost-effective way to do it.”

HVAC engineers have known for decades the value of desiccants to air conditioning. In fact, one of the pioneers of early A/C, Willis Haviland Carrier, knew of its potential, but opted to go the refrigeration route.

Most people know of desiccants as the pebble-sized handfuls that come with new shoes to keep them dry.

The kind NREL uses are syrupy liquids — highly concentrated aqueous salt solutions of lithium chloride or calcium chloride. They have a high affinity for water vapor, and can thus create very dry air.

Sounds like the technical challenge was designing a system which would make the liquid desiccant portion of the system low-cost and reliable.

Workers in HAZMAT suits seal a portion of the pipeline

Soil samples being collected to for contamination testing.

Pipeline being moved for cutting into segments

Worker preparing to cut a section off the pipe for disposal.

Hopefully the contamination tests will come back negative…

As it stands now, most emissions data focuses on the production side of our consumer society. For example, the factory that makes your gadget in China contributes to China’s emissions count. When that same gadget is shipped to a UK consumer it does not count towards the UK’s emissions count. Barrett showed that the result of this approach has led to what he called “carbon leakage.” He said that as countries become more and more service based, with demand for products and services met by imports rather than production, the overall amount of carbon leakage goes up.

…

The truly startling revelation from Barrett’s data on the growth of UK greenhouse gas emissions from consumer goods and services was the degree to which strategies for “greening” consumption have failed:

• “Green products” have less impact in reducing emissions than most people think. The growth of green consumption has not reduced emissions.
• Gains in emissions reductions from technological advances have been wiped out by increases in consumption as people demand higher levels of affluence.
• The UK’s 50-70% of gains from home energy conservation are lost when they’re redirected for other resource consumption, by people buying other goods and services with the money saved.

…

The big question then is: How can we drive systemic lifestyle changes broadly and more effectively than by telling people to stop consuming, or to consumer “greener” products? Barrett said that some economists are exploring one possible solution: a move toward a future of “steady state economics,” in which a high quality of life exists with no economic growth, since economic growth has (so far) driven growth in material consumption.

So many ‘big’ issues in so few sentences…

This is the first time I’ve considered the fact that if the houses we build use 50% of what a ‘typical’ house uses (let’s say $100/mo), what that really means is that the owner of our house has an additional $50/mo to spend on consumer goods.  Consumer goods which were probably made in dirty chinese factories and then shipped across the ocean to be eventually buried in one of our land fills.

The second big point that is casually tossed out is ‘steady state’ economics.  This is something I’ve been wondering about ever since I watched these thought-provoking videos about exponential growth.

Last week an F/A-18 Super Hornet flew from the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Md., powered by a 50/50 mix of aviation fuel and camelina, also known as wild flax. It was the first supersonic fighter to fly on a bio-fuel mix. The event was celebrated by US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on the Navy’s new official blog, also launched last week .

Officials say that during the 45-minute flight the plane’s engines worked as well on the camelina fuel as on normal aviation fuel – at both subsonic and supersonic speeds.

“The fuel works so well, all I needed to do was just fly the plane.” the plane’s pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Tom Weaver said. Mabus describes the program a “significant milestone” toward operational use of bio-fuels by the Navy.

The Navy says it will take a few months before camelina can be certified as an alternative fuel source, but it has already received 40,000 gallons of camelina bio-fuel from a grower in Montana, at a cost of nearly $3 million. The humble weed is now being cultivated because of its high oil content – with farmers across the Pacific Northwest looking at its potential.

It’s not only the US Navy that’s interested in camelina. In March the US Air Force test-flew an A-10C Thunderbolt from Eglin Air Force base in Florida on the same mix; Japan Air Lines has also tested camelina.

The military program has attracted some of America’s top corporations, including General Electric (which tested the engines) and Honeywell (which blended the fuel), as well as smaller players like Sustainable Oils. But industry sources say it will only be feasible if the new fuel can “drop in” – without expensive aircraft modifications being necessary. It’s a big if – the Navy has a goal of meeting half of its energy needs from alternative sources by 2020.

Navy officials say the next step is to start testing bio-fuels in ships later this year, starting with algae-based fuels.

A new report by the Pew Charitable Trust says the US military is making good progress toward energy efficiency. It cites wind turbines on air bases and the growing use of solar farms in residential areas on bases. The Pew report concludes: “While work remains to be done, the military continues to build on its successful record in managing resources and investing in long-term innovations.”

Environmentalists give a lukewarm welcome to the programs, but say the military should be focusing on other ways to reduce its ‘footprint.’ “Does it really need all those post-WWII military bases in places like Germany and Japan? Does it need to keep all that cold-war hardware in operation? “ asks Michael Graham Richard at Treehugger.com.

 AMOA ( Austin Museum of Art) recently hosted their Art Trek event at the  Edward Durrell Stone house in Dallas. Built in the 50′s and lovingly restored to its full glory by our gracious host. This modernist residence was modeled after the US Embassy in Delhi, India.

Here is a link to the recent report produced by McKinsey & Company; KEMA; The Energy futures Lab at Imperial College London; Oxford Economics and the ECF. OMA & AMO also contributed to the graphic narrative.

Its an interesting approach especially towards the end of Volume 3, where AMO graphically illustrated the ideal scenario for what could happen in the next 40 years.

http://www.archdaily.com/56229/roadmap-2050-a-practical-guide-to-a-prosperous-low-carbon-europe/

It seems he’s finally started to think about the effects of climate change, and seems to have come to the conclusion that climate change poses a more serious threat to the world.  He gave a talk at TED in which he outlined his analysis of the problem:

CO2 = P x S x E x C

Meaning this: the climate emissions of human civilization are the result of four driving forces:

* Population: the total number of people on the planet (which is still increasing because we are not yet at peak population).

* Services: the things that provide prosperity (and because billions of people are still rising out of poverty and because no global system will work unless it’s fair, we can expect a massively increased demand for the services that provide prosperity).

* Energy: the amount of energy it takes to produce and provide the goods and services that our peaking population uses as it grows more prosperous (what some might call the energy intensity of goods and services). Gates believes it’s likely cutting two-thirds of our energy waste is about as good as we can do.

* Carbon: the amount of climate emissions generated in order to produce the energy it takes to fuel prosperity.

Those four, he says, essentially define our emissions (more on that later). In order to reach zero emissions, then, at least one of these values has to fall to zero. But which one? He reckons that because population is going to continue to grow for at least four decades, because billions of poor people want more equitable prosperity, and because (as he sees it) improvements in energy efficiency are limited, we have to focus on the last element of the equation, the carbon intensity of energy. Simply, we need climate-neutral energy. We need to use nothing but climate-neutral energy.

To do that, we need an “energy miracle.” We need energy solutions that don’t yet exist, released through a global push for clean energy innovation. That, in turn, demands that a generation of entrepreneurs push forward new ideas for renewable energy, unleashing “1,000 promising ideas.” He described one of his own investments, but went on to note that we need hundreds of other ambitious companies as well, and he plans to put his own efforts into this arena.

This is a very accessible way to approach the problem; it comes with a handy acronym, presents the problem as a simple equation that needs solving, and makes intuitive sense.  Framed in this way I have to agree with him; developing net-zero energy sources seems like the best way to zero out the problem.

So after reading this I felt all warm and fuzzy; Bill Gates is on the case, and he has tonnes of cash to throw at it!  Surely we’ll have this engineering problem solved in the next decade or so right?

Then I read this response written by Joe Romm (former Acting Assistant Secretary at DOE and current senior fellow at the Center for American Progress), which basically shreds both Gate’s premise and his solution.  Here’s the basic problem; quantifying ‘Services’ distorts reality beyond utility, developing ‘energy miracles’ will take too long to work, and even if it didn’t we already have all the technology we need to fix the problem.

So I have thought a lot about whether Gates is right that we need multiple “energy miracles” developed through a $10 billion-a-year government R&D effort to stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm.

Put more quantitatively, the question is — What are the chances that multiple (4 to 8+) carbon-free technologies that do not exist today can each deliver the equivalent of 350 Gigawatts baseload power (~2.8 billion Megawatt-hours a year) and/or 160 billion gallons of gasoline cost-effectively by 2050? [Note -- that is about half of a stabilization wedge.] For the record, the U.S. consumed about 3.7 billion MW-hrs in 2005 and about 140 billion gallons of motor gasoline.

Put that way, the answer to the question is painfully obvious: “two chances — slim and none.” Indeed, I have repeatedly challenged readers and listeners over the years to name even a single technology breakthrough with such an impact in the past three decades, after the huge surge in energy funding that followed the energy shocks of the 1970s. Nobody has ever named a single one that has even come close.

…

I don’t know why the energy miracle crowd can’t see the obvious — so I will elaborate here. I will also discuss a major study that explains why deployment programs are so much more important than R&D at this point. Let’s keep this simple:

• To stabilize below 450 ppm, we need to deploy by 2050 some 12 to 14 stabilization wedges (each delivering 1 billion tons of avoided carbon) covering both efficient energy use and carbon-free supply (see here). The technologies we have today, plus a few that are in the verge of being commercialized, can provide the needed low-carbon energy [see "How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated)"].
• Myriad energy-efficient solutions are already cost-effective today. Breaking down the barriers to their deployment now is much, much more important than developing new “breakthrough” efficient TILTs, since those would simply fail in the marketplace because of the same barriers. Cogeneration is perhaps the clearest example of this.
• On the supply side, deployment programs (coupled with a price for carbon) will always be much, much more important than R&D programs because new technologies take an incredibly long time to achieve mass-market commercial success. New supply TILTs would not simply emerge at a low cost. They need volume, volume, volume — steady and large increases in demand over time to bring the cost down, as I discuss at length below.
• No existing or breakthrough technology is going to beat the price of power from a coal plant that has already been built — the only way to deal with those plants is a high price for carbon or a mandate to shut them down. Indeed, that’s why we must act immediately not to build those plants in the first place.

For better or worse, we are stuck through 2050 with the technologies that are commercial today (like solar thermal electric) or that are very nearly commercial (like plug-in hybrids).

I have discussed most of this at length in previous posts (listed below), so I won’t repeat all the arguments here. Let me just focus on a few key points. A critical historical fact was explained by Royal Dutch/Shell, in their 2001 scenarios for how energy use is likely to evolve over the next five decades (even with a carbon constraint):

“Typically it has taken 25 years after commercial introduction for a primary energy form to obtain a 1 percent share of the global market.”

Note that this tiny toe-hold comes 25 years after commercial introduction. The first transition from scientific breakthrough to commercial introduction may itself take decades. We still haven’t seen commercial introduction of a hydrogen fuel cell car and have barely seen any commercial fuel cells — over 160 years after they were first invented.

The article goes on to discuss how technologies move from lab discoveries to commercial energy sources – the gist is; it takes a really long time and we should be spending the next 40 years trying to push existing technologies into wider use rather than trying to develop brand new ones.

The LA-based MAK Center for Art and Architecture commissioned 21 artists to take over some of the most exclusively commercial sites of public architecture

They’re made by an Austin company called Zebra Imaging.  I really want to drop by their office and look at some of them in person…

via Landscape and Urbanism

Another nice video from BIG as well.

Bathsheba Grossman is a sculptor who uses cutting-edge technology to render math- and science-inspired shapes in three dimensions. You can buy 3D-printed laser-cut metal ones, or order them in plastic at lower costs from ShapeWays. That sound you hear is my jaw scraping my keyboard.

Borromean Rings

120 Cell

Along these same lines – check out the renderings on the Minimal Surface Archive, and for some background on what it means to project a 4-d dodecahedron into 3 dimensions, this video explains how to think in 10 dimensions.  If you really want to blow your mind, try parsing this article on the Lie Group E8, which has been proposed as a fundamental model of physical existence.