Water purification for the other 90%. A low cost ($2) water purification device for those living in third world countries.
(image borrowed from flickr user Nieuwslicht)
Archive for the 'Green Products' Category
You hate to see any type of renewable energy source taken out of commission, but it sure is cool to watch. The wind turbine self destructs after it’s brakes fail to slow it down in high winds. Story.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSB1SdVHqQ&rel=1]
Reuse that ipod shuffle or nano packaging to create a set of ipod speakers. You could do this yourself if you were handy with a soldering iron and had a couple of speakers laying around, but here is an easier way:
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/23/bird-electron-ez17-b-ipod-recycling-speaker/
Solar’s day as an economical alternative to coal may have come. Nanosolar has started selling their “printed” solar cells.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/18/nanosolar-begins-shipping-world-s-lowest-cost-solar-panel/
http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/2007/12/18/nanosolar-ships-first-panels/
I am pretty sure most everyone has heard of using solar cells on a house. You may have even heard of people going “off the grid” using a combination of solar cells, energy sipping appliances, and even scaled down wind turbines.
Unless you are into RV’s, you may not have heard about putting solar (or photo voltaic) cells on the roof of a recreational vehicle. I have a friend that is working on a project to equip his van with solar cells. He regularly takes mountain biking and wind surfing trips and would like the convenience and piece of mind of being self sufficient.
The basic procedure for this type of project is to find out how many amps you will be using. From there is a little beyond me, but here is a quote from someone advising him on the project. “Sizing calculations are based on amp hours. So take your 2 amp load and estimate how many hours/day you plan on using it. That’ll give you x amp hours of load per day. Then you need to consider you battery(s). Deep cycle (not starter) batteries are the best type for these applications, for example a Group 24 12V deep cycle battery you can get at Wally world is good for about 75 amp hours. So as an example, if you ran your 2 amp fan for 4 hrs per day you’d only consume 8 amp hours per day. For 3 days you’d only consume 24 amp hours or roughly, a third of a group 24 batteries capacity.” Whatever that means…
I am going to leave the technical stuff there, but it is great that rv’ers are embracing a technology that could be so important for our energy production in the future. It would be safe to assume that those people would be more likely to install photo voltaic cells on their houses. Solar cells could be one of those technologies that have been around a while and it would be great to suddenly see explosive growth because of mass adoption as a viable technology.