Universal Energy Access: IAP at MIT with e4Dev

e4Dev, a student group at MIT interested in Energy for Development, is organizing a four day course on
"Exploring the intersection of energy and human development
Racing Towards Universal Energy Access:
Why the Next 2 Billion Users Matter (more than you think)"

I wonder if they'll use Buckminster Fuller's World Game design criteria, "How can we make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone?" or one of Bill McDonough's Ecological Design Principles, Use only available solar income.

e4Dev, if they wanted to, might be able to do all or part of the course as a webinar or a MOOC [Massive Open Online Course]. After all, they do have a Ustream channel (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/e4dev) and MIT is part of EdX (https://www.edx.org/school/mitx).

----------------------

"More than 1.5 billion people lack access to basic energy services. This is not inherently problematic as access to energy is not in and of itself a goal of development. Energy access has, however, been identified as a potentially important component in enabling many essential quality of life improvements.

"In a four-day series of lectures, case studies, interactive activities, and the development of an energy access project evaluation strategy, students participating in this course will be exposed to the challenges and opportunities in energy access for the developing world with possibility of continuing work on projects into the Spring if they choose.

"Led and facilitated by Prof. Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga, MIT Energy Initiative Deputy Director Rob Stoner, and a variety of guest speakers, lectures will provide working knowledge of:
The current state of energy access (and what it means to provide access);
The connection between energy access and various aspects of human development work; and
Financing mechanisms and business models for energy projects in the developing world

"The course listing is now available on the the IAP 2014 site, and a more detailed description of each day can be found on the MIT Energy Initiative calendar (http://mitei.mit.edu/calendar).

"DETAILS
Date: Tuesday, January 7 – Friday, January 10
Time: 9:00am – 12:00pm
Location: Building E17, Room 128 (E17-128), 40 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02139"

More information at http://18.9.62.56/calendar/e4dev-introduction-energy-and-human-development-session-2-energy-and-human-development

Solar Christmas Present

Wakawaka (http://us.waka-waka.com) makes a

super efficient, sustainable, lightweight, sturdy and compact solar phone charger and lamp. It enables you to charge virtually any type of (smart)phone or small electronic device within just a few hours and will provide you with up to 80 hours of safe light.

They are offering a buy one/give one program which provides their solar lights and chargers to Syrian refugees:
http://www.solarforsyria.org/en/#.UrN0iaWugcs

Perhaps a way to promote the Christmas spirit of peace on Earth and goodwill to all.  (Bah Humbug!)

hat tip to http://inhabitat.com

Here are some other solar Christmas ideas:
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-solar-christmas.html

Pattern Language for an Urban Agriculture System

A series of patterns from _A Pattern Language_ (Christopher Alexander et alia, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1977) for designing an urban agriculture system, from City Country Fingers to Paving With Cracks Between the Stones:

3.  City Country Fingers
4.  Agricultural Valleys
7.  The Countryside
8.  Mosaic of Subcultures
12.  Community of 7000
15.  Neighborhood Boundaries
19.  Web of Shopping
25.  Access to Water
32.  Shopping Street
41.  Work Community
46.  Market of Many Shops
51.  Green Streets
60.  Accessible Green
61.  Small Public Square
64.  Pools and Streams
67.  Common Land
69.  Public Outdoor Room
73.  Adventure Playground
80.  Self-Governing Workshops and Offices
88.  Street Cafe
89.  Corner Grocery
97.  Shielded Parking
100.  Pedestrian Street
105.  South Facing Outdoors
106.  Positive Outdoor Space
111.  Half-Hidden Garden
114.  Hierarchy of Open Space
118.  Roof Garden
119.  Arcades
127.  Intimacy Gradient
134.  Zen View
139.  Farmhouse Kitchen
161.  Sunny Place
163.  Outdoor Room
170.  Fruit Trees
171.  Tree Places
172.  Garden Growing Wild
173.  Garden Wall
174.  Trellised Walk
175.  Greenhouse
176.  Garden Seat
177.  Vegetable Garden
178.  Compost
236.  Windows Which Open Wide
242.  Front Door Bench
245.  Raised Flowers
246.  Climbing Plants
247.  Paving With Cracks Between the Stones

Canal Restorer to River Restorer?

This greenhouse at the former historic Fisherville Mill in South Grafton, Massachusetts, sits on the banks of a canal by the Blackstone River.  It is cleaning stormwater runoff and water contaminated by #6 fuel oil, also known as Bunker C oil, which leaked from underground tanks.  At the end of the process, 95% of the hydrocarbons are removed without the application of chemicals, using only ecological design.

The Blackstone River can rightfully claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the USA as in 1790, Samuel Slater built the first water-powered spinning mill in America for Moses Brown, a founder of Brown University, in Pawtucket, RI using the Blackstone River as a power source.  By October 7, 1828, the Blackstone Canal from Providence, RI to Worcester, MA was completed and became the original industrial corridor of the United States.  Some say the Blackstone was the hardest working river of 19th century America with its water powering factories all along its length.

Perhaps now it will become an example of 21st century American technology that uses ecological systems thinking to clean up the wastes industrial development has left in its wake.

500 to 1000 gallons of water is pumped each day from the bottom of the canal through a filter which was designed to trap particulates and has, over time, developed its own ecosystem that begins to process the pollutants.  Soon samples will be taken of the filter layers to see what organisms are present and thriving in the presence of such contaminants.

The water is then distributed to the black boxes you can see on the right of the greenhouse which contain mushrooms and other organisms.  These continue to filter the water and break down the hydrocarbons and other complex compounds as the mushroom cultures and other organisms feed.

From the mushroom boxes the water goes into a series of six 700 gallon tanks, each of which is a separate ecology with plants, animals and microbes that continue to break down pollutants and contaminants into their constituent parts.  The water gets cleaner and cleaner from one tank to the next until it can support fish and snails and other more complex lifeforms.

The plants floating on top of the tanks are also part of the process with the roots serving as habitat for many different organisms, increasing enormously the active surface area for biological activity, breaking down more compounds into nutrients that feed the leaves, flowers, and fruits.

After passing through the greenhouse, the water is then returned to the canal through an artificial marsh, a floating canal restorer, that continues the process of biological digestion of hydrocarbon pollutants.  The marsh also takes water directly from the bottom filter in a separate cycle, cleaning it as it recirculates back into the canal.

it is the belief of the designer of this system, John Todd, that not only does this system clean the water it filters but that it also distributes micro-organisms that can help clean water downstream.  He suspects that if such a system were to operate over years, it would begin restoring the waters of the canal and the Blackstone River, a result of this experiment which began last year that he will be testing for soon.

John envisions a canal with a continuous band of floating restorers cleaning the contamination and pollution of over two centuries of industrial waste, returning the canal and the Blackstone River to pristine condition.  

John has completed projects similar to this before.  You can read about his Urban Municipal Canal Restorer in Fuzhou, China here [pdf alert]:

http://toddecological.com/clients/PDFs/100623.casestudy.baima.pdf

These are the ecological design principles John Todd uses in building his systems.  Every time I read them, I learn something new.

1.  Geological and mineral diversity must be present to evolve the biological responsiveness of rich soils.

2.  Nutrient reservoirs are essential to keep such essentials as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium available for the plants.

3.  Steep gradients between subcomponents must be engineered into the system to enable the biological elements to evolve rapidly to assist in the breakdown of toxic materials.

4.  High rates of exchange must be created by maximizing surface areas that house the bacteria that determine the metabolism of the system and facilitate treatment.

5. Periodic and random pulsed exchanges improve performance.  Just as random perturbations foster resilience in nature, in living technologies altering water flow creates self-organization in the system.

6.  Cellular design is the structural model as it is in nature where cells are the organizing unit.  Expansion of the system should also use a cellular model, as in increasing the number of tanks.

7.  A law of the minimum must be incorporated.  At least three ecosystems such as a marsh, a pond, and a terrestrial area are needed to perform the assigned function and maintain overall stability.

8. Microbial communities must be introduced periodically from the natural world to maintain diversity and facilitate evolutionary processes.

9.  Photosynthetic foundations are essential as oxygen-producing plants foster ecosystems that require less energy, aeration, and chemical management.

10.  Phylogenetic diversity must be encouraged as a range of aquatic animals from the unicellular to snails to fish are as essential to the evolution and self-maintenance of the system as the plants.

11.  Sequenced and repeated seedings are part of maintenance as a self-contained system cannot be isolated but must be interlinked through gaseous, nutrient, mineral, and biological pathways to the external environment.

12.  Ecological design should reflect the macrocosmos in the microcosmos, representing the natural world miniaturized and reflecting its proportions, as in terrestrial to oceanic and aquatic areas.

from _A Safe and Sustainable World:  The Promise of Ecological Design_ by Nancy Jack Todd

Washington:  Island Press, 2005

ISBN 1-55963-778-1

More information at

Todd Ecological  http://www.toddecological.com

Clark University Living Systems Laboratory  https://wordpress.clarku.edu/fisherville/

CTI Micro-Reduction Technologies, LLC  http://ctigreenpower.com/

By working with Nature, we can create miracles.

The pictures of the Fisherville Canal Restorer and Greenhouse were taken on a tour with the Ecological Landscaping Association (http://www.ecolandscaping.org) on Tuesday, August 6. 2013.

Previously

The Next Industrial Revolution Is Ecological

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/02/1165557/-The-Next-Industrial-Revolution-Is-Ecological

Ecological Restoration:  Cleaning the Fisherville Mill Canal

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/21/1112491/-Ecological-Restoration-Cleaning-the-Fisherville-Mill-Canal

Providential Experimentation

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/26/1190128/-Providential-Experimentation

The Challenge of Appalachia:  Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/05/14/515882/-The-Challenge-of-Appalachia-Comprehensive-Design-for-a-Carbon-Neutral-World

From Coal to a Carbon Neutral World:  Ecological Design for Appalachia

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/07/01/543978/-From-Coal-to-a-Carbon-Neutral-World-160-Ecological-Design-for-Appalachia

Sixpack of Solar: How Many Solar Devices Can You Make from a Plastic Bottle?

How Many Solar Devices Can You Make from a Plastic Bottle?
A clear PET plastic bottle can help disinfect water.
6 hours of sunlight's UV-radiation kills diarrhoea-causing pathogens in water making it safer to drink.
A clear bottle full of water and a little bleach can become a solar skylight, providing the equivalent of a 50w incandescent light to a windowless shack.
Cut the bottom off a clear plastic bottle to make a mini-greenhouse, a hot cap, to protect seedlings from frost.
Surround that bottle hot cap with a circle of other bottles full of water for solar heat storage to extend the growing season.
Here's a bottle inside a bottle inside a bottle to heat water in the innermost bottle
and a variation of this design using a clear bottle, a dark can full of water, and a set of reflectors.
They illustrate the essentials of solar thermal energy:
light reflects
dark gets hot
clear keeps the wind out
With that knowledge you can move, concentrate, and store energy.
This clear plastic water heater is much larger and more practical for household use.  It is made almost entirely from recycled packaging waste.
You can make a window out of plastic bottles, too,
and a south-facing window is already a solar collector.

But that's another story.

Simple Solar Principles

Simple solar principles
dark gets hot
light reflects
clear keeps the wind out
insulation keeps heat in
heat can be stored and moved
and any window that sees sunlight
is already
a solar
collector

Free Energy: Solar and Dynamo LED Keychain Lights

Last year, one of the vendors at NESEA's Building Energy conference (http://www.nesea.org/buildingenergy/) gave away a keychain fob, a little two LED hand crank light.  This year, another vendor gave away three LED solar keychain lights.  A few weeks later, I got another solar LED light as a giveaway from the MIT Energy Initiative.

A little searching found where these promotional gifts are available in bulk:
1.61 @ per 5000 solar keychain lights
http://promotionalproductsonline.com/products/Colored-Solar-Powered-LED-Keylights.html

1.32@ per 5000 hand crank keychain lights
http://www.dhgate.com/top-50-pcs-lot-brand-new-2-led-mini-dynamo/p-ff80808133cfdac80134165da92c2e25.html#s1-1-1

I wonder what happens when these cheap sweatshop trinkets meet the necessary invention of the bottom billion and a third, billion and a half people who do not yet have access to reliable electricity.




In 1988 I visited China.
One evening, I walked out of the White Swan Hotel
on Shamian Island and crossed the bridge
into the city of Guangzhou.
There I saw a line of men
standing behind small folding tables
in closed shop doorways.

Coming closer, I saw that they were rebuilding and
reselling
plastic "disposable" lighters.

I want a solar rechargeable reading light
just as cheap, adaptable, and readily available
as a disposable cigarette lighter.
We need to make it possible
for every child around the world
to read in bed
and dream.

That's one way we could transition to a more renewable economy.

Richard Komp has been practicing another, seeding solar cottage industry systems around the world for the last few decades.  He teaches people how to assemble their own panels, from  AA battery to household, school, or hospital scale, out of raw solar cells.  You can read more about cottage industry solar at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/25/1196968/-Solar-as-a-Cottage-Industry

Boston Solar House Tour, 1990

A tour of suburban homes and urban apartment houses using solar energy around the Boston area from 1990 or so. Some of these houses were built as early as the 1960s.

Energy Critical Elements

"Energy Critical Elements"

Wednesday, January 16, 2013
1:30p–2:30p
MIT, Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Robert Jaffe - Morningstar Professor of Science, Department of Physics
I will then turn to our recent report on "Energy Critical Elements: Securing Materials for Emerging Technologies", describing rare elements' roles in emerging technologies, constraints on availability, and government actions to avoid disruptive shortages.

Web site: http://student.mit.edu/searchiap/iap-9289af8f3b3c7818013b3d15ee340001.html
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Physics IAP
For more information, contact:  Denise Wahkor
617-253-4855
DENISEW@MIT.EDU

American Physical Society (APS) and Materials Research Society Energy (MRS) Critical Elements report:
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=236337

Since the Chinese have recently monopolized rare earths production, energy critical elements have become a serious economic and policy concern.  The US has responded by engaging in rare earths mining and now produces 20% of some of them.  Australia is also beginning rare earths mining.  If the usual model of capitalistic boom and bust, which we've experienced with the silicon market over the last decade, is any indication, there will be an over-investment in rare earths elements (REE) and then a subsequent bust as the market settles.  However, the fact remains that the US is 90% dependent on imports for critical energy materials.

Some of these energy critical elements include:

Gallium, germanium, indium, selenium, silver, and tellurium, all employed in advanced photovoltaic solar cells, especially thin-film photovoltaics.

Dysprosium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium (all REEs), and cobalt, used in high-strength permanent magnets for many energy-related applications, such as wind turbines and hybrid automobiles.
Most REEs, valued for their unusual magnetic and/or optical properties. Examples include gadolinium for its unusual paramagnetic qualities and europium and terbium for their role in managing the color of fluorescent lighting. Yttrium, another REE, is an important ingredient in energy-efficient solid-state lighting.
Lithium and lanthanum, used in high performance batteries.
Helium, required in cryogenics, energy research, advanced nuclear reactor designs,
and manufacturing in the energy sector.
Platinum, palladium, and other PGEs, used as catalysts in fuel cells that may find wide applications in transportation. Cerium, a REE, is also used as an auto-emissions catalyst.
Rhenium, used in high performance alloys for advanced turbines.

Tellurium is one fourth as abundant as gold.  It takes 80 tons of Te to get a gW of peak power in thin film pv solar according to Jaffe.  (However, thin film pv is not the most efficient pv currently available and I doubt that anyone would consider deploying large-scale thin film pv installations.)  The estimated world production of tellurium is 500 tons per year.

Neodymium and praseodymium are used in wind turbines and are about one tenth of world rare earth production.

Terbium production is about 450 tons per year.

Rhenium is perhaps the rarest material with an annual world production between 40 and 50 tons per year.

In the next few years the US will sell off its helium stockpile. Helium is a by-product of natural gas, at 4 parts per billion, but only some natural gas deposits include it and those have not been adequately mapped.

10% of world's silver production now goes into silicon pv contacts.

Almost all of these materials are by-products of other materials and their prices are artificial because of that:
Rhenium with molybdenum
Tellurium with copper (also zinc and lead)
Indium and germanium with zinc
Gallium with aluminum

Thorium is frequently present in rare earth deposits as well but usually disposed of because it is not economic to capture it. As are many other useful materials.  Witness the flaring of gas from the fracking operations in North Dakota.

In addition, as by-materials, they depend upon the main ores and the processes used to produce them.  For instance, copper can be processed in such a way that tellurium is lost.

The report recommends some changes in policy:
a "coordinated response" which is beginning as the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has established a task force on critical and strategic mineral supply chains led by Cyrus Wadia;  the US DOE has selected the Ames Laboratory to house the Critical Materials Institute;  and, although the Bingaman-Murkowski amendment of the energy critical materials bill died in the last Congress, it will be re-introduced in the next Congress with the sponsorship of Ron Wyden and Barbara Murkowski since Jeff Bingaman has retired from the Senate;

"comprehensive, reliable, and up-to-date information on all aspects of the life cycle of ECEs as present information on many of these materials is very uneven";

"research and development to both expand availability and reduce dependency" on such materials and to train scientists and technologists in the field especially since it takes 5-10 years for research and develop substitutes and another 5-15 years to bring new sources online;

and "recycling" as many of these materials are not yet recycled or even tracked through the materials flows of our industrial and commercial systems.

Thomas Graedl of Yale is one scientist working on recycling and materials flows:

"The historical reservoir for the materials used by our technological society has been virgin stocks (ore bodies, mineral deposits, and the like). For a variety of reasons, those stocks may become inadequate or unavailable at some times or places in the future, and the loss of resources by dissipation or discard is often problematic from an environmental standpoint. These issues can be addressed by developing cycles for the stocks and flows of materials of interest, particularly if the cycles are temporally and spatially resolved.

"I, along with my colleagues, have characterized regional and global cycles, current and historic, for copper and zinc, determining the stocks available in different types of reservoirs and the flows among the reservoirs. GIS techniques are used to display some of the results in spatially-gridded form. The work provides a new basis for assessments of resources sustainability, environmental impacts over time, and related policy initiatives."
source:  http://environment.yale.edu/profile/graedel/research

Europe is actually doing some recycling now.  EU Rare Earths Recycling study:  http://reinhardbuetikofer.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Rare-earths-study_Oeko-Institut_Jan-2011.pdf

One company is Solvay
http://www.solvay.com/EN/NewsPress/20120927_Coleopterre.aspx

Of course, there is an industrial association and lobbying group, RARE, the Association for Rare Earth (http://www.rareearthassociation.org/)

RARE is the premier international advocate and opinion leader for rare earth industry suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers dedicated to improving the future through rare earth innovation.

One interesting parallel track Robert Jaffe didn't mention is the Center for Inverse Design
(http://www.centerforinversedesign.org/) which is doing a systematic examination of the periodic table for new and more efficient properties, in some cases using genetic algorithms. Carla Gomes of Cornell is also doing some interesting work on the computational analysis of new materials.  After hearing talks on the Center and then, a few weeks later, Dr Gomes, I alerted her to the Center's work.  I have emailed Dr Jaffe about both and hope that something useful can come from making such connections.

In addition, there's the currently outlandish possibility of nuclear transmutation of elements.  Here is a presentation by Yasuhiro Iwamura of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on transmutation reactions delivered at the American Nuclear Society on November 12, 2012:
http://youtu.be/VefCEaLAkRw

It is always good to remember

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

But I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation of such (scientific) miracles.