SWARF Online
SWARF Online provides insightful commentary and inside information on the machining world similar to what you will find in the print edition of Today's Machining World but more current. You will also find additional Swarf content which you can comment on at the TMW blog, www.swarfblog.com.
Garbage Fuel: Just like in the MoviesRemember the last scene of Back to the Future when Doc Brown returns in his flying DeLorian to take Marty to the year 2015? As a 5 year old kid in 1985 I still remember being fascinated, not only because the car was flying, but because the new DeLorian was powered by garbage instead of plutonium. At the time I didn’t even know what plutonium was. But garbage fuel – now that was a cool concept.
In 2008, people are finally starting to work on garbage-powered aviation. The Solena Group, a Washington DC company that builds and operates renewable energy power plants in North America, Asia and Europe, has started work on a facility that will produce jet fuel from trash, tree bark and manure using a process called plasma gasification. It uses 5000-degree plasma arcs to break trash into gas fuel, which is then converted into liquid suitable for powering an airplane.
The plasma gasification and the gas-to-liquid conversion processes will release significant amounts of CO2 into the environment, but the company claims that the CO2 does much less harm to the environment than emissions created by decomposing landfill waste and reliance on petroleum based aviation fuel. (According to the Department of Transportation, aviation accounts for 2.7 percent of U.S. annual greenhouse gas output.) Also, energy generated from the plasma arcs is used to power the system, which makes it self-sustaining.
Solena plans to build its plant in Gilroy, California, (home of the famous Gilroy Garlic Festival) where it will have access to a steady stream of household trash from Norcal Waste Systems, a big California garbage collection company.
The Company won’t begin production until 2011, despite some U.S. biofuel tax credits being scheduled to expire in 2008. Also, no commercial airlines have expressed interest in the project. But if prices of fuel keep going up there could be some significant interest by 2015, and maybe Back to the Future director/writer Robert Zemeckis will turn out to be a true science visionary, not just a great Sci-Fi creator.
Source: www.wired.com
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Garbage Fuel in BACK TO THE FUTURE
An old friend of mine at Columbia University business school recently returned from Dubai where he had traveled with his class for spring break.
He told me that there were tons of chic restaurants and bars, but that the place had “no real culture.” Everyone on the street was from a different country and speaking English, every type of food was available much like one would find in any major city, and the nightlife scene reminded him of South Beach, Florida. The place exists for foreigners – business people and rich vacationers (primarily from Europe).
My friend said that the construction going on there was incredible, and he wondered if the place was being overbuilt. Dubai recently constructed the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. It also has a network of tiny manmade islands for vacationers called “The World” which combine to form the shape of the continents. Presently the city is constructing three more gigantic manmade islands in shape of palm trees. The reason for the shape is that the fingers of land which serve as the branches of the palm dramatically increase the available beachfront property to build hotels on.
The unprecedented rate of construction in Dubai is made possible by the country’s abundant supply of dirt cheap labor from India and other countries of that region. The workers generally receive about seven dollars a day, and because they don’t have unions it’s possible to make them work longer hours and do other activities the U.S. would prohibit. Many people have even characterized Dubai’s manual labor workforce as slave labor.
Take a look at “Next” in Today’s Machining World’s April issue for more on Dubai.
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Construction in Dubai
This day (April 21) in 1878, the fire station pole was invented. Prior to the existence of fire station poles, firemen often used sliding shoots like those in playgrounds to quickly get down to the ground floor, as opposed to taking a slower staircase. Like so many inventions it was inspired by an accident. At Engine Company 21, a station of all black firemen in Chicago, fireman George Reid was in the hayloft on the station’s third floor (back then hay was needed for the horses which pulled the fire “engines”). A long binding pole used to secure the hay to the wagon was sticking vertically up the loading area into the hay loft, when suddenly the fire bell rang and Reid impulsively slid down the pole to get to the ground.
The Station’s captain David Kenyon liked the concept, and he and the Chief decided to cut a hole in the second floor and install a permanent pole made of waxed, varnished, Georgia Pine three inches in diameter. Soon Engine 21 got the reputation of being the first responders, inspiring the rest of Chicago’s fire stations to install their own poles.
In 1880, Boston advanced the idea by making its fire stations’ poles from shiny, slippery brass.
Today fire station poles are no longer en vogue, as many people consider them safety hazards. New firehouses are often built without them, and one-story fire stations are generally preferred.
(Source: PeteLamb.com, via wired.com)
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