Editorial A year after the city of Lawrence implemented curbside recycling, residents have grown accustomed to the convenience of setting out their bins of unsorted recyclable materials and having the city tote off their contents. However, Sunday’s Journal-World story about the decline in the amount of glass the city actually is recycling is a disappointment to what seems like an otherwise successful curbside system. There is some dispute about the actual numbers, but recycler Ripple Glass says it now receives 40 percent less glass from Lawrence than it did before curbside recycling began. Before Lawrence instituted curbside recycling, people who wanted to recycle glass had to take it to bins that contained only glass. Under that system, Ripple Glass was collecting about 100 tons of glass each month from Lawrence. Now it says it’s receiving about 60 tons per month. The problem stems from the fact that glass mixed with other materials often picks up debris that contaminates the glass and makes it unsuitable for recycling. Whole bottles and jars and even clean broken glass are recyclable, but broken pieces of glass are difficult to separate from other recyclables. That makes it more difficult to recycle not only the glass but also the materials it is mixed with. City commissioners were aware of the problems of including glass in the city’s curbside recycling program but wanted to make the system as easy as possible for residents. That’s understandable, but, a year into the program, that decision deserves review. Other cities have dealt with this problem in various ways. Perhaps the most convenient system would be to have local residents place glass in separate containers that would be picked up by trucks with separate compartments for glass. According to the city’s website, recycling bins for glass also remain available at a number of locations for residents who want to use that option. Lawrence officials deserve credit for responding to the call for curbside recycling, but it appears that system may need to be refined. Most Lawrence residents probably would be willing to separate glass into a separate bin if they knew that would increase the amount of clean glass that could be successfully recycled. City officials should look at the costs and the options and see what they can come up with.
Our cars’ electric future Monday, Febrero 1st, 2016 | Filed under Technology | Posted by GreenMag
Electric Cars are hotter than ever, and they might end up being cheaper than their gas-powered competitors. The Honda Fit EV is currently the cheapest $37,000 car in history, with other competitors being the Nissan Leaf, the Fiat 500e, the Chevrolet Spark and the Ford Focus EV (shown here). If you’re looking for efficiency andgood looks, the Tesla has become quite the commodity, having outsold a number of luxury
sedan models for this year in spite of its hefty starting price of just over $100,000. In May we reached a th milestone with the 100,000 purchase of an electric vehicle in the U.S. The goal now is to boost consumer demand/sales, which will hopefully spur research and development to further lower the cost of the technology production. Of course with an electric vehicle comes the need for a charging station for your vehicle, and Bosch recently announced it’s going into production of those necessary stations. Only compatible with the Nissan and Chevy models of the EV as of now, Bosch’s wireless, portable charging station consists of a parking pad that sets the owner back $3,000 in installation costs alone. However, cities around the nation have built charging stations, with San Francisco as an example of a city with over 100 charging stations. All things considered, the electric car may become the way of transportation for the future.
Hydrogen vehicle The 2015 Toyota Mirai is one of the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to be sold commercially. The Mirai is based on the Toyota FCV concept car (shown).[1] A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen as its onboard fuel for motive power. Hydrogen vehicles include hydrogen fueled space rockets, as well as automobiles and other transportation vehicles. The power plants of such vehicles convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to mechanical energy either by burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, or by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to run electric motors. Widespread use of hydrogen for fueling transportation is a key element of a proposed hydrogen economy.[2] Hydrogen fuel does not occur naturally on Earth and thus is not an energy source; rather it is an energy carrier. As of 2014, 95% of hydrogen is made from methane. It can be produced using renewable sources, but that is an expensive process. Integrated wind-to-hydrogen (power to gas) plants, using electrolysis of water, are exploring technologies to deliver costs low enough, and quantities great enough, to compete with traditional energy sources.
Many companies are working to develop technologies that might efficiently exploit the potential of hydrogen energy for use in motor vehicles. As of November 2013 there are demonstration fleets of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles undergoing field testing including the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell, Honda FCX Clarity, Hyundai ix35 FCEV and Mercedes-Benz BClass F-Cell. The drawbacks of hydrogen use are high carbon emissions intensity when produced from natural gas, capital cost burden, low energy content per unit volume, low performance of fuel cell vehicles compared with gasoline vehicles, production and compression of hydrogen, and the large investment in infrastructure that would be required to fuel vehicles.
Is hydrogen power the future? Dramatic changes in driving forecast by hydrogen and fuel cell experts "The consequences of doing nothing will be dramatic." - Bill Reinert. In this year of heightened concern, if not hysteria, over global warming, and the political battles being waged over what the appropriate courses of action should be, that sort of comment could have been made by any number of those who believe the end is nigh. But when it comes from an advanced technology engineer with a major auto manufacturer, perhaps we ought to listen carefully. Those words were spoken by Bill Reinert, National Manager of the Advanced Technologies Group at Toyota, at the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells 2007 International Conference in Vancouver last week. He was joined there by Dr. Christine Sloane, Global Leader and Director of Hydro gen Fuel Cell Codes and Standards with General Motors, and if you get past the grand titles, these two eminent authorities are in charge of no less than planning the technological future of their respective auto companies in a challenging and rapidly changing world. As such, they are visionaries whose opinions carry a lot of weight. The two took slightly different approaches to the discussion, with the common thread that hydrogen as the energy source for personal transportation is the solution. Reinert took a fairly broad view, including political and environmental ramifications that go beyond just making air cleaner. Related story: Fuel cells' rocky road "Our energy future is now in the hands of the OPEC countries. The oil supply from them and from the former Soviet Union countries is expected to peak at a bit over 90 million barrels per day within the next 10 years or so. "But predictions are that the world will require about 125 million barrels per day by 2020. There is no scenario we can envision, no combination of petroleum or renewable resources, that will allow the consumption of that level of energy per day." The predictions get worse. "We are looking at a world population of 3-to-4 billion people. At the moment we have 250 million cars on the road in the U.S. and 750 million worldwide, and if we look at population growth and the increasing penetration of the automobile in developing markets, we see a situation where there may be 2 or even 3 billion cars on the road by 2040, and an environmental impact far beyond what we are looking at today. "There are three things we are going to have to do to realize a hydrogen-based economy," Reinert concluded. "We have to continue research and deal with the technical challenges. We have to prepare society so that people understand what the issues are. And we have to rethink the urban environment and embrace mass transit." Sloane echoed his comments. "There has never been a time more right for a change in transportation than
now. Conservative estimates put the need for energy rising 70 per cent in 30 years if only from the growth in developing countries. "We can't continue doing what we are doing now, can't just do it a little better or be more efficient. We are going to have to change. And 30 years in the automotive industry is not that far out. "We have to find sustainable energy solutions. We need to have energy that is assured; we can't continue to have geopolitical factors causing energy to be at risk." She went on to say that there is one overriding concern. "Long term, we've got to get off petroleum. And we don't need to shift to something else that will cause the same problems. We need to shift to a new form of energy that is diverse and allows renewable energy sources to grow seamlessly with existing technology. "Hydrogen is perfect. Among its attributes is that you can make it from a number of different sources, and it generates no emissions in vehicles. "So our strategy is clear. We are looking to move the vehicle away from a mechanical analogue system to a digitized electric one." Of course, the car-buying public has the final say. "How do we ensure public acceptance of this new technology?" Sloane asks. "If we establish standards that relate to the conditions of today, we will always do things like we do today. We have to state the performance that we want, so that the technology can be developed around the performance that is required, be it efficiency or safety or whatever. "And we need to motivate society to accept the transfer to the new technology, via accelerating the diversity of energy sources and the development of infrastructure. That is our task, and when it all gets done, we'll be moving forward." Reinert leaves no doubt that the public is already clamouring for change. "The pressure to develop the solution is growing," he says. "We can acutely feel the public pressure for change. It's not like it's early adopters who are talking about this, it's everybody. We don't get much sleep." He said it with a chuckle, but the message is clear. There is no turning back now on the road to hydrogenfueled personal mobility. Cost, infrastructure hinder hydrogen Ethanol may be the flavour of the moment, in terms of alternative fuels, but hydrogen is the long-term darling of auto makers and politicians alike. To quote General Motors' R&D head Larry Burns, one
of the industry's biggest hydrogen boosters, hydrogen provides the potential to "remove the automobile from the environmental equation." A vehicle using hydrogen (H2) as its fuel would be virtually emissions-free, its only significant byproduct being water. In addition, hydrogen can be produced, with varying degrees of efficiency, from multiple sources, almost anywhere. Consequently, the security-of-supply issue that plagues the world's fossil-fuel resources could be all but overcome by the adoption of a hydrogen economy. There are, however, still many other problems to overcome before hydrogen has a realistic possibility of becoming our fuel of choice – problems on both the vehicle and fuel sides of the equation. The challenges facing the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells are well known – cost still being among the most vexing. But fuel cells are not the only powerplants capable of running on hydrogen. BMW, Ford and Mazda have all developed conventional internal combustion (IC) engines that operate on H2 and all three are in the process of putting hydrogen-powered vehicles into real-world service in demonstration fleets around the world. In addition, both Honda and General Motors are in the process of building 100-vehicle-strong fleets of fuel cell demonstration vehicles for real-world evaluation; DaimlerChrysler already has more than that number in service; Ford, Nissan, Toyota and most other auto makers have smaller numbers of FCEVs (fuel-cell electric vehicles) in various test fleets. I may be a hopeless optimist, but based on the progress that has occurred over the past decade, I am confident that at least some hydrogen-powered vehicles, fuel-cell or IC-engine powered, will be in series production and available to the public by 2015, if not before. If, that is, there is a hydrogen infrastructure in place to support them. It is a very big "if." Hydrogen is the most plentiful potential fuel on Earth, but it doesn't exist in pure form in nature. It is always compounded with one or more other elements, such as oxygen in water (H2O) or carbon in a vast array of hydrocarbon fuels, such as gasoline, or natural gas, or ethanol or coal. To be used as a fuel itself, it has to be extracted from one of those compounds. Not only does that mean some other source must be depleted, it means energy must be expended in the process. Hydrogen can be "reformed" from such fuels as gasoline or methanol, but the most common basestock for its production is natural gas, itself a depleting
resource, and the energy losses in such conversion are significant. It can also be "electrolyzed" from water, but that process requires substantial amounts of electrical energy, which could further increase the demand for natural gas, or prompt the construction of more nuclear generating stations, which is a controversial solution at best. The ideal answer – the only answer in the minds of some environmental stewards, including many hydrogen proponents – would be electrolysis of water using electricity generated by some benign, renewable means, such as solar, geo-thermal, tidal or wind power. Until that happens, the production of hydrogen incurs ancillary costs that must be weighed against any reduction in petroleum use that may result. Furthermore, while vehicles running on hydrogen may produce few or no tailpipe emissions, the production of hydrogen may itself be polluting, depending on the process used. Beyond those issues, there is the matter of its cost, as well as the challenges of transportation and storage. Even when contained at very high pressures (10,000 p.s.i.) or very low temperatures (-253C), a tank the size of a conventional gasoline tank would provide a range significantly less than that of today's equivalent gasoline-powered car. That is one reason why BMW's Hydrogen 7 – 100 models of which will begin production this year – uses cryogenic liquid hydrogen (LH2), rather than compressed gaseous hydrogen, which most other automakers favour. Liquefying the fuel, BMW says, makes it easier to handle and transport using conventional methods, as well as increasing its energy density to a level that will provide an acceptable operating range from a reasonably sized fuel tank. There is one other elephant in the room that may significantly affect hydrogen's acceptance as a vehicle fuel. It is called the Hindenburg. It is almost 70 years since the conflagration that consumed the mammoth airship while it was landing at Lakehurst, N,J., but the legacy of that disaster lingers on in an almost universal fear of the hydrogen gas that fuelled those dramatic flames. In fact, hydrogen's proponents say, it is actually less dangerous than many other fuels, including gasoline. Being lighter than air at ambient temperature, if a leak occurs it quickly dissipates into the atmosphere rather than pooling in a concentrated mass that can be easily ignited. Depending on how it is produced, hydrogen has much to offer as a vehicle fuel. But it also has many challenges to overcome if its promise is to be realized. "It is the fuel of the future," one wag declared, "and it always will be."
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