Month: January 2012

Promote these solutions through our T-shirts 

#23 Solutions presenteert 23 oplossingen voor het klimaat probleem. Gebruik het nummer systeem als je er over blogt, zodat mensen er makkelijker informatie over kunnen vinden. Het zijn praktische oplossingen die tegelijk het klimaatprobleem bestrijden en ons over doen gaan op de schone welvaart. 

1. Albedo versterking #23Solutions01

Albedo is het percentage reflectie van de aarde. Ijs en sneeuw en zout hebben een zeer hoge albedo. De koelende effecten van hoge albedo zijn absoluut, de zonneenergie wordt teruggestraald de ruimte in.

Ze zijn ook redelijk plaatselijk. Koeling is echter van groot belang omdat planten niet goed tegen veranderende temperaturen kunnen, deste koeler deste minder kans op droogte. We moeten werken aan duurzaam geproduceerde eenvoudige manieren om de albedo te verhogen. Met name op de polen is dat van groot belang. Omdat de koelte daar zeer slen aan het afnemen is (12 graden verschil de afgelopen jaren). De koude aan de polen is essentieel voor belangrijke zeestromen.

Post 1 Post 2

2. Geconcentreerde Zonlicht #23Solutions02

Door zonlicht te concentreren kunnen zeer hoge temperaturen worden bereikt. Hiermee kan stoom en electriciteit mee worden opgewekt, maar ook chemische processen ‘aangedreven’. De techniek is zeer eenvoudig. Gebruik van plastic lenzen en zilver spiegels of membranen om zonlicht te focussen is al eeuwen bekend.

De potentie van CSP is zo enorm dat een klein stukje woestijn genoeg is om de hele wereld van energie te voorzien. Toepassingen zijn oa het genereren van methaan en het opladen van zink lucht batterijen. 

3. Heliostats and Solar Trackers #23Solutions03

Heliostats are usefull for CSP (concentrated solar power), solar towers but also for home heating and lighting, adding extra windows and sending sunshine to the north side of your house! We have developed an accurate 2 axis control system that can match professional systems at a fraction of the cost.

Solar trackers can increase the productivity of your PV system up to 38%.

4. Solar Air Heating and Heat Storage #23Solutions04

Solar air heating is a low tech way to heat homes. You are basically adding windows without the thermal loss. Make your walls store heat and you’ll use less gas.

5. Sustainable Battery Technology #23Solutions05

Nickel Iron batteries are the best battery solution. No patents, non acidic, super durable and 100% recyclable. They combine with carbon to create ultracapcitors, quick low loss storage devices, they open a road to large scale low cost hydrogen storage and low cost ultracapacitors.

6. Wheelhub Car Electrification #23Solutions06

The quickest way to convert a car to electric is by changing the wheels to electric ones and replacing the engine by a power block. 

7. Home Solar Thermal Applications #23Solutions07

You can cook, roast melt and even laser with sunlight. Smart solutions mean less gas use and less emissions.

Cerns ultra high vacuum panels 

8. Unconventional Wind #23Solutions08

Wind can be used in many more ways than to just generate electricity. It’s often cheaper to do so than to take the electric detour.

9. The New Steel #23Solutions09

We need a building material that is zero carbon, versatile and unlimited. It has to be costless as well. We have identified it.

10. Bamboo Oceans #23Solutions10

Floating bamboo islands can cover the pacific gyri and do organic CCS on a massive scale . They will be tropical islands you can travel between and live on. Reserve your spot! The uses of bamboo in itself are miriad, and it also grows very quickly. Salt water varieties exist, but it is not difficult to create a freshwater environment on a floating organic raft, the size of which can prevent it from being damaged by storms. Then again use of them in regions without to much storm is the best option.

11. (Vacuum) Insulation #23Solutions11

Vacuum insulation can be cheap and extremely effective. It’s vacuum, nothing. That stops heat transmission. Radiation shielding is another great method. In combination they can prevent heat loss or heat entering with great efficiency. You can have laminated glass with vacuum, special panels made out of foamy stone sealed in aluminium foil, but also solar thermal boxes with nothing, locking in heat as it enters, like in the linked below.

Ultra High Vacuum Solar Thermal Panels

12. Air Quality Monitoring #23Solutions12

Using your pc and a device we are developing you can be a air quality measurement node in a global network.

13. NH3 Fuel and Fertilizer from renewables #23Solutions13

NH3 is a diesel like fuel that burns into N2 and H20, 100% clean. You can make it using electricity, the plants can be bought commercially. We want to rais awareness for this clean ozone, CO2 and VOC free fuel we can make in limitless quantities with sunlight. 

Link NH3 Fuel Association Freedom fertilizer

14. Ocean Evaporation Enhancement #23Solutions14

Strategic evaporation of ocean water can bring rain to deserts and increase organic carbon cature. Flooding of salt deserts can have equal benificial effect. Generating coulds before they form spontaneously will prevent damaging storms and freak weather events and can contribute to the necessary global cooling.

15. Local Monetary Control #23Solutions15

The tubecoin.com website houses a barter system allowing anyone to create certificates of ownership, tradable online and usable for barter like real money.

16. Direct Democracy #23Solutions16

Direct democracy is the best option to weed out all the carbon interests, which include companies competing for market share (all going into debt with the bank). Addemocracy.com is a direct democracy model site. Questions are asked and suggestions are voted on, best suggestion at deadline is the winner.

17. Unconventional Desalination #23Solutions17

A lesser known but efficient way to desalinate water using renewable energy. Two methods, one solar one wind driven are known that are not being used but are actually more efficient than RO or flash evaportation methods.

18. Deep Ocean Fertilization #23Solutions18

Using a autonomous floating device to oxgenize and feed the ocean by mixing surface and deep water. Oceans are a rich potential source of nutrients and energy, plans are ready, but we need to act quick because warming and acidification will reduce algae growth significantly within the next century

19. Dedesertification and Reforestation #23Solutions19

With indiginous plants in the right combination life can be helpt gain a foothold on deserts again. Plants and trees create microclimates and hold water to allow more life to come in. This is one example where you can start with nothing and end up with paradise. 

20. Organic Farming #23Solutions20

The productivity of organic farming is equal to GMO intensive farming. The only reason for the latter is dependence of the farmer, so he does not become a political force. Too bad, farmers have the best ideas and vision.

21. Vegetarianism #23Solutions21

Humans can do without meat. The carbon and water investment in meat could be directed elsewhere, and bad air pollution like ozone which damages crops could be avoided.  

22. Owning the Fossil Fuel and Hydrocarbon Reserves #23Solutions22 

Oil is like a sword. Someone got to it first and uses it to keep it. We need to take it and use it for our own protection, which may mean not use it at all.

We may consider ourself to suffer from organized crime, and to much respect for the bribing and coopting of high culture by an industry based on decomposition of life. Central public ownership can make the transition to renewables a breeze.

23. Making Renewables with Renewables #23Solutions23 

The key to exploding access to renewable energy is removing the production limit. One of the factors is energy, fossil fuel energy. Making renewable energy sources with renewable energy will mean unlimited capacity.  

One example is to refine silicon with solar thermal energy, this is possible and saves 2/3rds of the energy in makeing solar grade silicon.

There is no room or option for alternative sources of oil if Iran decides to cut off supply. The price may rise, but oil is of such existential importance to some, it is such a decider of the ability to wage war that any disturbance will probably start a conflict.

If Iran doesn’t have control over it’s oil, noone will.

Price elasticity in oil and the prediction some buyers would go ‘offline’ as was remarked by the World Bank is french for mass dislocation, suffering and chaos in areas that no longer have money to buy fuel.

This is the buyer turning into a mugger to get what he wants..either because there is nothing to pay with or the owner doesn’t want to part with the goods or the good is being competed for with equal force by others..

What if global food logistics ginded to a halt?

The usual strategy is a smear, accusation that warrants a lower standard : Iran has nuclear weapons, so it can be nuked. So in order to get the oil the illusion of equal force in using nuclear weapons is essential. The mugger tells the owner he is pointing a gun in order to justify shooting him to take his goods. The troublesome reality is that the US does not suffer more from mugging Iran than from not mugging Iran.

As said in the below video, the suicide approach is an option that can not be prevented. Blowing up wells was a method used by Saddam Hussein, who wanted to sell oil outside of US control (directly to Europe). So in order to keep oil flowing the west either risks being cut of completely or has to comply with Iran’s conditions.

The only country actively seeking a solution is Germany, a country that is building up enough renewable capacity to become independend of oil.

Today anybody can see that carbon resources have to be shared amongst more and stronger parties. At the same time most people are aware of the arrival of the ‘End of Cheap Oil’. Tar sands oil now makes up more than half of the US supply, it’s a type of fuel that can only be derived from the tar by burning a large part of it. The ‘carbon overhead’ of carbon is increasing. Because we are told money is the key to access anything we fail to see (in sufficient numbers) that money today is used to deny access to raw materials : Don’t create the money (absorb it using the immense ‘debt’) and you won’t have access. This in short means we are facing a raw material crunch, not a credit crunch, and the response to the crunch is delayed as long as we keep bickering over who owes what to whom and why. Money is a means of exchange, you need stuff to exchange, not money.

So in the near future there will be no carbon/oil/coal there may be gas, but considering the climate problem using that gas is suicidal behaviour. As there will be no oil there will be no mining or logistics. Maybe there will be in areas with large coal reserves, or if one makes oil out of coal (besides gas). But there will be little reason to waste it as we do today. How likely is the abundant consumer society if the main reason for it’s existence (cheap and potent liquid fuel) is removed?

So here’s the quandry : How to build renewable installations, anything to counter the ecological degradation, anything to keep humans alive in a carbon depleted society? So many processes depend on carbon, coal, oil, gas because in every step the carbon industry saw an opportnity to replace labour with fuel expenses. Carbon dealers put a margin on everything. Now we need a way to construct and counter the damage on a massive scale. It can’t be done! Say some and look at nuclear, thorium or population reduction (Bill Gates).

The constraints are:

1. No mining (unless  renewable powered)

2. No logistics (unless  renewable powered)

3. No big machines (unless renewable powered) 

4. No plastics, glues or other chemical products

5. Parts and repairs be made where they are used

6. Renewable power sources be made where they are used 

The answer is simple : Glass 

Help us get this lens

Japanese supplier http://www.ntkj.co.jp

Total Budget Summer 2012

Pledges	Purpose	By
USD 85,-	Demo Fresnel Lenses	Charronfamilyconnect
USD 1000	Big Fresnel lenses + shipping
USD 500	Structures and control system
USD 2500	Transport, travel and recording

Today anybody can see that carbon resources have to be shared amongst more and stronger parties. At the same time most people are aware of the arrival of the ‘End of Cheap Oil’. Tar sands oil now makes up more than half of the US supply, it’s a type of fuel that can only be derived from the tar by burning a large part of it. The ‘carbon overhead’ of carbon is increasing. Because we are told money is the key to access anything we fail to see (in sufficient numbers) that money today is used to deny access to raw materials : Don’t create the money (absorb it using the immense ‘debt’) and you won’t have access. This in short means we are facing a raw material crunch, not a credit crunch, and the response to the crunch is delayed as long as we keep bickering over who owes what to whom and why. Money is a means of exchange, you need stuff to exchange, not money.

So in the near future there will be no carbon/oil/coal there may be gas, but considering the climate problem using that gas is suicidal behaviour. As there will be no oil there will be no mining or logistics. Maybe there will be in areas with large coal reserves, or if one makes oil out of coal (besides gas). But there will be little reason to waste it as we do today. How likely is the abundant consumer society if the main reason for it’s existence (cheap and potent liquid fuel) is removed?

Glass beads at the site of a crater.. 

So here’s the quandry : How to build renewable installations, anything to counter the ecological degradation, anything to keep humans alive in a carbon depleted society? So many processes depend on carbon, coal, oil, gas because in every step the carbon industry saw an opportnity to replace labour with fuel expenses. Carbon dealers put a margin on everything. Now we need a way to construct and counter the damage on a massive scale. It can’t be done! Say some and look at nuclear, thorium or population reduction (Bill Gates).

The constraints are:

1. No mining (unless  renewable powered)

2. No logistics (unless  renewable powered)

3. No big machines (unless renewable powered) 

4. No plastics, glues or other chemical products

5. Parts and repairs be made where they are used

6. Renewable power sources be made where they are used

The answer is simple : Glass 

(Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser)

Glass

Glass is made of the first and second most abundant element on our planet, Oxygen (49%) and Silicon (29%) with additions to lower the melting point. Normal sand (SiO2) melts at about 2000 degrees Celcius, and adding Sodium and metals can lower this to 450 Celcius. Making glass out of sand sounds undoable, but it’s a simple matter of adding heat energy to achieve the result show above, sand melting. The image is made by Markus Kayser who  went to Marocco and Egypt to demonstrate his Solar Sinter machine. It uses another thing found in abundance, ususally in the same place as sand : Sunlight. A simple 1 m squared fresnel lens can melt sand.

A fresnel lens, they are extremely cheap to make 

We need to mention another instance of the use of solar energy with silicon, and that is in the purification of it to make solar grade silicon also discussed here. But glass made of sufficient thickness can keep a vacuum, and therefore be a very strong insulator.  The amount of heat energy (with temperatures up to 300 degrees Celcius) that can be collected with glass vacuum collectors can be applied in many ways.

Solar silicon prurification. Good for a kilo of solar grade silicon a day..

Energy

We find the energy to melt sand into glass exactly where we find the sand : In our deserts. A rudimentary calculation (and probably off by a factor 10) tells us we need 1,3 to 5 MJ of energy to melt 1 kilo of sand. Melting sand requires high temperatures, which mean that head has to be added faster than it can be radiated from where it’s added. This means one usually needs elaborate oxygen pumped furnaces and high power fuel. But sunlight allows itself to be concentrated easily using the above type lense, and can make a spot as hot as 3500 Celcius. Melting sand with sunlight is easy.

Investment

Today investments are made based on their fee structure, especially as banks are in a terminal fight over the right to control our raw material flow, as explained above. Any technology that has no relationship with the main raw material : Carbon or any investment with no economical return (so no role in the current economical ecology) will be branded ‘risky’,’unproven’,’to expensive’, which is french for IT DOES NOT MAKE US RICHER! Natually an enterprise that sets out to work entirely outside carbon dependence will get no support. The only support it may get is support to promise and fail, like we see with CSP, which seems to be on the winning hand, but is still under the control of the enemy (Desertec). If we want to open up new frontiers in sustaining ourselves, we may have to do it without the carbon/credit system or confiscate the carbon for use despite vehement objections of the credit part!

The Building Blocks of The Glass Revolution

The question should be : If you only had sand and fresnel lenses and a minimum amount of other materials, how would you green the desert? Could you green the entire desert from the coast of Mauritania to Egypt? The answer is of course yes, The energy abundance means it’s only a matter of applying it and the entire desert can be made green, all equatorial deserts probably. But it requires understading the properties and possibilities of a new raw material : Glass. 

Glass can be made to collect solar heat and turn it into steam. Glass steam engines are possible, glass steam turbines are even more possible, so are glass pneumatic drills and excavation. It would not be perfect, and it’s likely to have it’s drawbacks, but with nothing else around it may do the trick. 

Greenhouses can be constructed entirely out of glass. Usually the supports are made of aluminium or concrete, but why not glass. Transparent glass needs certain minerals added, the ‘Desert Greenhouse’ concept, now hoarded by Goldman Sachs in Australia, means that provided there is water, either saline or fresh, any plant type can be grown, especially if it is done organically, and compost is used to nurish the soil, because then there is a cycle of hydrocarbons and minerals between what grows and the humans that live of that. Today that cycle has a huge imput of gas based fertilizer and other chemicals, which we dump in our rivers and oceans.

Glass can be used to lay irrigation pipes. Flexible silicone lined glassfiber tubes should be possible to make. This would mean irrigation systems would be developed with materials found on site.

If you can make a pot, can you make a pipe? How about a heliostat foundation for Desertec ? (bron)

The effects of vegetation

If the desert is developed using solar energy, this does not mean it will always depend on human intervention in the growth of the life in it. Vegetation captures and recycles moisture in microclimates as is shown in the picture below. It’s in the middel of arrid Australia, a small patch of forrest keeps itself green, as it’s not for profit it can be assumed the financial inputs are modest if not non existent.

A forrest in the desert. The effect of vegetation in creating a microclimate that captures moisture, require little irrigation. 

Channel lining slabs like the ones covering the inside of modern tunnels could be created. The use of salt water channels, especially to irrigate salt deserts, is a much easier way to bring water to deserts than to focus on desalination first. Wind patterns may carry large amounts of evaporated water to desert regions. Glass constructions can be used to maximize evaportation from shallow basins. The resulting cloud cover will also benefit life in arrid zones..

Which reminds us of the potential of solar pumped laser.  The efficiency to work with solar glass material may be increased by the use of solar pumped lasers . These are lasers that take in solar photons which are converted into laser light that can cut through steel, and load up magnesium for use in batteries. 

Glass Revolution

It is only a matter of time before we have to start looking at what we have to make things instead of relying on the usual complex logistics carbon/credit investment method of getting things done. The latter is dying. The potential of glass to green desert regions and rebuild our ecology, if not to simply sustain ourselves then to recapture carbon from our atmosphere and protect the rich biotic phase our planet is in right now almost suggests we should start a research center, aimed at churing out practical applications of direct solar glass, as a new source of wealth and life on Northern Africa. As said many times before, the renewable future is one with infinite resources and opportunities, without even having to economize on protecting and restoring our ecology. The only glass ceiling is a fantasy of our carbon/credit oppressors. 

The future? (bron)

Replace artificial light with carbon/credit and this petition can be made against our carbon/credit economic capture and for the ustilisation of the energy provided by our sun/natural light in the same manner today as it could in France in 1845..

Zonleningen 

We hebben een nieuwe website voor het crowdfunden van zonnepanelen : Zonleningen.nl Als u een installatie wilt plaatsen (al dan niet gecrowdfund) kunt u zich registreren. Wij nemen dan zsm contact met u op.

2 projecten met gebruik van mirco inverters

Project 1 2500 Wp Poly op plat dak in Rijswijk

Project 2 3200 Wp CIS als onderdeel van dak van een serrekas in Poortugaal

Project 3 (in uitvoering) 1800 Wp op Museum Oud Overschie Update

Voor u mensen gelooft die gouden bergen voorspellen als het om Schaliegas gaat, gas dat door het verpulveren van de aardlagen wordt vrijgemaakt, niet te snel aannemen wat wordt beweerd.

"The U.S. Energy Department cut its estimate for natural gas reserves in the Marcellus shale formation by 66 percent, citing improved data on drilling and production." (bron)

De Schali gaswinnings techniek is er een die het grondwater premanent vervuilt met methaan en radioactive stoffen en zware metalen (naast de kraakvloestoffen zelf). Het kan aardbevingen veroozaken. Het is een zeer verkwistende manier van energie winnen, want in sommige gevallen wordt het land voor landbouw of bewoning onbruikbaar.

Er is genoeg gas, we komen er in om als we niet uitkijken, maar er zijn slimme en domme manieren om er aan te komen. Geld mag niet altijd de doorslag geven zolang we nog gas gebruiken. Schalie gas is desastreus, en zoals nu blijkt kan de productie enorm tegenvallen. 66% minder. Het is goed dat Boxtel de proefboringen niet toestond. Maar zolang er geen duidelijk moratorium op deze vorm van gaswinning komt blijft het mogelijk dat een serie wetswijzigingen onder de radar ons land opeens overleveren aan deze schadelijke industrie.  

The world is about to make a choice, to fight to the death over global resources or abandon weapons and make something of what we have together, using our ingenuity, technology and local renewable resouces. Fighting no longer makes sense, because you fight over oil, and the fighting costs oil, and the loser is the side that first runs out of oil. We now have sources of wealth like solar panels and wind turbines that can breath life in the remotest desert, scarcity is about to be eliminated for good.

Earlier piece on the Global Standown 

So a last world war to consolidate fossil fuel reserves in light of climate change is the most horrible mistake you could make, because it would decimate the chance of an adequate response to the global warming threat. It would be suicide. We already have oil companies forcing us to do that, but those work by the grace of a military that has a growing awareness of the futility of big wars over the dwindling supply of easily gotten fossil fuels. Refineries are to easy to target, so the wealth has to be shared anyway, and it is not even wealth. Who wants to die or kill for that and suffer the consequences? Only a few, and those few are increasingly exposed.

Humanity is vehemently denying it’s enlightenment, hanging on to slivers of the most basic instincts, waved in it’s face by the media. The key is to accept those instincts, fill them with love instead of guilt, and with that we enable ourselves, like Jezus enabled the poor by telling them God forgave them. Anyone could be a messiah in today’s environment 

We see North Korean soldiers plowing the fields after threatening nuclear war. North Korea, a proxy for China (the Korean war saw the US pitted against China, a conflict that just barely escaped from being full on nuclear). That war never ended. But as the first blow did not come when it was expected one can safely assum the plot for mutual self destruction won’t play the way Kim Jung Un imagined it. China doesn’t want it.

"And [Jacob] shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (bron) 

At the same time the US is denying Israel bunker buster bombs that it needs to fight Iran. No use for Israel to start that war now, no quick in and out. The threat is accumulating there and maybe we will see an exodus once Iran announces it has a nuclear weapon. We have suggested the Israelis settle in the North Sahara to build the solar infrastructure that can power the world Desertec style, on a tiny patch of it and bring wealth to themselves and peace to all, because peace comes from abundance.