Project Reflection

Solar Fan

I wired together a simple circuit, comprising of a couple of photovoltaic solar cells and a small electric motor. Originally it was going to be a 'flashlight,' and actually store the energy for later use, but the solar panels were only strong enough to light a single LED (light emitting diode) and the capacitors didn't work. Also, fans are much more practical - why should you need a flashlight in broad daylight? It's not that great looking - it's held together by scraps of duct tape and is housed in a used orange juice container - but it's a fully functioning and potentially useful device.

I started off experimenting how I should wire the device - that's the most important part - and determining if it would actually work at all. I managed to get a single LED up and running, but was already using twice the solar panels I intended to - I couldn't scale up. I had already housed it in the juice container, but had to quickly convert it to a motorized fan instead - a simple process, but a process nonetheless.

This is a prime example of sustainability - I reused a juice bottle and various electronic components to create a device that uses a renewable power source. It creates no emissions or other pollutants in and of itself, though there was some waste during the manufacturing process that was unavoidable. It's also being an environmental steward by keeping more waste from entering landfills.

Termites

These little wood-eating pests may seem like an unnecessary nuisance when your house has to be fumigated to get rid of them, but those same bugs have great potential in new, renewable energy sources.

Biomimicry

As I mentioned in my earlier post, biomimicry is learning from the designs of nature and applying that to solve problems.

Why Termites?

Termites are a strange sort; they live in the dark much of the time, eating the parts of plants that most animals find inedible. To accomplish this, they rely on microorganisms in their stomachs that secrete enzymes to digest wood matter.

One of the things that these enzymes convert wood into is hydrogen - which can be used in hydrogen fuel cells to create energy. Termites can convert a single sheet of paper into two liters of hydrogen, and are among the most efficient bioreactors in the world.

Another thing that termites create in their stomachs is acetate, a kind of alcohol, which they use for energy. If we could harness the enzymes that perform this miraculous task, we could convert large amounts of plant matter directly into ethanol, a much cleaner fuel that has gained some interest in recent years.

The enzymes are catalysts, chemicals that speed up chemical reactions, for converting the plant matter, called cellulose, into alcohol. Cellulose is different from plant matter that we eat, like corn, because it's the part of the plant that we normally can't eat. This includes things like wood and corn husks, which would normally be disposed of or burned. Because the enzymes work well with even the parts that we don't eat, instead of corn or sugar cane - which we do eat, using it doesn't effect our food supply, and there is more food to go around for everyone.

Sustainability Concepts

Definitions

• Sustainability




• The pursuit of 'sustaining' a process, allowing it to continue for a longer period of time. In terms of environmentalism, this means reserving natural resources such as water, clean air, and energy sources for future generations.




• Freegans




• This recent following is a contraction of 'free' and 'vegan.' These oddballs feed off the trash of others in a protest to our rampant consumerism. Learn more here.




• Stewardship




• A steward is someone who is entrusted with taking care of something. We are the only stewards of our planet, and as such we must work to keep our environment conducive to our existence, even if others will not.




• Biomimicry




• A contraction of 'bio', meaning life, and 'mimicry', copying, biomimicry is the process of designing something based on an animal's natural adaptations to solve a particularly vexing problem.




• Ecological Footprint




• An ecological footprint is the impact one has on the environment, based on the resources that one uses and such. It is related to the more familiar term, carbon footprints, but is a broader-reaching footprint that deals with things like water use in addition to gaseous emissions.




• Overshoot




• When human consumption out runs the Earth's ability to replenish its resources, you have overshoot. We currently use about 30% more than the Earth has to offer, and have been since 1987. This trend is expected to continue, unless we take drastic measures in the next few years.

Supply and Demand

Supply : Area × BioProductivity = BioCapacity

Demand : Population × Consumption per Capita × Footprint Intensity = Ecological Footprint

Basic economics, when demand exceeds the demand, all is not well. The global Ecological Footprint, the demand, exceeds its BioCapacity, the supply, by about 30%.

1987

1987 was the year that the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE closed at over 2000 for the first time. It was also the first year in which our consumption of natural resources was greater than nature's ability to replenish them. We've come a long way since then - DOW JONES now closes at over 12000, and we use all of our resources for the year several months early. We obviously don't go without food, water, or fuel for several months out of the year, so to continue to function regularly we must buy resources from other places.

October 6, 2007

Last year, the day that we used all of our resources for the year was Oct.06 - leaving a good three months when we had to actually borrow natural resources from other countries.

Hermit Gulch Haiku

On a camping trip
The Island Catalina
It was hot and cold.

First Few Hours

So far, we haven't done too much. We made journals out of recycled paper we found lying around school, and right now everyone's trying to get their blogs up and running. This looks to be a fairly uneventful day - got to make up for when we go to Catalina Island (if we ever do), I guess.