Thursday, 2 June 2016
Thursday, 26 May 2016
“Lets nurture the nature, so that we can have a better future.
Monday, 25 April 2016
Plant 900,000 Trees A Day With Seed Bombs
“The current proposal retrofits unused C-130 Hercules cargo planes to drop cones of seeds. The cones “bury themselves in the soil of a deforested area at the same distance that one would want them to be if planting the trees by hand. The tree bombs don’t explode on impact but rather their casing dissolves over time and they contain a measure of fertilizer and enough moisture to ensure that the tree takes root.”
Monday, 21 March 2016
Could this machine be the answer to global warming?
A Weizmann professor and an entrepreneur have patented a device that extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turns it into fuel. They say it has the potential to save life on our planet.
if this past summer felt hot to you, it’s not your imagination. Meteorologistspredict that 2015 will end up being the hottest year on record. There isscientific consensus that the culprit is global warming, caused by carbon dioxide emissions.
Nevertheless, global warming is a hairtrigger issue and that’s because combustion, the chemical reaction responsible for modern industry, produces carbon dioxide (CO2), and carbon dioxide produces global warming. It’s a fact of nature that we can’t wish away, yet we’re unwilling to give up the modern comforts of electricity, automobiles, skyscrapers and advanced technology. Humanity is caught in a tragedy of its own making — our greatest achievements could soon lead to our biological extinction.
“Our bodies absorb oxygen and combine it with the food we eat to produce energy. We emit carbon dioxide when we breathe. But the carbon dioxide breathed out by animals is absorbed by plants and trees. Using the energy of the sun, they convert it back into carbon (carbohydrates) which makes their trunk and branches, and they emit oxygen back into the atmosphere.”
This natural balance, says Banitt, was first disturbed when our human ancestors made fire, combining the carbon in firewood with oxygen in the air to produce energy and CO2. But the amounts of excess CO2 were very small and nature adjusted itself.
Once we started burning coal and oil, however, there were not enough plants to absorb all the excess CO2.
“The quantities are immense. At present humanity is emitting 40 billion tons of CO2 per year above the natural balance. The problem is that CO2 gas emitted into the atmosphere creates a kind of blanket that prevents heat from leaving the atmosphere to go into space, and this is causing temperatures to rise slowly, which is climate change.”
About twenty years ago, says Banitt, scientists developed technologies to capture up to 90 percent of CO2 emissions before they hit the atmosphere.
“But the technology is expensive, and then you have 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. What do you do with it? The original idea was to bury it in geological formations, but that’s like setting a bomb to go off 200 years from now.”
Indeed, some scientists argue that burying carbon dioxide can trigger earthquakes and that even a small earthquake can cause leaks that will defeat the purpose of the burial.
According to Banitt, there are a handful of companies worldwide that allow you to do something useful with the carbon dioxide you’ve captured. New CO2 Fuels allows you to get rid of the carbon dioxide and make money in the process.
“We basically recycle the carbon dioxide.”
What New CO2 Fuels does is reverse the combustion process. It takes CO2 and extracts the oxygen by injecting energy into it.
“We extract the oxygen — which is a good product in its own right. We’re left with carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen. That’s a gas known as syngas (synthetic gas) and there are lots of people around the world who know how to convert it into methanol, ethanol, gasoline, kerosene ammonia, urea, plastics, you name it.”
Where do you get the energy to do this?
“We can take it from the sun. And there are many industries producing a lot of heat that gets wasted. For instance, steel mills burn a lot of coal and gas to melt the ore. It’s the same with glass, cement and other metals.”
Bannit says it’s a no-brainer for a steel mill to use his technology.
“You have a lot of heat that you’re wasting. You have a lot of CO2 that the regulator is pressuring you to reduce. Instead of wasting both of them, put them into our system and generate fuel, plastic or fertilizers.”
Yes, but if people go out and burn those fuels how are you reducing CO2 emissions?
“Imagine a steel plant that emits 10 million tons of CO2 per year. The plant is next to a town with 20,000 cars that emit another million tons of CO2 per year. Instead of buying oil from the oil company, the city can buy fuel from the steel mill which it generated using its heat and CO2. Previously, you had 11 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Now you take a million tons of CO2 from the steel mill and convert it back to fuel. So you only have 10 million tons of emissions.”
Sunday, 20 March 2016
Saturday, 19 March 2016
We all fall down #WakeUpSaveTheWorld
We're moving fast and living large,
Forgetting Mother Nature's in charge.
Amazed when rings our bell,
Sending us through living hell.
Monday, 14 March 2016
Sunday, 13 March 2016
Friday, 11 March 2016
Low Arctic sea ice extent
February continues streak of record low Arctic sea ice extent
Arctic sea ice extent for February 2016 was 14.22 million square kilometers (5.48 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1981 to 2010 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Arctic sea ice was at a satellite-record low for the second month in a row. The first three weeks of February saw little ice growth, but extent rose during the last week of the month. Arctic sea ice typically reaches its maximum extent for the year in mid to late March.
Arctic sea ice extent for February averaged 14.22 million square kilometers (5.48 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the satellite record. It is 1.16 million square kilometers (448,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average of 15.4 million square kilometers (5.94 million square miles) and is 200,000 square kilometers (77,000 square miles) below the previous record low for the month recorded in 2005.
The first three weeks of February saw little ice growth, but extent rose during the last week of the month primarily due to growth in the Sea of Okhotsk (180,000 square kilometers or 70,000 square miles) and to a lesser extent in Baffin Bay (35,000 square kilometers or 13,500 square miles). Extent is presently below average in the Barents and Kara seas, as well as the Bering Sea and the East Greenland Sea. Extent decreased in the Barents and East Greenland seas during the month of February. In other regions, such as the Sea of Okhotsk, Baffin Bay, and the Labrador Sea, ice conditions are near average to slightly above average for this time of year. An exception is the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which remains largely ice free.
In the Antarctic, sea ice reached its minimum extent for the year on February 19, averaging 2.6 million square kilometers (1 million square miles). It is the ninth lowest Antarctic sea ice minimum extent in the satellite record.
Monthly February sea ice extent for 1979 to 2016 shows a decline of 3.0 percent per decade. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Monday, 7 March 2016
Do trees communicate with each other?
Do trees communicate with each other?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes.
They might seem like the strong, tall and silent type, but trees
actually communicate with each other. Many Forest ecologist, studies a type of
fungi that forms underground communication networks between trees.
Big old trees — dubbed 'mother trees' — are hubs in this
mycorrhizal fungal network, playing a key role in supporting other trees in the
forest, especially their offspring.
"We found that the biggest oldest trees had more
connections to other trees than smaller trees. It stands to reason because they
have more root systems,"
Fungal networks also boost their host plants'
immune systems. That's because, when a fungus colonizes the roots of a plant,
it triggers the production of defense-related chemicals. These make later
immune system responses quicker and more efficient, a phenomenon called
"priming".
Every tree in a 30 by 30-meter forest stand was connected to
every other tree, with an estimated 250 to 300 trees being connected together
in this single forest stand.
The fungal Internet exemplifies one of the
great lessons of ecology: seemingly separate organisms are often connected, and
may depend on each other. "Ecologists have known for some time that
organisms are more interconnected and interdependent." The wood wide
web seems to be a crucial part of how these connections form.
Friday, 5 February 2016
Rawlemon's Spherical Solar Energy Generator
Rawlemon's Spherical Solar Energy Generator
German architect André Broessel, of Rawlemon, has looked into his crystal ball and seen the future of renewable energy. German Architect Andre Broessel believes he has a solution that can “squeeze more juice out of the sun,” even during the night hours and in low-light regions. His company, Rawlemon, has created a spherical sun power generator prototype called the beta.ray. His technology combines spherical geometry principles with a dual axis tracking system, allowing twice the yield of a conventional solar panel in a much smaller surface area. The futuristic design is fully rotational and is suitable for inclined surfaces, walls of buildings, and anywhere with access to the sky. It can even be used as an electric car charging station.
- The modular collector system charges and stores energy during daylight hours and can even collect energy from the moon during night hours.
- “The beta.ray comes with a hybrid collector to convert daily electricity and thermal energy at the same time. While reducing the silicon cell area to 25% with the equivalent power output by using our ultra transmission Ball Lens point focusing concentrator, it operates at efficiency levels of nearly 57% in hybrid mode. At nighttime the Ball Lens can transform into a high-power lamp to illuminate your location, simply by using a few LED’s. The station is designed for off grid conditions as well as to supplement buildings’ consumption of electricity and thermal circuits like hot water.”
The rotating glass orb, he says, brings in energy from the sun and concentrates it onto a small surface of tiny solar panels. The ball lens is able to concentrate and diffuse light on one small focal point, making it more sustainable (less material used to create solar cells, most of which are made from crystalline silicon) and more efficient. Additionally, Broessel says poor weather would not impact the device, because of a built-in weather tracking system.
Broessel’s device is not yet available in the market. He is trying to raise $120,000 on his Indiegogo campaign for further testing, and for patent applications he’s filed in five jurisdictions.
Tuesday, 2 February 2016
Plastic man of India
Did you know that an Indian has already invented a method to convert hazardous plastic waste into roads?
Prof. Rajagopalan Vasudevan is an ingenious innovator. He has devised a technique of laying down roads made of plastic waste. Known as The Plastic Man of India, Prof, Vasudevan has so far laid down more than 20,000kms of plastic roads in India. A simple and effective method that not only eliminates the problem of plastic waste but increases the longevity of the roads as well.
A professor of chemistry at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, near Madurai, he insists that plastic gets a bad rap. Rather than an incipient environmental calamity, plastic, in Vasudevan’s opinion, is a “gift from the gods”; it’s up to humans to use it wisely. And he’s devised a way to transform common plastic litter—not only thicker acrylics and bottles but also grocery bags and wrappers—into a partial substitute for bitumen in asphalt.
Plastic waste helps increase the strength of the road, reducing road fatigue. These roads have better resistance towards rain water and cold weather. Since a large amount of plastic waste is required for a small stretch of road, the amount of waste plastic strewn around will definitely reduce.
Prof R Vasudevan’s inclination to keep experimenting led to another innovation. He decided to try creating a stone block with plastic coating and, in 2012, ‘plastone’ took birth. A plastone block is made from a mixture of waste plastic and stone. It has been found to withstand more pressure and it resists water percolation. In the professor’s department of chemistry they have made plastone blocks using granite and ceramic waste, along with plastic waste.
Each plastone block consumes 300 plastic carry bags and around six PET bottles.
“It is an easier way of disposing off plastic bottles which are found scattered all over,” points out Dr. Vasudevan.
Almost 10% of solid waste consists of used materials that can be broken into pieces and used in the making of plastone. Industrial slug can also be used in the process. One of the foremost advantages of plastone is its non-porous nature and the ability to prevent water penetration.
Plastone can be used for flooring, especially outdoors. It can be a cheap and strong substitute for cement blocks, which have a tendency to wither away in constant rain. It can be an effective liner for water bodies, especially canals, preventing water seepage. It can also be used to raise compound walls. A coat of emulsion can be provided to make it colourful and attractive.
Sadly, our own country did not take him seriously, and now the Netherlands is testing his idea and constructing roads using his patented technology. The technique will involves molding of plastic waste using blue metal into pre-fabricated bricks. These bricks help to build roads quickly.
This system will not only help to use up dangerous plastics for a good cause, but also allow roads to be built quickly. The plastic also provides durability to the roads as well as lightens the surface load as plastic is lighter than traditional road material. The maintenance cost will also be lower compared to asphalt roads. As per The Guardian, these roads are also hollow, making it easier to install cables and utility pipelines below the surface. Sections can be prefabricated in a factory and transported to where they are needed, reducing on-site construction, while the shorter construction time and low maintenance will mean less congestion caused by roadworks. Lighter materials can also be transported more efficiently.
India needs such innovations to tackle its mounting environmental and infrastructure problems. It is surprising that no mainstream media channel has tried to highlight this novel innovation yet.
Plastic Man Of India
Did you know that an Indian has already invented a method to convert hazardous plastic waste into roads?
Prof. Rajagopalan Vasudevan is an ingenious innovator. He has
devised a technique of laying down roads made of plastic waste. Known as The
Plastic Man of India, Prof, Vasudevan has so far laid down more than
20,000kms of plastic roads in India. A simple and effective method that not
only eliminates the problem of plastic waste but increases the longevity of the
roads as well.
A professor of chemistry at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, near
Madurai, he insists that plastic gets a bad rap. Rather than an incipient
environmental calamity, plastic, in Vasudevan’s opinion, is a “gift from the gods”;
it’s up to humans to use it wisely. And he’s devised a way to transform common
plastic litter—not only thicker acrylics and bottles but also grocery bags and
wrappers—into a partial substitute for bitumen in asphalt.
Plastic
waste helps increase the strength of the road, reducing road fatigue. These
roads have better resistance towards rain water and cold weather. Since a large
amount of plastic waste is required for a small stretch of road, the amount of
waste plastic strewn around will definitely reduce.
Prof
R Vasudevan’s inclination to keep experimenting led to
another innovation. He decided to try creating a stone block with plastic
coating and, in 2012, ‘plastone’ took birth. A plastone
block is made from a mixture of waste plastic and stone. It has been found to
withstand more pressure and it resists water percolation. In the professor’s
department of chemistry they have made plastone blocks using granite and ceramic waste,
along with plastic waste.
Each
plastone
block consumes 300 plastic carry bags and around six PET bottles.
“It
is an easier way of disposing off plastic bottles which are found scattered all
over,” points out Dr. Vasudevan.
Almost
10% of solid waste consists of used materials that can be broken into
pieces and used in the making of plastone. Industrial slug can also be used in the
process. One of the foremost advantages of plastone is its non-porous nature and the ability
to prevent water penetration.
Plastone can be used for flooring,
especially outdoors. It can be a cheap and strong substitute for cement blocks,
which have a tendency to wither away in constant rain. It can be an effective
liner for water bodies, especially canals, preventing water seepage. It can
also be used to raise compound walls. A coat of emulsion can be provided to
make it colourful and attractive.
Sadly, our own country did not take him
seriously, and now the Netherlands is testing his idea and constructing roads
using his patented technology. The technique will involves molding of plastic waste using blue metal
into pre-fabricated bricks. These bricks help to build roads quickly.
This system will not only help to use up
dangerous plastics for a good cause, but also allow roads to be built quickly.
The plastic also provides durability to the roads as well as lightens the
surface load as plastic is lighter than traditional road material. The
maintenance cost will also be lower compared to asphalt roads. As per The
Guardian, these roads are also hollow, making it easier to install cables and
utility pipelines below the surface. Sections can be prefabricated in a factory
and transported to where they are needed, reducing on-site construction, while
the shorter construction time and low maintenance will mean less congestion
caused by roadworks. Lighter materials can also be
transported more efficiently.
India needs such innovations to tackle
its mounting environmental and infrastructure problems. It is surprising that
no mainstream media channel has tried to highlight this novel innovation yet.
Friday, 29 January 2016
Sunday, 24 January 2016
Thursday, 21 January 2016
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Importance of Trees!!
Trees play a very important role in our surroundings. Trees provide us with fresh air to breathe, shade in summers, food, and other benefits without which we cannot even think of living. As pollution and cutting of trees increases day by day, the ecological balance should be maintained. We should plant more and more trees in order to provide a healthy life to our children and the generations to come.
https://twitter.com/WaKeUpMyCiTiZeN
Monday, 18 January 2016
Climate change is a hoax?
“The climate challenge illustrates how we have to change. The developing countries need more support and opportunities to develop and use clean energy. Because if the current situation continues, then the world will not be able to handle this burden."
#WakeUpSaveTheWorld
Acid Rain Effect
One of the direct effects of acid rain is on lakes and its aquatic ecosystems.
There are several routes through which acidic chemicals can enter the lakes. Some chemical substances exist as dry particles in the air while others enter the lakes as wet particles such as rain, snow, sleet, hail, dew or fog. In addition, lakes can almost be thought of as the "sinks" of the earth, where rain that falls on land is drained through the sewage systems eventually make their way into the lakes. Acid rain that falls onto the earth washes off the nutrients out of the soil and carries toxic metals that have been released from the soil into the lakes. Another harmful way in which acids can enter the lakes is spring acid shock. When snow melts in spring rapidly due to a sudden temperature change, the acids and chemicals in the snow are released into the soils. The melted snow then runs off to streams and rivers, and gradually make their way into the lakes. The introduction of these acids and chemicals into the lakes causes a sudden drastic change in the pH of the lakes - hence the term "spring acid shock". The aquatic ecosystem has no time to adjust to the sudden change. In addition, springtime is an especially vulnerable time for many aquatic species since this is the time for reproduction for amphibians, fish and insects. Many of these species lay their eggs in the water to hatch. The sudden pH change is dangerous because the acids can cause serious deformities in their young or even annihilate the whole species since the young of many of such species spend a significant part of their life cycle in the water.
Sulphuric acid (H2SO4) in water can affect the fish in the lakes directly interferes with the fish's ability to take in oxygen, salt and nutrients needed to stay alive.
Friday, 15 January 2016
E-waste
Electronic waste or e-waste is any broken or unwanted electrical or electronic appliance. • E-waste includes computers, entertainment electronics, mobile phones and other items that have been discarded by their original users.
E-waste is the most rapidly growing waste problem in the world.
--> • It is a crisis of not quantity alone but also a crisis born from toxics ingredients, posing a threat to the occupational health as well as the environment.
--> • Rapid technology change, changes in media (tapes, software, MP3), falling prices, low initial cost, high obsolescence rate have resulted in a fast growing problem around the globe.
• An estimated 50 million tons of E-waste are produced each year.
• The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only 15-20% of ewaste is recycled, the rest of these electronics go directly into landfills and incinerators
• the amount of e-waste being produced - including mobile phones and computers - could rise by as much as 500 percent over the next decade in some countries, such as India.
• The United States is the world leader in producing electronic waste, tossing away about 3 million tons each year.
• China already produces about 2.3 million tons (2010 estimate) domestically, second only to the United States. And, despite having banned e-waste imports, China remains a major e-waste dumping ground for developed The USA discards 30 million computers each year and 100 million phones are disposed of in Europe each year.
- VOLUME REDUCTION:-
- • Volume reduction includes those techniques that remove the hazardous portion of a waste from a non-hazardous portion.
- • These techniques are usually to reduce the volume, and thus the cost of disposing of a waste material.
- • For example, an electronic component manufacturer can use compaction equipment to reduce volume of waste cathode ray-tube.
- RECOVERY AND REUSE:-
- • This technique could eliminate waste disposal costs, reduce raw material costs and provide income from a salable waste.
- • Waste can be recovered on-site, or at an off-site recovery facility, or through inter industry exchange.
- • For example, a printed-circuit board manufacturer can use electrolytic recovery to reclaim metals from copper and tin-lead plating bath.
- RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE CITIZEN:-
- • Recycling raw materials from end-of-life electronics is the most effective solution to the growing e-waste problem.
- • E-wastes should never be disposed with garbage and other household wastes. This should be segregated at the site and sold or donated to various organizations.
- • Reuse, in addition to being an environmentally preferable alternative, also benefits society. By donating used electronics, schools, non-profit organizations, and lower income families can afford to use equipment that they otherwise could not afford.
- • Gather any unwanted chargers, accessories or batteries to recycle –find national recycling center of the company
REFERENCES:- • Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Bangalore http://wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in) • United Nations Environment Programme - http://www.unep.org • http:// wikipedia.org • http://www.greenpeace.org/ • http://www.dosomething.org/
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