An inventor has created what he claims is the world’s first motorcycle powered by fresh air.
Jem Stansfield says his converted Puch moped produces cleaner air than found in many town and city centres and so can actually reduce pollution.
“It actually fires out cleaner air,” said 37-year-old Stansfield, who used to be a sheep herder.
The University of Bristol aeronautics graduate fitted the Puch with high pressure carbon fibre air cylinders used by fire fighters as breathing apparatus in burning buildings.
The cylinders power two rotary air engines which in turn drive the chain to the rear wheel.
Unlike electric scooters, it takes just seconds to recharge from larger air tanks filled by a diving compressor.
With a top speed of 18mph and a range of just seven miles between air top-ups, Stansfield admits it’s never going to be good for trans-continental touring. But hesaid: “You could definitely run a fleet of delivery bikes on it.”
We’ve learnt a lot from nature, such as flight and medicine. Scientists in Australia have designed an innovative power generation system inspired by the shape of the tailfins of Tuna and Sharks. The currents on the ocean floor impose a force on the fin of the BioStream device. The to-and-fro motion of the fin is directed into a specially designed gearbox that converts the oscillating motion into a rotational motion that drives a conventional dynamo.
Aside from the smart technique in harnessing ocean currents, Finnigan and his team have come up with an electricity generation system that has zero impact on the environment. Unlike wind turbines, the BioStream technology does not impact the local scenery either.
Tim Finnigan is a professor of ocean engineering at the University of Sydney in Australia and has founded a company called BioPower Systems to actively develop a range of nature-inspired electricity generators. His company intends to sell the energy created by the environmentally-friendly devices as a completely green energy source.
Although the energy is entirely green, it does come at a price. But just think what BioPower Systems could do with the money it raises from selling energy. Hopefully even more incredibly innovative eco friendly technologies!
A designer by the name of Wu Jian has come up with a concept for an eco-friendly battery gadget. The Soft Solar Battery is made of several layers of film, including a flexible battery and flexible solar panel. The battery is rolled out flat to charge up in the sun, the level of charge indicated by the small display on the panel.
When you wish to use the flexible battery, you simply roll up the film into a cylinder to use within conventional devices that need a battery. Due to the lack of tech info on the product it appears to be purely a conceptual thing. Cool though.
The EcoSmart Zeta fireplace is bizarre looking to say the least. Designed by John Dimopoulos, the director of a design and architects company in Sydney, the Zeta is named after the likeness of its shape and the Greek letter Zeta. Using stainless steel, wood and leather, the fire is completely portable and has no need for a conventional flue. A glass screen sits on either side of the fire to protect the flame (or apparently to enhance it according to the description).
Rather curiously, the fire is powered by denatured ethanol. As a snobby chemist, I think that “denatured” is actually the wrong word. “Mixed with non-drinkable chemicals” is more appropriate. Anyway, it uses what you might know as household ethanal or methylated spirits as a fuel source, cited as being an eco-friendly and sustainable fuel.
Assuming that the ethanol is produced using a form of fermentation or other eco-friendly process, it theoretically is an eco-friendly fuel. However, the combustion of ethanol does produce the common greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. It’s an interesting idea, however I’d question the amount of heat it actually provides in this form.
There are plenty of hand-powered and solar powered chargers out there, so what’s new about this one? The USB Wind Up Eco Charger doesn’t have an internal battery like other chargers. Instead, it has a USB socket that can be used to directly charge any gadgets that are charged via a USB cable.
Although this means that gadgets are only charged whilst you are cranking away, it does mean that the Benex Eco Charger produces up to 5 times more energy compared to the hand-crank-charger-with-battery variation. Since all batteries degrade eventually, since this eco charger doesn’t haven an internal battery, it’ll last a really long time too!
Typically when you see a low power PC, you’ll see really low power usage, but then a pretty low specification in terms of raw processing power. That’s all fine and good, except when you’re trying to do something that requires a little more power. TheMaingear Pulse is touted as the world’s greenest gaming PC, consuming 40% less power compared to conventional gaming systems.
The Pulse uses a NVIDIA ION-based GeForce 9300 Motherboard by Zotac, which comes with both dual and quad core options. The Pulse also uses special edition GeForce 9600 GT and 9800 GT graphics cards that consume 40% less power compared to other graphics cards. A Pulse under a full load consumes less than 145 watts whilst gaming compared to convention gaming systems!
Using an optimised chassis design, air flow is maximised to ensure the GPUs and CPUs are kept as cool as possible. Components are therefore kept cooler, and less energy is wasted trying to cool hot components.
The Pulse has capacity for up to 8GB of DDR2 RAM, 802.11b/g wireless networking, eSata support, and optional Blu-ray and TV Tuner features. Pricing starts at $898.99 with one of the eco-friendly graphics cards.
Fit PC have done it again (see their Fit PC slim), this time with the release of the Fit PC 2. The Fit PC 2 features a 1.1GHz or a 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 160GB SATA Hard Drive, Gigabit LAN and has a peak load of just 9 Watts.
Fit PC have a reputation for creating attractive and energy efficient computers, but now we have something with a bit of power. The Fit PC more than doubles the processing power of its predecessor without any significant increase in power consumption. The unit is fanless, and designed to minimise the heat produced to avoid wasting energy. At just 11.5 x 10.1 x 2.7 cm, the Fit PC 2 is smaller than 3 stacked CD cases!
The standard specification also includes DVI with graphics acceleration, 6 USB ports, a sound card. The Fit PC 2 comes with a WiFi option and can be ordered with Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux. Prices start at £270 + VAT in the UK.
If you don’t have a garden, but you still want to be green-fingered, you might find the Aeroponics Power Plant Growing Machine interesting. Using technology pioneered by NASA, the growing machine allows you to grow all kinds of plants all year round using a soil-less plant-growing technique. The system uses a series of microjets that constantly sprays roots with super-oxygenated nutrient rich water to help plants grow.
You simply add water to the nutrient mix, add the nutrient solution to the specially designed sponge strip, sow your seeds in the sponge and stick the growing machine on your windowsill. The seeds will start to germinate in just a few days, meaning you don’t need to wait long to enjoy the fruits of your (albeit minor) labour.
The growing machine runs on a 12 volt power supply which drives the microjet pump. Spare sponges are not yet available. Once your nutrient solution runs out, you can just use common nutrient mixes as available from all garden centres. The growing machine is available for £34.95.
The Savaplug is a specially designed energy saving gadget that helps to cut your electrical bills by helping refrigerators and fridge-freezers run more efficiently. The plug should help to reduce electrical bills by around £12 a year.
The Savaplug was created in a project supported by the Department of Energy, its aim is to help reduce the amount of electricity fridges and fridge-freezers use. The device needs to be wired to the fridge or fridge-freezer, but it is as simple as wiring a normal plug, remove the current plug and attach the wires in their correct places within the Savaplug.
The Savaplug then works to lower the energy consumption by reducing the amount of energy getting to the refrigerators motor. When a fridge starts up its motor the energy needed is high, as getting a motor started requires a lot of electricity. However once the motor is going less energy is needed to keep it simply going and it is then that the Savaplug reduces the flow of electricity to the appliance.
It is thought that fridges are one of the most energy intensive items you can run in a house. It is estimated that they cost around £55-£65 a year in electricity. The Savaplug is thought to reduce this usage by around 20%, though they are a lot more effective on older models of refrigerator. The plug will not work with models with an electrical controller.
There is some argument as to the effectiveness of the energy saving plug, as once a motor has fully started up its energy consumption naturally drops. Also most modern models cut their energy consumption to the motor anyway and use smaller motors so there is little to no saving to be made. This product then is more useful for those with old fridges and fridge-freezers who wish to cut their energy usage a little.
The Savaplug is available for £25.99 plus delivery.
The proposition is that it is possible to power a phone from a carbohydrate, in this case sugar which can be found in high levels in many drinks. The interaction of enzymes with the carbohydrate generates power through an electrochemical reaction.The Eco Friendly Mobile Phone should only produce oxygen and water, as a byproduct of the reaction, which can then be poured out of the battery and down a drain once the phone battery has finally run out of charge. It is hoped that charging a phone this way would give a longer lasting charge time, predicted to be 3 to 4 times the length of charging a normal mobile battery. The designer hopes that this type of battery would be fully biodegradable.
Mobile phones normally run from a lithium battery. It is well documented that producing these batteries, charging them and then disposing of them produces quite a high quantity of pollution into the environment. Unfortunately the manufacturing of many drinks have their own negative environmental impact, from the production of the drink to the issues that arise from the drinks bottles and cans especially when these are not recycled.
By using left over bits of drink the impact is minimized to some extent. This design may well run from sugar dissolved in water which would also lessen the impact somewhat. The problem of disposing lithium batteries is rather serious, coupled with charging the battery from mains power for its life then the negative impact of a conventional lithium phone battery is quite high. Though there are a few unconsidered issues with this ‘eco friendly’ battery it is certainly a step in the right direction.
Freddie James 