Green Building & Manufacturing Articles
The ABCs of ICFs
Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs) have been around since the late 1960s, but have garnered more attention over the last several years as an increasing push for green building and energy-efficient homes has taken hold in the construction industry. As their name indicates, ICFs are forms for constructing cast-in-place concrete walls, floors and roofs. Made of expandable polystyrene (EPS) foam, the forms are hollow and modular, with an interlocking structure that allows them to be stacked without the use of mortar as a binder. Steel rebar is placed at regular intervals, running both horizontally and vertically, to add support and strength. Concrete is then poured inside the hollow forms. Left in place after the concrete cures and dries, the forms serve as excellent thermal and acoustic insulation. They also allow space to run electrical wiring and plumbing pipes.
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Sunny Record: Breakthrough for Hybrid Solar Cells
ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2010) - Scientists at the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) and the Freiburg Materials Research Center (FMF) have succeeded in developing a method for treating the surface of nanoparticles which greatly improves the efficiency of organic solar cells. The researchers were able to attain an efficiency of 2 percent by using so-called quantum dots composed of cadmium selenide.
These measurements, well above the previous efficiency ratings of 1 to 1.8 percent, were confirmed by the "Dye and Organic Solar Cells" research group of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems at the FMF. The photoactive layer of hybrid solar cells consists of a mixture of inorganic nanoparticles and an organic polymer. As it is theoretically possible to apply the method developed by the researchers to many nanoparticles, this breakthrough opens up new potential for increasing the efficiency of this type of solar cell even further.
The procedure has been patented and the results were published in a recent issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.
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Owners - What Should You Do About BIM?
Owners are hearing about projects coming in at 10% lower than budgeted when architects and engineers created their drawings and specifications using BIM as their modeling tool. We are now getting early reports of projects coming in at 20% lower than budgeted when IPD (Integrated Project Delivery) is used on a project; this is where the contractors and sub-contractors add detailed construction modeling to the architects and engineers BIM projects prior to bidding and construction. Conflicts are worked out in the model and not in the field. Prefabrication is possible because dimensions are very accurate and there is confidence that the prefabricated items will fit. Owners are also starting to realize that if they have many architects working on their projects they are not getting an integrated set of data from the collection of projects, and therefore, the downstream value of the BIM projects for facilities management, operations and maintenance is compromised.
BIM is very new. Many people have different ideas on what it means, where it is going and what it will accomplish. While this is being sorted out, there is little disagreement that BIM is a new era and will result in tremendous change for almost everyone dealing with buildings. This paper gives examples of what can be improved for owners when they require BIM projects be created with consistent and coordinated requirements and guidelines.
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A quarter of U.S. nuclear plants leaking
AP: "27 of 104 plants leak radioactive tritium, a carcinogen, raising Concerns about nation's aging plants"
Radioactive tritium, a carcinogen discovered in potentially dangerous levels in groundwater at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, now taints at least 27 of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors - raising concerns about how it is escaping from the aging nuclear plants.
Just something to add to all of the "benefits" of going nuke (see "Intro to nuclear power"). At the very least, this should put up yet another warning flag on the rush to build dozens of new nukes.
The AP story suggests that the original plant designs were inadequate from the perspective of public safety:
The leaks - many from deteriorating underground pipes - come as the nuclear industry is seeking and obtaining federal license renewals, casting itself as a clean-green alternative to power plants that burn fossil fuels.
Tritium, found in nature in tiny amounts and a product of nuclear fusion, has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin in large amounts.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday that new tests at a monitoring well on Vermont Yankee's site in Vernon registered 70,500 picocuries per liter, more than three times the federal safety standard of 20,000 picocuries per liter.
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Scientists Demonstrate World's Fastest Graphene Transistor; Holds Promise for Improving Performance of Transistors
ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2010) - In a just-published paper in the magazine Science, IBM researchers demonstrated a radio-frequency graphene transistor with the highest cut-off frequency achieved so far for any graphene device -- 100 billion cycles/second (100 GigaHertz).
This accomplishment is a key milestone for the Carbon Electronics for RF Applications (CERA) program funded by DARPA, in an effort to develop next-generation communication devices.
The high frequency record was achieved using wafer-scale, epitaxially grown graphene using processing technology compatible to that used in advanced silicon device fabrication.
"A key advantage of graphene lies in the very high speeds in which electrons propagate, which is essential for achieving high-speed, high-performance next generation transistors," said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science and Technology, IBM Research. "The breakthrough we are announcing demonstrates clearly that graphene can be utilized to produce high performance devices and integrated circuits."
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Super Material Will Make Lighting Cheaper and Fully Recyclable
ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2010) - With the use of the new super material graphene, Swedish and American researchers have succeeded in producing a new type of lighting component. It is inexpensive to produce and can be fully recycled.
The invention, which paves the way for glowing wallpaper made entirely of plastic, for example, is published in the scientific journal ACS Nano by scientists at Linköping University and Umeå University, in Sweden, and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
Ultra-thin and electricity-saving organic light diodes, so-called OLEDs, have recently been introduced commercially in mobile phones, cameras, and super-thin TVs. An OLED consists of a light-generating layer of plastic placed between two electrodes, one of which must be transparent.
Today's OLEDs have two drawbacks -- they are relatively expensive to produce, and the transparent electrode consists of the metal alloy indium tin oxide. The latter presents a problem because indium is both rare and expensive and moreover is complicated to recycle. Now researchers at Linköping and Umeå universities, working with American colleagues, are presenting an alternative to OLEDs, an organic light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC). It is inexpensive to produce, and the transparent electrode is made of the carbon material graphene.
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Riding green wave, Philips says "let there be LED"
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - More than a century into its existence, Philips is once again betting heavily on semiconductors. This time the consumer electronics firm is looking to harness their potential as a source of light.
The producer of one in four of the world's lights, which sold its semiconductor business in 2006 after it was undercut by Asian rivals, has invested more than 4 billion euros ($5.47 billion) to ride the clean-tech wave and defend its world-leading position.
But this time, Philips is better prepared for competition.
The company is betting on a shift in the lighting market, away from inefficient incandescent light bulbs and toward light-emitting diodes or LEDs -- perhaps best known for their use in the flashing indicators found on most consumer devices.
"In terms of value around 2015, LED will be bigger than conventional light sources," said Philips executive Niels Haverkorn. In the fourth quarter of 2009, LED-based products made up more than 10 percent of Philips' lighting sales for the first time.
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Biofuels In Europe: Part 1
The US government is spending millions of dollars to build bio-energy plants. They'll turn everything from wood chips to algae into energy. But these facilities are years behind what they are already doing in Europe - especially in Germany. In the first part of our three-part series on biofuels in Europe, Sadie Babits takes us to one German plant that makes green energy on a massive scale:
We're in Eastern Germany where crews work on what looks like brew vats.
These monster tanks remind me of vats for brewing beer, except these vats will brew energy from fermenting rye, manure and bacteria.
"Basically, we're standing here in front of the biogas and bio fertilizer production area. The big fermenter is for the biogas production."
Oliver Lutke is our tour guide. He's really a chemical engineer for Verbio. The company is one of Germany's largest commercial producers of biofuels. Lutke's been involved in turning this ethanol facility into a plant that makes ethanol and biogas. That's methane.
"We convert everything into energy by using biological processes. This combination biogas and bioethanol production plant isn't existing in the world."
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Active Design Guidelines
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, architects and urban reformers helped to defeat infectious diseases, such as cholera and tuberculosis, by improving design of buildings, streets, neighborhoods, clean water systems and parks. In the 21st century, designers can again play a crucial role in combating the most rapidly growing public health epidemics of our time: obesity and its impact on related chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. Today, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are second only to tobacco use as the main causes of premature death in the United States. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.
The Active Design Guidelines provides architects and urban designers with a manual of strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating.
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HUD Secretary: Nation Must Debunk 'Drive to Qualify' Myth and Connect Housing to Jobs
Communities nationwide may inscribe various local meanings to "sustainability,'' said Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan at the 9th Annual New Partners Smart Growth Conference in Seattle, but their common question is how to ''meet the needs of today without compromising the futures of their children and grandchildren."
Outlining HUD efforts to ''tie the quality and location of housing to broader opportunities such as access to good jobs, quality schools, and safe streets,'' and to reverse frequent perception of the federal government as ''a barrier to smart growth rather than a partner in smart growth,'' Secretary Donovan said it's no coincidence the sudden 2008 recession often hit hardest the neighborhoods farther away from transportation, good schools and economic possibilities. ''For all the implications of 'sprawl' – from job loss and economic decline, to alarming obesity, asthma rates and segregation, to the loss of habitat and global warming, to our dangerous dependence on foreign oil – all of them are driven by one fundamental problem: The mismatch between where we live and where we work,'' he told a session moderated by a Smart Growth pioneer, former EPA Development, Community and Environment Division (DCED) head and now District of Columbia Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning.
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U.S. Wind Energy Industry Installed Nearly 10,000 MW in 2009
The U.S. wind industry installed nearly 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new wind turbines in 2009, increasing its generating capacity by 39%, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The industry group credited the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the record-breaking year, which topped 2008 by nearly 19%. AWEA's fourth quarter report, released on January 26, places wind power neck-and-neck with natural gas as the leading source of new electricity generation for the country. Together, the two account for about 80% of the new capacity added in the country last year. The new wind capacity is enough to serve more than 2.4 million homes.
With 4,041 MW completed, the fourth quarter was the strongest in the year but still lower than the fourth quarter of 2008. Overall, the 9,922 MW installed in 2009 brought the total wind power generating capacity in the United States to more than 35,000 MW.
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Battery-Less Radios Developed
ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2010) - At the International Solid State Circuit Conference, imec and Holst Centre report a 2.4GHz/915MHz wake-up receiver which consumes only 51µW power. This record low power achievement opens the door to battery-less or energy-harvesting based radios for a wide range of applications including long-range RFID and wireless sensor nodes for logistics, smart buildings, healthcare etc.
Today's battery-operated wireless communication systems consume a lot of power at times when the radio does not have to transmit or receive data. This means that most of their time Bluetooth or WLAN radios on mobile phones are taking energy from the battery without adding functionality. Imec and Holst Centre's wake-up receiver with ultra-low power consumption and fast response time can be put in parallel with the conventional radio to switch it on when data needs to received or transmitted.
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7 trends that will shape the future of green building
Concern for food, water, climate and infrastructure will put focus on sustainability.
Green building seems to be here to stay, but what lies on the road ahead?
With all the changes afoot today in both the real estate economy and local and federal government, many may be wondering how to position themselves for emerging sustainable development issues. I see the following key trends informing the road ahead for green building, impacting both the public and private sectors.
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Is BIM the Next Construction Standard?
Building information modeling (BIM) is increasingly becoming the design standard for architectural and construction engineering. Adopting BIM technology and tools is likely to be a future priority.
Despite its relatively recent development, reports show that Building Information Modeling (BIM), which involves digital models for use in construction and design, has crossed the threshold into broad adoption, making it an important consideration in maintaining engineering competitiveness.
According to a 2009 survey from Building Design+Construction magazine, 83 percent of the largest United States engineering, architecture and design firms have at least one in-house BIM seat license (which grants access to a BIM program), half have more than 30 seats and 23 percent have 100 or more BIM seats.
Although the BIM adoption rate has slowed due to a challenging economic climate, 51 percent of survey respondents have added or plan to add more BIM seat licenses, down from 63 percent of companies in 2008. The total number of seats purchased is also expected to decline by 56 percent since 2008.
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A Boom in 'Distributed' Solar Projects
As big solar power plants planned for the desert Southwest remain bogged down in environmental disputes, utilities increasingly are turning to so-called distributed solar rooftop arrays and small photovoltaic farms that can be built close to transmission lines.
Over the past few weeks, some 1,300 megawatts' worth of distributed solar deals and initiatives have been announced or approved. At peak output, that is the equivalent of a big nuclear power plant.
Two weeks ago in California, regulators authorized the utility Southern California Edison's program to install 500 megawatts of solar on commercial rooftops. A few days later, they recommended that Pacific Gas and Electric, the dominant utility in Northern California, be given the green light for its own 500-megawatt initiative that aims to install ground-mounted photovoltaic arrays near electrical substations and urban areas.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District said in January that it took only a week to sell out its 100-megawatt solar program, which offers developers the opportunity to build photovoltaic projects of up to five megawatts.
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More construction firms likely to perform stimulus-funded work in 2010 as funding expands beyond transportation programs
Analysis of Stimulus Data Shows Program Delivering More Construction Jobs than Initially Estimated, Helping Boost Transportation Spending, Contractors Group Notes
Stimulus funded infrastructure projects are saving and creating more direct construction jobs than initially estimated, according to a new analysis of federal data released today by the Associated General Contractors of America. The analysis also found that more contractors are likely to perform stimulus funded work this year as work starts on many of the non-transportation projects funded in the initial package.
"The stimulus is one of the very few bright spots the construction industry experienced last year and is one of the few hopes keeping it going in 2010," said Ken Simonson, the association's chief economist. "The stimulus is saving construction jobs, driving demand for new equipment and delivering better and more efficient infrastructure for our economy."
Simonson noted that new federal reports show the $20.6 billion dollars worth of stimulus highway projects initiated over the past twelve months have saved or created nearly 280,000 direct construction jobs. That amounts to 15,000 jobs per billion dollars invested, well above pre-stimulus estimates that every billion invested in infrastructure projects would create 9,700 direct construction jobs.
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What's Wrong With Us?
Gov. Ed Rendell likes to tell a story that goes back to his days as mayor of Philadelphia.
As he recalled, the city had a long cold snap with about a month and a half of below-freezing temperatures. Then, abruptly, the mercury rose into the 60s, he said, "and 58 of our water mains broke, causing all sorts of havoc."
The pipes were old. Some were ancient. "My water people told me that some had been laid in the 19th century," said Mr. Rendell, "and they were laid shallow, without much protection. So with any radical changes in temperature, they were susceptible to breaking. We had a real emergency on our hands."
Infrastructure, that least sexy of issues, is not just a significant interest of Ed Rendell's; it's more like a consuming passion. He can talk about it energetically and enthusiastically for hours and days at a time. He has tried to stop the hemorrhaging of Pennsylvania's infrastructure, and he travels the country explaining how crucially important it is for the United States to rebuild a national infrastructure landscape that has deteriorated so badly that it is threatening the nation's economic viability.
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