Should you buy cans or bottles of beer?

Many readers of the Green Machine drink beer and are concerned about their carbon, land, and water footprints that result from their choice of packaging for their beers. There is great debate of whether to opt for aluminum cans over glass bottles. From a taste and quality perspective there is a bias towards glass bottles. I am no beer aficionado and my opinion on quality and taste can only be based on the fact that aluminum cans are coated and do not likely impart any taste to the beer. Also in a blind taste test if the subjects drink the beer out of a glass rather than the original container it has been shown that there is no statistical difference or preference between the two methods of packaging beer. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582616,00.html
http://www.triplepundit.com/2006/09/askpablo-bottles-and-cans-just-clap-your-hands/


Beer packaged in an aluminum can also has a longer shelf life as no oxygen can enter the beer. Caps on bottles do not completely seal out oxygen in the air from diffusing into the bottle and reacting with the beer. Also beer is sensitive to light and photoreactions occur in beer, therefore a can that completely blocks the beer from light is preferable even to amber glass bottles. For the purposes of our eco analysis I will assume that good beer in either method of packaging has no taste difference or price difference and that the consumer is basing their selection purely from a Green perspective.

The analysis of comparative carbon, water and land foot prints is dependant on the following primary parameters. The distance from the brewery to the point of sale, the distance of the brewery from the point of manufacture of the container, whether the container is manufactured from virgin or recycled material (the recycle rate for containers in that location), the distance of the container manufacturer from the recycling center or the glass or aluminum foundry, the source of energy used in the glass or aluminum foundry, and the volume of beer within the container. A local brewery in a major metropolitan area like San Francisco, that does not transport the beer very far for sale nor haul empty bottles very far from their point of manufacturer should continue from a green perspective to use glass bottles unless the recycle rate for aluminum cans is more than 75%. Below this threshold of recycling the mining of bauxite and the upgrading of bauxite to alumina and the final refining of aluminum from alumina simply is too energy, land, and water intensive to displace new glass bottles from an Eco footprint perspective. Remember that the simple act of recycling a single beer can saves the equivalent amount of electricty to run your television three hours.

For larger breweries that are less proximate to their markets, aluminum cans even with a recycle rate of only 50% are likely the more eco friendly option. If the aluminum smelter is in Iceland and the electricity for the smelter is generated by hydroelectric dams, then there is no doubt that an Icelandic brewery should use aluminum cans and not glass bottle. Also I am fairly certain that Iceland has a relatively high recycle rate on their beer cans.

The nutrition value (energy content) of a 12 ounce can of beer is approximately 150 Calories. This is only one half of the energy that was required to produce the can if the aluminum was made from virgin bauxite. If the can was made from recycled aluminum, then the energy content of the beer is about fourfold the energy content of the can. SAB Miller is selling some pretty anemic beer now with only 57 Calories, in this case the sickle cell beer has the same energy content as the can made of recycled aluminum. Drinkers of this type of beer with only 2.5% alcohol don’t really care about taste they only care to be true Green Machines and their selection of this brand is all about eco footprint. Here is an interesting link to the calories in various beer brands. The greater the alcohol content the greater the calories. This makes sense as alcohol has carbon bonds with hydrogen that yield energy when metabolized. http://www.beer100.com/beercalories.htm

I have used up my space for this week’s blog and I will therefore continue the discussion on beer in my next blog. As they say Skal for Cheers in Iceland. I bid you all Skal and I hope the beer you drink does not hurt your skull. Here is a link on from Denmark on how to say Cheers in many countries. http://www.awa.dk/glosary/slainte.htm

Please provide comments below. And please recycle all of your beverage containers, plastic, glass and aluminum

Did you know that glass is a liquid?

After last week’s article on jail cells and Bernie being cooped up in an eight by eight without any windows, we will learn about that amazing material we call glass. Glass got its name from the Lain word Glesum meaning transparent and lustrous. In describing glass one may say that it is a transparent material that is of solid nature. This description is actually inaccurate. Glass is not a solid but is rather a super-cooled liquid that has been cooled to a rigid condition without crystallizing. Think of glass as an extremely viscous liquid that will eventually pool up after thousands of years. Glass is to silly putty or molasses what a tortoise is to a hare.

Glass is versatile and is not only used for window panes. As I am an engineer and work in biopharma, I kind of think of glass as the material that test tubes and lab beakers are made from. Thanks to glass scientists have been able to discover millions of molecules including tissue plasminogen activator (TPA), a protein that is used in stroke treatment. Each day that I go to work and lead the team that manufactures TPA, I reflect in wonder that a team of scientists discovered this enzyme more than twenty years ago by their observations of reactions in glass beakers in a lab at Genentech.

Glass also has a major role in energy conservation. Homes and buildings are insulated with glass fiber. Owens Corning a leading manufacturer of glass fiber insulation, has registered the trademark “PINK” for its brand of insulation material. They have also licensed the “Pink Panther” image for their marketing campaigns. Glass fiber insulation has perhaps done more for energy conservation that any other material ever invented. A close second may be expanded polystyrene that is also used to insulate buildings. The physics of an insulator is that it is a material that is a poor conductor of heat. Glass fiber and expanded polystyrene incorporate void spaces that are filled with air and these void spaces in turn limit the speed at which heat is conducted through a material. The ultimate insulator is created when the void space is not filled with air but rather contains nothing and this is called a vacuum. We all have Thermos Bottles and these bottles have a vacuum in the annular space between the exterior and interior of the container. Before Thermos Bottles were manufactured from stainless steel they used to be manufactured from glass that was coated with a shiny metal. I was pretty clumsy as a kid and dropped a few thermos bottles only to have them shatter.

I know that many of my neighbors and friends think that the best use of glass is to fabricate the bottle in which wine or beer is placed. No doubt this is a good way to preserve the beverage and prevent oxidation. However glass bottles have a far greater carbon footprint in their manufacture, cleaning, and transportation than those cardboard cubes with a mylar plastic bladder inside that some less expensive wines are now being sold in. If Latin was not a dead language and was still being spoken the word for these containers would be Cavus, which means to cave. The cave I was thinking of was not the hollow in the mountain where the barrels are stored but the caving in of the bladder.

Will LEDs save us?

The Holiday Season is upon us and lights will glitter all over the land to celebrate the holidays. Christmas Trees and Hanukah Menorahs are symbols that have lights for decoration. The story of Hanukah is about the miracle of the lamp oil in the temple in Jerusalem lasting for eight days instead of the expected one day. This meant that the lamp increased its efficiency eight fold. Well we too have new lamp technology that is similarly more efficient than the old incandescent bulbs that adorned our Christmas Trees or our homes. This wonderful technology is that of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).

I believe I have written previously that LEDs use one tenth the energy of incandescent light bulbs and are long lived and can operate for as long as twelve years. Perhaps we are also witnessing a miracle now that we have replaced the old and inefficient strings of red, green, white or blue incandescent holiday lights. We also will not have to bother with searching which bulb has blown and needs replacement so that the whole string of lights shines once more. The Tiburon Fire Department can also rest easier as LED's do not burn hot and are not a fire hazard.

The National Christmas Tree in Washington DC as well as the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City are lit with LEDs. The tree at the Rockefeller center this year is a seventy two foot Norway Spruce. It will be decorated with 30,000 LED lights that are connected with just over five miles of wire. These lights will consume 1,297 kilowatt hours of electricity each night the tree is lit. Using LEDs saved 2,223 kilowatt hours each night compared with the old string of lights that were replaced. This amount of energy saved each night will power the average Tiburon home for two months. Additionally, the brightness (lumens) of the string of LED lights is also three times as bright as the replaced lights.

It would be interesting to find out if one of our spy satellites is capable of photographing this tree from outer space with the resolution of being able to see the individual lights. Sorry even the Green Machine does not have the answer to this as it is classified.What does one do with a seventy two foot Christmas Tree after the Holiday Season has passed and it is time to pay the bills? The folks at Rockefeller Center will have it recycled for use as smaller toys for the animals in the Brox Zoo as well as having part of it mulched for hiking trails in and around New York City.

Many people ask me if they should use a live tree or a plastic tree for their Christmas Tree at home. Over the whole lifecycle of a decade the plastic tree has a lower carbon footprint than buying a live tree each year. The largest contribution to the carbon footprint over the decade is from the gasoline used to drive the SUV or Station Wagon to and from the tree lot or the tree farm if you fell your own tree. Many folks also like to light their tree until February or March. In this case plastic trees have far lower danger of catching alight. Form a green point of view whether you choose plastic or living trees, please use LED lights to decorate the tree. Of course the colors of the lights must be varied as green lights will be camouflaged by the tree. Happy Green Holidays to all of you.

Can we use diamonds to sequester carbon?

Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Diamonds are also pure carbon. I hear old Alfalfa and the venture capitalists he joined in Silicon Valley are working on a technology to sequester carbon in diamonds. Only joking, the sum total of diamonds sold a year is only one hundred and sixty million carats. A carat is equal to one fifth of a gram, therefore the yearly sales of diamonds only equals thirty two million grams or about thirty five US tons. Fifteen cars emit approximately thirty five tons a year of carbon, so please don't rush out to the local jewellers and buy diamonds thinking you are helping reduce global warming by sequestering carbon. It is interesting that a rough uncut diamond is only worth $100 per carat or $500 per gram. This is less expensive than the new monoclonal antibodies that biotech drug companies have developed.

The GEMs I was thinking about are the street legal electric cars that were first introduced ten years ago. These cars can zip around at 25 MPH and have a range of thirty miles before they need recharging. GEM stands for Global Electric Motorcars. They are produced in a factory in Fargo North Dakota. I guess they chose this town as they thought Fargo would increase the range of the vehicle. GEM is now owned by Chrysler. A 2001 GEM E2 (2 seats) sells on ebay for around $4,500. This is equal to the original price that the vehicle sold for some eight years ago. Chrysler's other vehicles do not have similar resale value. Kelly Blue Books lists a 2001 Chrysler Sebring in excellent condition as having a private party value of $3,100. Anyone who bought a Sebring back in 2001 should rather have bought a real gem rather than a cubic chrysloneum.

I am a very happy vanpooler these days. I just received $300 worth of gas cards from 511 dot org. This money was given to me as I organized a vanpool from Manzanita to Genentech in South San Francisco where I work. We will receiver another $600 over the next six months from 511 dot org if we continue the vanpool. The gas cards are usable at ARCO stations. I filled up the behemoth van at the ARCO station near Goodmans on the Redwood Highway for the paltry price of $1.93 a gallon. I just hope we have learned our green lessons well and don't go back to wasting energy now that gas prices are less than half they were just four months ago.

While I was typing this episode of Green Machine we had a power outage. This is the third power outage to my home in less than a month. There was no storm or inclement weather that caused the outage. I believe it may be that PG and E now stands for Please Go-out and Eat. They may be trying to help the restaurants in this poor economy by cutting power every so often to the homes on the Tiburon Peninsular. I am lucky that Microsoft Word stores a back-up file of the document I was working on when the computer has a sudden shut-down., else I would have had to start this article again from scratch. Microsoft will introduce a new product in 2010 codenamed GEM. The codename GEM stands for Gates Enjoys Money

Does gallium stand a chance?

Thank Gallium It’s Wednesday

Today we thank the thirty first element of the periodic table for contributing to our green machine. Gallium is named after Gaul the Latin name for France. Actually France is a leader in high tech but is often remembered for poor quality autos and rude waiters. Gallium is playing a very important role in the greening of lighting. Gallium Arsenide is used in fabricating light emitting diodes (LEDs), a technology that will soon proliferate in lighting homes, offices, streets and the outdoors. LEDs are much more efficient in converting electricity into light than incandescent or even florescent bulbs. LEDs also are also long lived and can glow continuously for 100,000 hours before needing replacement.

We can also thank Gaul for the Smart Car that is beginning to be sold in the USA. Yes Mercedes owns the Smart Car brand, but the cars are manufactured in France. Hopefully the folks from Mercedes have better quality control systems than Renault. Who remembers the Le Car Renault 5 that tried in vain to compete with the Honda Civic in 1980? Well this time I believe the French may actually have a winner in the Smart Car if the quality is can be maintained. One thing about the French, they can make the “Smart Car” as well as the “Not So Smart Car”.

There is some good news on the energy front with gasoline prices dropping since reaching a peak in mid June here in Tiburon. I use mid grade even though Mercedes recommends premium for my 1999 C 280. Actually every car can run on a grade lower than that recommended by the manufacturer, except of course if you use regular there is no grade marketed as sub-regular. On June 19th I filled up at the gas station by the Cove with mid grade costing $4.79 a gallon, on August 23 the very same gasoline cost $4.15 a gallon some sixty four cents less. It must be that Ark readers are paying attention to the Green Machine and driving less. If this is true for you I tip my black beret to you and say merci.

Returning to the periodic table, Gallium is a metal that falls between Aluminum and Indium and is referred to as a “poor metal”. Prior to its use in LEDs, gallium was used to help fabricate fine mirrors, nuclear weapons, and solder. The term “poor metal” does not refer to its economic status but like the other metals such as lead in its column of the periodic table, Gallium is soft and therefore considered poor. There is some hope that Gallium can be alloyed with other elements for dental fillings, hydrogen storage, and even treating cancer and autoimmune diseases.

LEDs will save a significant amount of electricity and is in essence the solid state replacement of a vacuum tube in lighting applications. We can thank Gallium for this improvement in efficiency. I personally like the name Gallium for a race horse or even a high performance car. Just think of it someday we may have the Hyundai Gallium just like we have the Hyundai Tiburon. However, if Renault named a car the “Le Gallium” this would relegate Gallium back to its poor metal status forever.

Thank Gold

Green Thursday TGIT - Thank Gold it is Thursday
Today we will discuss nano gold and its potential to save the world. I wrote parts of this blog a year ago before many of you were subscribers to Thermo Thursday, but the topic remains interesting and pertinant.

Nano materials are being investigated for unique properties and gold is considered to be one of the most promising nano materials. Nano comes from nanometer or one billionth of a meter. Gold is not the same color when it is in nano form and it is not even a metal but rather a semiconductor in nano form http://www3.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/kielyworkingwithgold.asp Old Robin Williams who was Mork from Ork never realized how important his utterance on Nano Nano would become.

A very simple use of nano gold is as an oxidation catalyst to convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. Gas masks for fire fighters will be made with nano gold and the Taiwanese intend to market such gas masks soon.

Taiwan ITRI expects substantial patent income from nano-gold catalyst Claire Sung, Taipei; Esther Lam, DigiTimes.com [Tuesday 17 April 2007]

After successfully applying for patents for its self-develop nano-gold catalyst technologies in Taiwan and the US, the Taiwan government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) anticipates to generate hundreds of millions of US dollars in sales of commercial applications of the technology.

As gold can transform carbon monoxide (CO) to carbon dioxide (CO2) when it is in the form of nano-particles, the ITRI-developed nano-gold catalyst can be used in CO filtering applications such as gas masks. Jassy Wang, deputy general director at ITRI's material and chemical research laboratories, highlighted that the cost of ITRI's nano-gold catalyst is only one fifth of conventional materials.

ITRI has inked a 10-year licensing agreement with Taiwan-based Novax Material & Technology for nano-gold catalyst based device production and it expects patent income from the partnership could reach a minimum of NT$10 million. Novax said it will first use the material in gas mask production and anticipates that the derived business potential is worth about US$100 million.

Nano gold can be conjugated with a monoclonal antibody to deliver the nano gold to a specific target area of the body. Using near infrared light sources that will not do harm to the rest of the body these nano gold particles can be heated and the targeted cells can be thermally ablated. Altering the shape of the nano gold to cylindrical nanorods also improves the efficacy of the treatment. The Mayo Clinic reports that nano gold will be used in cancer treatment http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/mayo/research/dev_lab/nanogold.cfm

Work at UCSF and the Georgia Institute of technology has focused on shaping the nano gold more effectively for improved cancer imaging and treatment. http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=2039

http://nano.cancer.gov/news_center/nanotech_news_2006-03-27b.asp

Nano gold will also find use in treating Alzheimer’s disease http://www.physorg.com/news10099.html

I am glad to see the AWEA (Americans without electric appliances) has reported that the great state of Iowa leads the nation in the rate of adoption of wind power for electricity generation. I can attest to how windy the metropolis of Ames was, while I was mastering thermodynamics at one of the world’s leading chemical and nuclear engineering departments. Don’t laugh George Washington Carver is a fellow alumnus of the Iowa State University of Science and Technology.

Iowa Leads the Nation with 5.5% Wind Power, Says AWEA

Wind power provides 5.5% of the electricity generated in Iowa, making it the leading state for wind power generation on a percentage basis, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). AWEA's annual ranking of wind power leadership, released last week, continues to show Texas leading the states in terms of both total installed wind power capacity and the amount of new wind power capacity that was installed last year. In fact, the Sweetwater, Texas, wind plant more than doubled in capacity to 585 megawatts, pushing it from fifth to second place in the size rankings, while the state's Buffalo Gap wind facility expanded to 353 megawatts, placing it in fifth place for size. The recently completed 364-megawatt Capricorn Ridge wind facility, also in Texas, landed in fourth place, while last year's 401-megawatt Peetz Table Wind Energy Center in Colorado is the only non-Texas wind plant in the top five. See the AWEA press release and report (PDF 312 KB). Download Adobe Reader.

Given the subprime crisis and high oil prices I thought that we would end today’s blog with a quote of the day rather than the word of the day. My hero Albert Einstein preferred the study of thermo over accounting for the following reason “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts” This should have been the motto of the auditors and the management at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns as well as the Federal Reserve.

Thanks Graphite

Green Thursday - TGIT Thank Graphite It's Thursday

We are always blaming the sixth element Carbon for all of the world's woes. Today I will thank this basis of life element for it's contributions. We all know diamonds are a girl's best friend and diamond is pure carbon. Gabe, one of the first subscribers to my blog, knows just how expensive that glistening form of carbon is, as he prepares to ask his beloved's hand in marriage While I could opine at length on diamonds is is the other forms of carbon that do have a great possibility for our great green world.

Carbon might give us the world fastest microelectronic devices. A single atomic layer of carbon or Graphene as they call it may provide the world with super fast chips that perform well independent of the temperature they operate at. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=4L35OEZ4NNYU4QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=206905544

Graphite is also used as a lubricant and as part of a composite material made from carbon fibre that will be used on the very expensive and high performing Tesla electric car as a light weight super strong material. In these forms as graphite carbon actually saves energy by lowering friction as a lubricant or lowering the mass of the vehicle and therefore improving the energy efficiency of the vehicle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite

Some good news from the National Renewable Energy lab. They have developed a photovoltaic cell on flexible substrates that is 19.9% efficient. Here is the press release from the NREL

NREL Thin-Film Solar Cell Achieves Record Efficiency
The prospect for alternatives to crystalline silicon solar cells brightened considerably on Monday, when DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that it has created a thin-film solar cell with a record efficiency. NREL created the solar cell from thin films of semiconducting materials made from alloys of cadmium, indium, copper, and selenium, or CIGS. The cell achieved a record thin-film conversion efficiency of 19.9%, that is, the cell is able to convert 19.9% of the sunlight hitting it into electricity. Although solar cells have been built with much higher efficiencies using expensive processes a multiple layers of semiconductors, the more common crystalline silicon solar cells have achieved at most efficiencies of 20.3%, which is quite close to the NREL achievement with the thin-film CIGS solar cell. CIGS solar cells involve applying a thin film of semiconductor material to an inexpensive substrate such as glass, plastic, flexible foil, or stainless steel. See the NREL press release.

The news is always filled with doom and gloom and the British based El BBCera (the most anti US news organizations in the western world) has reported that in Britain they had this day called E Day or energy day in order to attempt electricity savings by the public at large. Sadly no electricity at all was saved despite the publicity. They claim the day was colder than normal and this might have caused an increase in electricity usage. Just goes to show 60 million Britons cannot change a light bulb. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7270218.stm

The word of the day is acrid or bitter tasting or smelling. It's root is from the latin word acer for sharp. The feeble attempt in the UK on E Day proves that they are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

acrid \AK-rid\, adjective:1. Sharp and harsh, or bitter to the taste or smell; pungent.
2. Caustic in language or tone; bitter.
There was burning jet fuel everywhere. Acrid, black smoke billowed across the water.-- Simon Worrall, "The Night the Sea Burnt", Independent, July 6, 1997
He rips off another match, lights it, and uses it to light another cigarette. He shakes out the match, takes a puff, letting the acrid, unfiltered taste burn the back of his throat. Kris Rusch, Hitler's Angel
The goal of sequencing the human gene set has been the subject of acrid debate among biologists.
Philip J. Hilts, "Head of Gene Map Threatens to Quit", New York Times, April 9, 1992
Paz's outspoken criticism of Cuba's brand of socialism placed him increasingly at odds with his colleagues. It led to a prolonged, sometimes acrid feud between him and the more left-leaning Fuentes.--
"Octavio Paz Mexico's Literary Giant, Dead at 84", New York Times, April 21, 1998
Acrid comes from Latin acer, "sharp."

Thank Gadolinium

Green Thursday TGIT Thank Gadolinium It's ThursdayBet you folks think I made up the word Gadolinium. I did not! it is one of the elements in the periodic table. It's symbol is Gd and it has atomic number 64. Kind of like client number 9 it is a powerful element but going away. It is a rare earth and its big use was in phosphors for tube TVs. This use will go by the way of the buggy whip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GadoliniumUnfortunately this week I cannot chat for too long as my wife had a full knee replacement surgery. This is a revision to the first full knee replacement as the kind surgeon named Dr. Woolf botched the first one. He thought he was Gadolinium but he was nowhere close and my poor wife is paying the price for his mistakes.Enough about knees let's talk energy and about our friend the lightest metal in the periodic table. before you non chemical type shout aluminum, the lightest metal is Lithium. The Economist had a very useful and complete article on lithium batteries and there hope for improving vehicle efficiency by hybrid drive systems. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789409This article is well worth reading and provides additional information on the research being done to make Lithium Ion batteries nor ignite.Oil prices exceeded $110 a barrel this week and premium gasoline is almost $4 a gallon here in Northern California. The subprime crisis will have all the yuppies driving subcompacts and this is good for the country.Sam Bodman our Energy Secretary has to be the dumbest chemical engineering graduate as he is still on the celulosic ethanol band wagon. At least the Romans had fuel while Nero played his fiddle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeroActually the fiddle was only invented 1,000 years later than the fire in Rome so he was not playing his fiddle he was fiddling the books or something like that. The word of the day is rodomontade a synonym for pomposity and pomposity did not come from Pompeii the other Italian city that suffered a disaster. The governor of the great empire state was a master of rodomontade and the mover of mountains until he hit unlucky number nine.
rodomontade \rod-uh-muhn-TADE; roh-duh-; -TAHD\, noun:Vain boasting; empty bluster; pretentious, bragging speech; rant.
These are rejoinders born out of a need to deflate a balloon filled with what others view as pomposity or rodomontade.-- Corey Mesler, "Dispatch #1: Buying the Bookstore (The Early Days)", ForeWord, August 2000
The very absurdity of some of his later claims (inventors of jazz, originators of swing) . . . has made him an easy target in a way far beyond anything generated by that other (and in some ways quite similar) master of rodomontade, Jelly Roll Morton.-- Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords
. . .the me-me-me rodomontade of macho rap.-- Nicholas Barber, "In the very bleak midwinter", Independent, January 7, 1996
But what he said -- that if any official came to his house to requisition his pistol, he'd better shoot straight -- was more rodomontade than a call to arms or hatred.-- William F. Buckley Jr., "What does Clinton have in mind?", National Review, May 29, 1995
Rodomontade comes from Italian rodomontada, from Rodomonte, a great yet boastful warrior king in Italian epics of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At root the name means "roller-away of mountains," from the Italian dialect rodare, "to roll away" (from Latin rota, "wheel") + Italian monte, "mountain" (from Latin mons).

Germanium

Green Thermo Thursday TGIT – Thank Germanium It’s Thursday

Today I hard time choosing which G word we would thank. It was a toss up between Gallium and Germanium. These two elements represent the two rivalries on the European Continent – Germany and France. Both were equally deserving of today’s top billing so I simply had to ask my carpool which to highlight and given the Teutonic nature of the carpool the French were once again defeated. What do European powers have to do with green energy and thermo? Actually news from Belgium will shine the light on this. IMEC a Belgium based research organization has developed a photovoltaic PV cell that is 24.7% efficient in converting solar radiation into electricity. The cell is based on Gallium Arsinide circuitry on a Germanium substrate. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=I2ELSSWHW0RQCQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=206801636

The founders of the European Union are very happy as this proves that Germany and France can for once get along and have some positive synergy. Wikipedia give some interesting information on Germanium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium The folks from Gaul should note that germanium can spontaneously extend whiskers that migrate into neighboring areas, kind of like the wehrmacht http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht . It is kind of interesting that the Latin root for Gallium and France has something to do with roosters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium of course it was not until American English developed some 2,000 years later that the French were once again associated with poultry.

The problem with germanium and gallium is that these are not abundant elements like silicon. While they may make more efficient PV cells it will be hard to compete on price with silicon based PV cells that can be fabricated from this much more abundant element. Silicon PV cells are typically 15% efficient so they too are much better at converting sunlight into energy than photosynthesis that is 0.1% efficient.

Last week I opined on liposuction. Well youtube has a video of a very fat cat from Australia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNnWky3Gu6g There are many ways to skin a cat but could this cat be the answer to the global energy problem?

Talking about fat cats Sir Richard Branson has entered the renewable fuel effort by having his test pilots fly a 747 jumbo jet from London to Amsterdam partial on bio-fuel made from coconut oil. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080224/britain_biofuel_flight.html This was a publicity stunt and will actually do more to the world than good. Wiki tells us that a 747 jumbo jet weighs 395,000 pounds empty http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_boeing_747_weigh and it uses about 20,000 pounds of fuel an hour. The approximately 250 mile flight from London to Amsterdam takes about 45 minutes and some 15,000 pounds of fuel were gobbled up for this publicity stunt. Sir Richard would have done a lot better if gave the coconuts to a local zoo so that the apes could have had some fun trying to crack their shells.

There is some good thermodynamic news on using a biomass for something useful. Beet juice can be used to help roads from freezing in the winter. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331739,00.html We all learned about solutes causing freezing point depression of water. This is great news for motorists and the department of transport as beet juice will not corrode metals like salt. I would have called this product beetheat but it was named geomelt instead.

The word of the day is fallible meaning prone to make mistakes. Sir Richard had proved he is also fallible as his Extra Virgin Coconut Oil relies on fallible experimentation.

Word of the Day
Thursday February 28, 2008

Today's Word | Yesterday's Word | Previous Words | Subscribe for Free | Help

fallible \FAL-uh-bul\, adjective:
1. Liable to make a mistake.
2. Liable to be inaccurate or erroneous.

But human beings are fallible. We know we all make mistakes.
-- Robert S. McNamara, "et al.", Argument Without End

Jack Kerouac was neither a demon nor a saint but a fallible, notably gentle, deeply conflicted and finally self-destructive person whose dream from childhood was to be a writer.
-- Morris Dickstein, "Beyond Beat", New York Times, August 9, 1998

On the other hand, mathematics does not rely on evidence from fallible experimentation, but it is built on infallible logic.
-- Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma

Fallible derives from Medieval Latin fallibilis, from Latin fallere, "to deceive." It is related to fail, false (from falsum, the past participle of fallere), fallacy ("a false notion"), fault (from Old French falte, from fallere), and faucet (from Old Provençal falsar, "to falsify, to create a fault in, to bore through," from fallere).

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for fallible