Water- - how to reduce the foot print:
Nalco’s Chief Technology Officer Dr. Manian Ramesh told attendees at the Water Footprint Summit USA in Miami the many ways companies can reduce their water use and shrink their environmental footprint..
“Water is a crucial component in numerous industrial production processes and in cooling and heating any large facility,” points out Dr. Ramesh. “For more than 80 years, Nalco has been helping customers optimize their water use. With increasing global water scarcity and increasing environmental restrictions, our ability to help those customers reduce water consumption, extend asset life, improve energy efficiency and cut waste helps them address the challenges of sustainable development.”
Dr. Ramesh’s presentation “Profitable Performance with a Smaller Environmental Footprint.” covered several key topics, including:
Measuring, analyzing and understanding your plant water costs
Creating a Base Line: Gathering operational data on water quality, flows and volume usage from water in to water out of your plant /li>
Benchmarking Your Water Usage: Plant to plant, plant to Corporate, Corporate to Industry
Designing the path forward and implementing improvement projects to secure sustainable gains
Nalco technologies bring a number of benefits to customers and the environment–cleaner water, less industrial use of fresh water, energy savings, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and reduction in air pollutants.
The Water Footprint Summit USA provides opportunities for representatives from a variety of industries to learn how to develop water use reduction strategies. Click on the attachment link below to view Dr. Ramesh’s presentation.
Attachment
"Skim over the existing hot political air". Innovation is the life blood of every nation. We encourage an idea exchange on any topics that is break through technology-simple or complex.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
ProActive Rants: Water footprint
ProActive Rants: Water footprint
The water footprint is critical to existence . Conservation ,better use ,new technology are all in the cards for next generation survival. We welcome your ideas on this SHT
The water footprint is critical to existence . Conservation ,better use ,new technology are all in the cards for next generation survival. We welcome your ideas on this SHT
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
china solar plant
China building solar plant for 30K homes
BEIJING (UPI) -- China will start construction as early as next month on an experimental solar thermal plant capable of powering at least 30,000 homes, officials say.
China Daily reported Thursday that Asia's first 1.5-megawatt solar thermal power station will be built in a Beijing suburb at a cost of $14.7 million and start operating next year.
Wang Zhifeng -- who is heading up the project and is the solar thermal power laboratory director for the Chinese Academy of Sciences -- said the plant would be designed and operated by 10 Chinese institutions and companies, including the academy, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Huadian Corp. and Himin Solar Group.
Wang projects the plant -- which will cover 32 acres and include 100 curved mirrors that track the sun and redirect the rays to a receiver atop a 328-foot tower -- will generate up to 2.7 million kwh of electricity per year, equivalent to eliminating 2,300 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants.
The receiver's concentrated solar thermal power will generate steam that will power a turbine used for electricity generation.
Solar thermal power plants are typically much larger than plants made of photovoltaic solar panels that use sunlight to produce electricity.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International
BEIJING (UPI) -- China will start construction as early as next month on an experimental solar thermal plant capable of powering at least 30,000 homes, officials say.
China Daily reported Thursday that Asia's first 1.5-megawatt solar thermal power station will be built in a Beijing suburb at a cost of $14.7 million and start operating next year.
Wang Zhifeng -- who is heading up the project and is the solar thermal power laboratory director for the Chinese Academy of Sciences -- said the plant would be designed and operated by 10 Chinese institutions and companies, including the academy, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Huadian Corp. and Himin Solar Group.
Wang projects the plant -- which will cover 32 acres and include 100 curved mirrors that track the sun and redirect the rays to a receiver atop a 328-foot tower -- will generate up to 2.7 million kwh of electricity per year, equivalent to eliminating 2,300 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants.
The receiver's concentrated solar thermal power will generate steam that will power a turbine used for electricity generation.
Solar thermal power plants are typically much larger than plants made of photovoltaic solar panels that use sunlight to produce electricity.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Dalton McGuinty’s “Green” Illusions on Jobs
An interesting and provocative point of view from the Frontier Centre. Alchemy did not work in the past because it had no scientific or factual basis to work.Are Dalton's green jobs more alchemy and wishful thinking ? Wiii this myth get busted -you decide. Based on experience, I agree with the following entitlement pitfall and consequence statement
" They use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the renewable energy sector; they lay damaging regulations on the traditional fossil fuel sector, and they issue mandates for the use of renewable energy that creates a false market in wind power at the expense of fossil fuel and nuclear power. Along the way, governments siphon off a chunk of the moneys they divert for administration, and they tend to create jobs that pay higher wages than those for a comparable activity in the private sector.
Invariably, at the end of the day, government efforts to create jobs cost the economy jobs on net, and add insult to injury by causing economic underperformance because they’ve diverted limited resources to inefficient uses".
In China ,when the government got out of the way-it magically became the second largest world economy in a very real and short leap forward. The invisible hand of the market, not artificial government hands ,create real jobs and real technology
SHT comment
In Brief:
One of the eternal fallacies of government (and the people who love government) is that governments can “create” jobs in the private sector.
They can’t, as the French politician Frederic Bastiat once noted, because they have to take money from productive areas of the economy and kill jobs there first, to “create” the “new” jobs.
For the record, calling something “green” doesn’t change this fundamental economic truth.
Everyone would love to end the recession, and enjoy clean, abundant, and affordable energy. But there are some hard realities that suggest Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s plan isn’t the smart way to do it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the eternal fallacies of government (and the people who love government) is that governments can “create” jobs in the private sector. A second fallacy is that somehow, calling something “green” suspends the fundamental laws of economics and really does offer you a free lunch and a utopian future of affordable, abundant clean energy.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty seems to fallen afoul of both these fallacies with his new “Green Energy Act.” The Act, which does not have a defined price-tag, would supposedly create 50,000 new jobs, putting people to work building windmills, solar power plants, and bio-fuel plants. The Green Energy Act, he claims, will lead Ontario out of its recession and into a glorious future of clean energy.
Now, everyone would love to end the recession, and enjoy clean, abundant, and affordable energy. But there are some hard realities that suggest Premier McGuinty’s plan isn’t the smart way to do it. Let’s review the reasons why governments cannot create jobs, and why labeling them “green” doesn’t change the basic dynamics.
Let’s start with the fallacy that governments can create jobs. This fallacy was exploded all the way back in 1845, by a French politician and political economist named Frédéric Bastiat. Bastiat pointed out that the only way governments can make jobs is by first breaking other jobs. Sometimes, they break other jobs by diverting taxpayer money away from the economic uses the taxpayer would have pursued if they got to keep their taxes. Other times, they break jobs by imposing regulations that kill off one industry in favor of another. In still other situations, they impose mandates, such as mandates to use recycled paper that create an artificial market for recycled paper, reducing jobs in fresh-paper production.
In the green energy case, they do all of the above: they use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the renewable energy sector; they lay damaging regulations on the traditional fossil fuel sector, and they issue mandates for the use of renewable energy that creates a false market in wind power at the expense of fossil fuel and nuclear power. Along the way, governments siphon off a chunk of the moneys they divert for administration, and they tend to create jobs that pay higher wages than those for a comparable activity in the private sector. Invariably, at the end of the day, government efforts to create jobs cost the economy jobs on net, and add insult to injury by causing economic underperformance because they’ve diverted limited resources to inefficient uses.
Now, let’s take the second fallacy, that somehow, there’s a free lunch if you call something “green.” The way that the green lobby does this is by inflating the expected value that society will get from engaging in a green activity that it otherwise wouldn’t get with a non-green alternative. In this case, the green aspect of the premier’s plan is that it would result in a reduction of greenhouse gases related to energy production. There’s only one problem: the amount of greenhouse gases that Canada could eliminate, even if the entire country simply shut down, is not sufficient to retard global warming in any significant way. Canada’s fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emissions account for about two per cent of world emissions. Ontario’s emissions are only seven-tenths of one percent of the world total. China, which is building a coal power plant every week, emits more than 10 times the greenhouse gases than all of Canada does, and shows no signs of slowing.
Ontario’s green energy program will offer virtually no climate change protection or delay in warming, and therefore no benefit to offset the costs of raising Canada’s energy prices, raising the cost of goods and services, and rending Canadian exports less competitive in world markets.
Mr. McGuinty, along with others such as U.S. President Obama who have internalized the twin fallacies of job creation and the free lunch need a reality check before they squander limited resources and worsen the economic prospects for North America. Energy is too important a policy field to be guided by such fallacious thinking. Developed countries are energy civilizations, first and foremost. Everything we make, do, and use requires multiple infusions of energy in creation and maintenance. Taking actions to raise the cost of energy using a fallacious job-creation approach and fallacious benefit claims will only exacerbate Ontario’s suffering in the ongoing world economic downturn.
" They use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the renewable energy sector; they lay damaging regulations on the traditional fossil fuel sector, and they issue mandates for the use of renewable energy that creates a false market in wind power at the expense of fossil fuel and nuclear power. Along the way, governments siphon off a chunk of the moneys they divert for administration, and they tend to create jobs that pay higher wages than those for a comparable activity in the private sector.
Invariably, at the end of the day, government efforts to create jobs cost the economy jobs on net, and add insult to injury by causing economic underperformance because they’ve diverted limited resources to inefficient uses".
In China ,when the government got out of the way-it magically became the second largest world economy in a very real and short leap forward. The invisible hand of the market, not artificial government hands ,create real jobs and real technology
SHT comment
In Brief:
One of the eternal fallacies of government (and the people who love government) is that governments can “create” jobs in the private sector.
They can’t, as the French politician Frederic Bastiat once noted, because they have to take money from productive areas of the economy and kill jobs there first, to “create” the “new” jobs.
For the record, calling something “green” doesn’t change this fundamental economic truth.
Everyone would love to end the recession, and enjoy clean, abundant, and affordable energy. But there are some hard realities that suggest Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s plan isn’t the smart way to do it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the eternal fallacies of government (and the people who love government) is that governments can “create” jobs in the private sector. A second fallacy is that somehow, calling something “green” suspends the fundamental laws of economics and really does offer you a free lunch and a utopian future of affordable, abundant clean energy.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty seems to fallen afoul of both these fallacies with his new “Green Energy Act.” The Act, which does not have a defined price-tag, would supposedly create 50,000 new jobs, putting people to work building windmills, solar power plants, and bio-fuel plants. The Green Energy Act, he claims, will lead Ontario out of its recession and into a glorious future of clean energy.
Now, everyone would love to end the recession, and enjoy clean, abundant, and affordable energy. But there are some hard realities that suggest Premier McGuinty’s plan isn’t the smart way to do it. Let’s review the reasons why governments cannot create jobs, and why labeling them “green” doesn’t change the basic dynamics.
Let’s start with the fallacy that governments can create jobs. This fallacy was exploded all the way back in 1845, by a French politician and political economist named Frédéric Bastiat. Bastiat pointed out that the only way governments can make jobs is by first breaking other jobs. Sometimes, they break other jobs by diverting taxpayer money away from the economic uses the taxpayer would have pursued if they got to keep their taxes. Other times, they break jobs by imposing regulations that kill off one industry in favor of another. In still other situations, they impose mandates, such as mandates to use recycled paper that create an artificial market for recycled paper, reducing jobs in fresh-paper production.
In the green energy case, they do all of the above: they use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the renewable energy sector; they lay damaging regulations on the traditional fossil fuel sector, and they issue mandates for the use of renewable energy that creates a false market in wind power at the expense of fossil fuel and nuclear power. Along the way, governments siphon off a chunk of the moneys they divert for administration, and they tend to create jobs that pay higher wages than those for a comparable activity in the private sector. Invariably, at the end of the day, government efforts to create jobs cost the economy jobs on net, and add insult to injury by causing economic underperformance because they’ve diverted limited resources to inefficient uses.
Now, let’s take the second fallacy, that somehow, there’s a free lunch if you call something “green.” The way that the green lobby does this is by inflating the expected value that society will get from engaging in a green activity that it otherwise wouldn’t get with a non-green alternative. In this case, the green aspect of the premier’s plan is that it would result in a reduction of greenhouse gases related to energy production. There’s only one problem: the amount of greenhouse gases that Canada could eliminate, even if the entire country simply shut down, is not sufficient to retard global warming in any significant way. Canada’s fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emissions account for about two per cent of world emissions. Ontario’s emissions are only seven-tenths of one percent of the world total. China, which is building a coal power plant every week, emits more than 10 times the greenhouse gases than all of Canada does, and shows no signs of slowing.
Ontario’s green energy program will offer virtually no climate change protection or delay in warming, and therefore no benefit to offset the costs of raising Canada’s energy prices, raising the cost of goods and services, and rending Canadian exports less competitive in world markets.
Mr. McGuinty, along with others such as U.S. President Obama who have internalized the twin fallacies of job creation and the free lunch need a reality check before they squander limited resources and worsen the economic prospects for North America. Energy is too important a policy field to be guided by such fallacious thinking. Developed countries are energy civilizations, first and foremost. Everything we make, do, and use requires multiple infusions of energy in creation and maintenance. Taking actions to raise the cost of energy using a fallacious job-creation approach and fallacious benefit claims will only exacerbate Ontario’s suffering in the ongoing world economic downturn.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Goals for Ethanol Production Are in Peril - NYTimes.com
Goals for Ethanol Production Are in Peril - NYTimes.com: "Barely a year after Congress enacted an energy law meant to foster a huge national enterprise capable of converting plants and agricultural wastes into automotive fuel, the goals lawmakers set for the ethanol industry are in serious jeopardy.
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Related
Green Inc.: Senator: Ailing Ethanol Industry Needs Help (February 12, 2009) As recently as last summer, plants that make ethanol from corn were sprouting across the Midwest. But now, with motorists driving less in the economic downturn, the industry is burdened with excess capacity, and plants are shutting down virtually every week.
In the meantime, plans are lagging for a new generation of factories that were supposed to produce ethanol from substances like wood chips and crop waste, overcoming the drawbacks of corn ethanol. That nascent branch of the industry concedes it has virtually no chance of meeting Congressional production mandates that kick in next year.
The decline in fortunes has been extreme for both kinds of ethanol since last summer, when $145-a-barrel oil appeared to shift fuel economics in their favor.
Only months ago, refiners in some regions were buying up as much corn ethanol as they could to blend with expensive gasoline, effectively keeping pump prices down slightly. Meanwhile, investors seemed willing to finance plants to produce next-generation biofuels.
But since the summer, oil and gasoline prices have plunged, while the price of corn, from which virtually all commercial ethanol in this country is made, has remained relatively high. Refiners are limiting their ethanol purchases to a level required to meet federal blending mandates — a level far below the industry’s capacity."
bad times ahead for the industry - opportunity to buy? SHT
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Green Inc.: Senator: Ailing Ethanol Industry Needs Help (February 12, 2009) As recently as last summer, plants that make ethanol from corn were sprouting across the Midwest. But now, with motorists driving less in the economic downturn, the industry is burdened with excess capacity, and plants are shutting down virtually every week.
In the meantime, plans are lagging for a new generation of factories that were supposed to produce ethanol from substances like wood chips and crop waste, overcoming the drawbacks of corn ethanol. That nascent branch of the industry concedes it has virtually no chance of meeting Congressional production mandates that kick in next year.
The decline in fortunes has been extreme for both kinds of ethanol since last summer, when $145-a-barrel oil appeared to shift fuel economics in their favor.
Only months ago, refiners in some regions were buying up as much corn ethanol as they could to blend with expensive gasoline, effectively keeping pump prices down slightly. Meanwhile, investors seemed willing to finance plants to produce next-generation biofuels.
But since the summer, oil and gasoline prices have plunged, while the price of corn, from which virtually all commercial ethanol in this country is made, has remained relatively high. Refiners are limiting their ethanol purchases to a level required to meet federal blending mandates — a level far below the industry’s capacity."
bad times ahead for the industry - opportunity to buy? SHT
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