SprintBio energy efficiency - Distibutors of environmentally friendly boilers, burners and heat pumps

An article in The Scotland on Sunday about burning wood for heat. Instead of using fossil fuels such as oil, wood is sustainable  and is considered carbon-neutral – it gives off CO2 when burned, but no more than it has already absorbed during its lifetime.  The article looks at high efficient wood fuel stoves and boilers.

read the article on Eco Living

In Stockholm, Sweden, a new eco-friendly office building is to be built harnessing human body heat from commuters of a neighboring railway station generated by about 250,000 people who use the Stockholm Central Station.

Designers will use standard heat exchangers in the ventilation system to convert excess heat generated by commuters to hot water and then pump it to the nearby Kungsbrohuset office block. It is hoped that this source will meet 5-15% of the building’s requirements.
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A three-bedroom home with a basement and hardwood floors soon will be on the market for those looking to move to a quiet subdivision in Jackson Township. What makes this $296,000 house unique is not merely that it was built using energy-efficient and environment friendly techniques.

Rather, it’s that a group of Chesterton High School students built it from scratch, starting with the blueprint.

“It’s a full year … (the students) are responsible for a lot of things,” said Jeff Larson, instructor of the school’s vocational building-trades class.

On Wednesday, about a dozen vocational building-trades students were busy at the site in High Meadows West, making final touches like installing toilets, tiles and sinks.

A school bus takes the students to the house,which has more than 2,000 square feet of living space.

“It beats being in the classroom,” said Jeff Wilkinson, 18, of Chesterton.

The class received a loan from the Kankakee Valley REMC utility, which has a partnership with the Duneland school district.

After the house, which is in REMC’s service area, is sold, the money is paid back to the utility for the amount it loaned.

Anything above the loan amount goes to the school, said Amanda Leek, spokeswoman for the utility.

The idea began with REMC’s power supplier Touchstone Energy with the purpose of educating the next generation of builders, Leek said.

The construction took two years with textbook schoolwork in the classroom.

“I think people looking for homes don’t often understand what the overall concept of energy efficiency is, that it incorporates a lot of things,” Larson said.

From using recycled materials for insulation to fluorescent lighting throughout the house, the students learned about the variety of environment-friendly options.

They also installed an air source heat pump that uses electricity, not natural gas, and meticulously sealed and caulked to ward off outdoor drafts.

“It gives you a better understanding of what goes into building (a home), said Brian Katzmarek, 18, of Chesterton.

“It helps you learn how to fix things around your own home,” said Rashad Williams, 18, of Valparaiso.

Most of the students began the project last year after they designed a blueprint of the home, considering factors such as what an average family would move into and the marketability.

Before getting their hands dirty, students review safety issues and plan out the project just as if they were professional builders.

They survey areas, select a site and figure out what has to be done not to disturb the environment.

They also talk to subcontractors to learn about the processes the professionals go through.

The students say they are likely to seek a career in building construction.

“We’re just thankful that they actually give us classes like this,” said Chad Passarelli, 18, of Porter.

A major boost in the effectiveness of a material that transforms waste heat into electricity could significantly boost energy efficiency in anything from air conditioners to car engines. It is the first major improvement in such “thermoelectric” materials in 50 years, say researchers.

Thermoelectric materials can also work in reverse to convert electricity into differences in temperature, allowing cooling without pipes, pumps or coolants.

Since the 1950s, engineers have used a semiconductor alloy called bismuth antimony telluride in niche applications, such as solid state cooling for precision medical equipment. But although it is the best material around for the job, the alloy is far from efficient. The new efficiency boost could see thermoelectric materials used in many more areas.

Rip it up and start again

The dramatic 40% boost is relatively simple to achieve. Grinding bismuth antimony telluride into fine particles and then pressing it back together again using heat transforms its thermoelectric properties, according to researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston College, both Boston, US.

Sticking the nanoscale particles back together increased the alloy’s peak figure of merit, a term used to measure metals’ relative thermodynamic performance, by 40% from 1.0 to 1.4.

The researchers say the jump happens because the reincarnated alloy has a finer-grained crystalline structure. The new structure offers greater resistance to the quantum vibrations called phonons that transport heat within solids, making it a better thermal insulator.

This is crucial because thermoelectric materials work by maintaining differences in temperature while letting electricity flow freely. If less of the incoming heat can escape through heat conduction, more will be used to drive electrons, and the material will be more efficient.

Heat hurdles

For phonons carrying heat, having more crystal grains to cross “is like the difference between running the 100-metre dash and running the same distance with hurdles every 10 metres,” says study author Zhifeng Ren.

Prior, unsuccessful, attempts to shrink the crystal structure of thermoelectric alloys tried to build the new materials from scratch, layer by layer, in an expensive method called thin-film deposition.

“That’s more like artists making fine art,” Ren says. “Our [process] is like a copy machine, making much larger quantities much faster.”