Gasoline and other petroleum products, when burned, release noxious gases into the air, increasing smog and global warming. Knowing the harmful effects of smog and global warming on the human population, as well as the biosphere, scientists are on the hunt for a cleaner source of energy.

One of the leading candidates today is biodiesel. Chemically speaking, biodiesel is a long chain ester. It can be made by combining alcohol and lipids. Animal fats, such as lard or butter, and vegetable oils, such as corn and olive oil, are used to produce biodiesel.

An obvious advantage of biodiesel immediately comes to mind: reuse of fats and oils. Restaurants and other confectioneries frequently use grease to deep fry their products. After three or four batches of fries or onion rings, the oil can no longer be used. On a busy night, a restaurant can through ten or more gallons of oil.

What do we do with this oil? Before the advent of biodiesel, this oil was thrown away as waste. However, this used oil is no longer regarded as waste. In fact, many businesses have sprung up, specializing in the collection of deep fry oil from restaurants.

These agencies may recycle the oil, so that it can be resold, or they may turn the oil over to a biodiesel manufacturer. A few months later, the same oil that was used to fry your chicken is fuelling the city bus that you are riding.

In addition to biodiesel’s ability to reuse what would otherwise be waste, biodiesel also releases less carbon dioxide. Each gallon of gasoline, when burned, releases 24.30 pounds of the greenhouse gas. Conventional diesel releases 26.55 pounds. Biodiesel, on the other hand, releases only 5.84 pounds, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by over 75%.

Interestingly enough, biodiesel may also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. From what materials is biodiesel made? Alcohol—and vegetable oil. The oil crops, be they soybeans or corn, constantly absorb carbon dioxide during their growth. Not only does biodiesel cut carbon dioxide emissions, it eliminates sulfur emissions completely. Furthermore, it also produces less carbon monoxide, an extremely toxic gas, and fewer smog-forming particles. Using biodiesel really does a lot for our air.

Furthermore, biodiesel generates much more energy than its manufacturing consumes. Gasoline, for instance, produces a net energy gain of 19.5 percent. That means if you used 100 kilowatt-hours to make some gasoline, that amount of gasoline would release 119.5 joules when burned.

Diesel’s energy gain figures are even lower: 15.7 percent. Biodiesel’s energy gain, however, took everyone by surprise: 220 percent! For every kilowatt-hour you put into making biofuel, you get 3.2 kilowatt-hours back.

Finally, did you know that biodiesel is good for your engine? Because biodiesel burns very cleanly, fewer particles of contaminants are left behind. This leads to reduced friction for the engine. Biodiesel’s smooth consistency also lends itself well to lubricating the engine.

Biodiesel presents obvious environmental advantages. It allows for reuse of waste materials. It reduces emissions of harmful gases. Finally, its energy generation capabilities are astronomical. Biodiesel may well become the fuel of the future.

When you look around the world at the rising cost of gasoline for vehicles, and consider a potential future oil crisis, you might be relieved that electric vehicles are finally starting to be developed. You might even be thinking, “It’s about time. What took them so long?”

But actually, it didn’t “take them long” at all. Electric vehicles are not, in fact, a new technology that is hurriedly being developed in the nick of time, in response to upcoming peak oil. These vehicles were developed well before the combustion engine rose to the fore; in the family of self-propelled carriages, the electric version is the older sibling, not the younger.

Records are a bit sketchy in many cases, but it’s well-known that the first electric carriage was invented somewhere in the 1830s. Yes, you heard right – as early as 1832 or thereabouts, the Scot, Robert Anderson, created what was very probably the first electric vehicle in the world. And he wasn’t the only one doing this in that decade. In 1835 in the Netherlands, a Professor Sibrandus Stratingh also designed an electric car, which his assistant, Christopher Becker then built.

Hot on the heels of these developments, another Scotsman, Robert Davidson, created a second electric vehicle, with the added advantage that this one used a (non-chargeable) electric cell as a power source. He shared the credit for that innovation with Thomas Davenport who did the same thing in the United States.

So you see that electric cars were well on their way, several decades before any serious development of oil-based vehicles. For most of the 19th century, when it came to self-propelling transportation, the main emphasis was on this type of car. In Britain and France especially, where the governments were on board, these vehicles became quite advanced for their time. It got to the point that speed and distance records were being kept, with the top recorded speed being 65 miles (or 105 kilometers) per hour. So these cars could go close to what people today would regard as highway speed, though undoubtedly they couldn’t run for as long a distance as today’s cars.

Electric vehicles seemed like the future of transportation throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, with even the United States catching up and taking serious notice by the end of the 19th century. In fact, it was the Americans who established the very first commercial setting for these cars, with the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company of Philadelphia building the first fleet of electric taxis for New York City.

So although combustion vehicles were now on the scene, at the turn of the century the electric cars seemed well on their way to a rosy future. They were cleaner and quieter than gasoline-powered vehicles and didn’t require hand-cranking to get them started. They also didn’t need the long warm-up period that steam-powered vehicles did.

Then the electric starter was invented for the combustion cars, and cheap oil was discovered in Texas. And the rest, as everyone knows, is history. The electric car was shoved aside for many decades. It still carries the distinction, though, of being the older sibling of gas-powered cars, rather than the reverse.

But surely, you think, there’s one development today that really is new – the electric-gasoline hybrid car. However, electric vehicles won the race in that department too.

Ferdinand Porsche designed what was probably the first hybrid car in history, sometime between 1897 and 1899, using a gasoline engine to turn a generator which in turn charged batteries that ran the wheels. Gas-electric vehicles were produced in Germany, the United States, France, and Belgium, through the first two decades of the 20th century. Even in Canada, the Galt Motor Company introduced a genuine hybrid in 1914.

So one might almost consider the combustion engine, powered by cheap oil, to be an aberration, or perhaps an experiment to see if an alternative to electric energy might work better for self-propelled vehicles. These days it’s like people have begun to think, “Well, that experiment didn’t do so well, did it?” and are now returning to the safer and cleaner – and original – method of powering vehicles.

Want to do your part to help save the environment? You can participate in the recycling program of your choice in your city or state. Here are some of the different items you can recycle, as well as ways to make your community efforts count.

If you have an old cell phone that you don’t use anymore, you can donate it to a recycling program in your area, so that some of the undamaged parts can be used to create new phones. In some cases, these phones are reprogrammed and given to the less fortunate. Cell phone recycling has even been used to help families with loved ones fighting in Iraq–the phones provided a more effective way for families to communicate with one another. For more information on how you can get involved with this type of recycling program, visit www.grcrecycling.com.

If you use ‘regular’ lightbulbs in your home, you can recycle these as well. The glass and wiring can be used to make new bulbs, and you may even want to switch to using florescent bulbs in your home. These bulbs are much brighter, and don’t use as much energy.

Batteries can also be recycled; if you have used the batteries to power an electronic device or toy, you can donate them at your local grocery store (in most cases) to be recycled. They can them be recharged and sold as ‘green batteries’, which helps the city to save money, and protects the environment from being exposed to excessive corrosive materials. You can find out which drop-off points are in your city by visiting www.batteryrecycling.com.

Even if you don’t have items like cell phones or batteries to recycle, you can still motivate your family or business to participate in the recycling program in your city or state. You can request recycle bins from your local sanitation department, and simply start separating your trash so that it can be filtered and used again. For instance, you can save the glass bottles that mineral water or some sodas are packaged in; the glass can be used to create another bottle, or for parts of a new appliance. If you drink soda or canned juices often, you can recycle the metal cans, or save the tops and take them to your local recycling center; some centers even offer a small monetary reward. Teaching your children to recycle at an early age will also help to make them more sensitive to the needs of the environment, and will teach them to conserve natural resources.

For more information on a recycling program near you, visit www.epa.gov.

If you’re drowning in the cost of your utility bills, then investing in a solar water heater may be the lifejacket that you’re looking for. These hot water systems can save you a bundle on heating water for your home because it uses sun energy as fuel. Unlike fossil fuels, sunshine is free, clean and there is an infinite supply. In this article, we’ll explain how these systems work and how it can save you money.

Sun powered water heating systems include storage tanks and solar collectors. There are two types of these heating systems: active, which have circulating pumps and controls, and passive heating systems, which don’t. Passive heating systems are typically less expensive than active systems, but they’re usually not as efficient. However, passive systems can be more reliable and may last longer. For active systems, discuss the maintenance requirements with your system provider and consult the system’s owner’s manual. Most water heaters that run on sun power, require a well-insulated storage tank. Solar storage tanks have an additional outlet and inlet connected to and from the collector. In two-tank systems, the solar heater preheats water before it enters the conventional water heater. In one-tank systems, the back-up heater is combined with the solar storage in one tank.

Solar water heating systems almost always require a backup system for cloudy days and times of increased demand. Conventional storage water heaters usually provide backup and may already be part of the solar heating package. A backup system may also be part of the solar collector, such as rooftop tanks with thermosyphon systems. Since an integral-collector storage system already stores hot water in addition to collecting solar heat, it may be packaged with a backup water heater.

Before you purchase and install a solar powered water heating system, you should consider the economics of solar energy systems, evaluate your site’s solar resource, determine the correct system size and energy efficiency and check into your local codes and regulations. The proper installation depends on your solar resources, climate, local building code requirements and safety issues. It’s best to have a qualified, solar thermal systems contractor install your system. Regular maintenance on simple systems can be as infrequent as every 3–5 years, preferably by a solar contractor. Systems with electrical components usually require a replacement part after 10 years.

Although solar water systems do have minor problems, the technology is quickly catching up. These systems are a smart investment for consumers because they pay for themselves in a relatively short period of time by reducing your utility bills. As a bonus, many governments and manufacturers offer rebates to people purchasing environmentally friendly household products. Buying a solar energy system is a win-win situation. You can save money on your utility bills, all the while being environmentally responsible.

Most regions depend on coal plants, nuclear plants or oil and natural gas plants for energy. However, the development of solar thermal energy is paving the way for cleaner energy from a renewable power source. In this article, we’ll explain why the solar power plant could change the way the world uses its resources.

Solar thermal energy is the heat that can be gathered from solar power without the use of photoelectric cells. It is a form of energy that can be transferred into water and stored in insulated containers and kept heated constantly by the sun, while retaining energy overnight. They are also used to heat water and homes. Some thermal energy is used to superheat water in massive solar power plants that use steam based turbines to generate electric power. This is very environmentally friendly because no emissions are produced.

The collection of solar thermal energy is usually done through a panel or a series of panels which pump water. These panels are commonly seen in a home’s hot water system and can cut consumption of energy used for heating water by more than half. Various collectors, such as solar hot water panels, are commonly used to generate solar hot water for domestic and light industrial purposes. Solar thermal energy is used in architecture and building design to control heating and ventilation in both active solar and passive solar designs.

There are a variety of cost efficient solar thermal systems available to homeowners, so you have to choose which best meets your needs. A closed loop solar thermal system supplements heat to your hot water tank. This system will cost about $4,600 US to install, but prices are steadily decreasing. Another popular closed loop system is called a drainback. The solar pool heater, which is an open loop system, is a very practical product. It’s called this because water circulates back into the pool since it’s an open system. A solar blanket, while not technically a solar thermal system, is an economical way to retain and increase the heat of your pool. Many governments are offering rebates to consumers who buy environmentally friendly products.

Foremost on the minds of consumers in the desire for cost efficient and environmentally friendly sources of energy. Solar thermal plants are providing an alternative to coal, oil and nuclear energy. Sun power is a free and renewable fuel for these systems. While the technology is costly right now, the expense is becoming more moderate as the technology advances and becomes mass produced. This is just one way to conserve the world’s energy resources.

Solar electric is the term used to describe something which uses sunlight to produce electricity. Solar power is one of the cleanest forms of renewable energy available and it can be used in several forms. In this article, we’ll shine a light on how the solar powered revolution is changing the way homes and business are run.

Solar electric systems are becoming more compact than when they were first created. Solar photovoltaic tiles and other forms of solar energy work by converting some of the energy in sunlight into a clean form of electricity. The PV cells consist of a positive and a negative slice of silicon placed under a thin piece of glass. As the protons of the sunlight beat down onto the PV cell, they knock the neutrons off the silicon. The negatively charged free neutrons are attracted to the silicon, but are trapped by the magnetic field that is formed from the opposing fields. Small wires on the silicon catch these neutrons and when connected in a circuit, an electric current is formed. The nature of the PV cell means there is little or no maintenance required and there are no moving parts. This means that a typical PV cell can last up to 40 years with no maintenance required besides an annual cleaning.

There are several ways to use solar electric power around the house. Solar retrofits are solar energy applications for an existing home. Solar electric power can be used to provide domestic hot water, swimming pool heating and electricity for lights and appliances. Even your central heating can be solar electric if you have adequate roof space for solar panels and an adequate amount of sun. An efficiently solar powered home will be able to reasonably create between 75% and 100% of their own power because of the grid tie system. This means your utility bills will be significantly reduced.

As technology develops, so does the number of solar electric products. Clocks, radios, torches, battery chargers and calculators are just some of the small solar energy appliances available on the market. The solar powered appliance market is steadily growing as the demand for environmentally friendly products increases. The impact of the solar industry can be huge, both economically and environmentally. For instance, by reducing the need for dry cell batteries, we reduce the lead that leaches into the ground from disposed batteries. That prevents our soil and drinking water from becoming contaminated.

Solar energy systems are one of the cleanest and most efficient ways to create power. By increasing the use of solar cells, we avoid depleting the planet’s resources. However, the technology won’t make a difference unless people choose to use it. By mass producing solar electric products, corporations can make these items more affordable to the consumer. Who wouldn’t want to save the planet inexpensively?

Samso, move over – hello Bornholm!

A few years ago, as a 10-year experiment aided by tax breaks and government incentives, the Danish island of Samso changed all of its energy sources until its carbon footprint not only shrank to zero, but went into the negative numbers. Eventually, through wind, solar, and even straw-burning methods, the island produced so much of its own energy in a green and sustainable way that it had an excess supply, and began exporting it to the grid on the mainland.

The one thing the Samso residents couldn’t seem to do, though, was find an economic way to operate vehicles that didn’t guzzle gas. So they added extra green elements to their energy production, to offset the footprint of that one emission problem they couldn’t seem to solve.

However, another Danish island, Bornholm, may be about to show Samso how it’s done. With Denmark set to build an extensive electric car battery charging and swapping infrastructure all along its major roadways, Bornholm will participate in that project but add an extra twist: using electric car batteries to store excess wind energy.

At the moment, the island gets 20% of its power from wind turbines, yet there are enough turbines there to provide as much as 40%. The main reason Bornholm isn’t using its turbines to capacity is simply a matter of storage: there’s nowhere to put the excess energy when the wind is really blowing. All the turbines can operate on a normal day when there’s nothing but breezes and short gusts. But build up to the wind speed of a big storm, and all that extra power has nowhere to go. So right when the wind turbines should be operating in all their glory, the island has to turn many of them off, to avoid blowing the whole system.

For quite some time, proponents of green energy have talked about the idea of using parked electric cars as storage facilities when excess energy is created that fills the grid system to capacity and threatens to overload it. With this system, known as “vehicle-to-grid” or V2G, the extra power could be siphoned into the car batteries, and when the wind dies down, could then be fed back into the grid as needed. Most of this power would not even be energy used to make the vehicles travel, but would be destined for the larger power system.

The process has never been tried before, but now Bornholm will be the pilot project, in the same way Samso was a decade ago. IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory has been developing software that will be used to control the system. It will operate much like other software that monitors and manages supply and demand for power grids, but with the extra factors involving the turbines and car batteries. If the V2G method works well, Bornholm may be able to add enough new turbines to its infrastructure to provide up to 50% of its total energy needs, rather than the current 20%.

By making Bornholm a microcosm of the mainland’s battery charging project, Denmark will not only be getting a good idea how well that infrastructure itself will work. It will also be testing ways to gather more power from wind turbines, and make more efficient use of all that energy just flying around out there.

People talk a lot about trying to find a solution to the global economy’s addiction to the automobile. But not many have come up with a viable alternative to gas-guzzling vehicles that won’t be just as destructive to the world economic system as global warming will be. This seems to be an either/or proposition, with each side of the equation promising something bordering on total collapse.

However, some people think there’s a way between the dual horns of this dilemma, and they’re putting their money where their theories are. A company called Better Place is one of these innovators.

Shia Agassi, the founder and CEO of Better Place, in response to the question, “How do you make the world a better place by 2020?” posed at the World Economic Forum in 2005, launched his company in 2007 as his answer. The goal of Agassi and the company, simply put, is to move the world from oil-based vehicles to zero-emission vehicles powered by electricity from renewable sources.

Not only does the company promote the production of electric vehicles (called EVs), but it recognizes that you still can’t drive them very far unless you’ve got something resembling the current filling stations that put gasoline in petroleum-based vehicles. So Better Place is working on creating not just the EVs, but the global infrastructure to support their operation and maintenance.

Better Place received considerable initial publicity in 2008 from its partnerships with the governments of Israel and Denmark. These were the first two countries to sign on to a plan to create EV battery charging and swapping stations along all major roadways. As more electric cars are produced and move onto the roads in those countries, the refueling stations will be there to keep them running. And to demonstrate that this type of system isn’t just for small countries, but will work in larger ones as well, Better Place has launched a project to develop a similar infrastructure for Australia.

To top that off, Agassi has told the Disruptive by Design conference in June of 2009 that China is now on the verge of giving the go-ahead to a similar project.

The Better Place website points out that this upcoming switch to EVs – which the company believes is inevitable all over the world – could in fact be the savior of the automobile industry, as demand increases. Already the Renault-Nissan Alliance has come on board, to be almost the first to introduce EVs in a major way. And many other auto manufacturers are looking into the plan.

But it isn’t just electric cars and infrastructure that preoccupy Better Place’s attention. The company is working on creating worldwide standardization of things like battery modules and plug connectors, as well as in-car software and smart navigation systems. Better Place is working with manufacturers to create advanced lithium-ion batteries that are environmentally safe, and which store more energy and generate twice the power per unit volume than current hybrid batteries. And it’s even helping to develop software and charging systems that will use electricity outside of peak periods, so the wider energy grid is never overloaded.

Better Place and its projects are growing by leaps and bounds. With so much innovation and so many companies and countries keen to be partners, it won’t be surprising if that goal – a gas-guzzler-free world – really is achieved by 2020.

Recycling a milk carton is easy. The item comprises entirely of paper. We do not need to separate plastic from paper, or glass from metal. However, recycling a car is more complicated. A car comprises of many intricately linked parts, and many materials: plastics, rubber, metals, and glass. How does car recycling work?

The first step of recycling, be it a water bottle or a car, is to collect the alike, and separate the unlike. For instance, frozen orange juice concentrate is sold in contains made of paper and metal. We separate the paper and metal, and place them into different boxes.

We must perform the same step with a car. Must workers meticulously disassemble the car by hand? The car recycling process, as it is currently implemented, is a combination of manual and automated labour.

A car is fairly big. Workers, with the aid of power tools, take the car apart, breaking it down into more manageable components. Then, the car is sent to a machine to be crushed. This is mostly to reduce volume, so more cars can be processed by the recycling centre.

Traditionally, car crushers have been big and clumsy. They took up lots of space, and could not be transported. However, most car crushers today are mobile, and can be transported from lot to lot. The machines’ mobility reduces the cost of rent, and thus the cost of car recycling.

The crushed car components are then sent to a shredder. The shredder whips around hammers and pieces of wire, at 175mph. The thrashing shreds the cars into fist-sized pieces of material. In one minute, about six cars can be shredded.

A shredder is a terrifyingly powerful machine. The hammers and wires receive so much damage, that the workers replace them everyday. The vibrations it produces are so powerful, that it could start an earthquake! For this reason, the shredder is placed on special, shock-absorbent material.

After this preliminary shredding, the fist-sized pieces of material may be fed to another shredder. This shredder will make the pieces even smaller. By making the pieces smaller, we decrease the probability that two different materials will be found together.

The shredded materials are dumped onto a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt carries the shreds below a powerful magnet, which attracts ferrous metals, such as iron. What about plastics, glass and non-ferrous metals? Currently, workers must sort out these materials by hand, rendering car recycling costly and time-consuming.

However, there are exciting new developments. In the parallel field of computer and electronics recycling, researchers have been scratching their heads at the same problem. Computers comprise of a plethora of different plastics and metals. How can we separate them?

Although the materials themselves may not be magnetic, we can place them in a magnetic environment. A thick ferromagnetic fluid is poured over the conveyor belt, underneath which lies an electromagnetic field. Non-ferrous shreds are poured over the ferrofluid. Plastics rise to the top. Metals such as gold fall to the bottom.

This exciting new technique is only in its developmental stages, but so far, it looks promising. In the future, car recycling will become even more automated, and even more efficient.

We all know that driving harms the environment. When petroleum is burned, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, causing global warming. In addition to carbon dioxide, driving releases other noxious gases, which cause breathing problems such as asthma in our children.

On the other hand, we recognize driving as a necessary evil. Public transportation is not well-established in many cities, and some distances are simply too long to bike. However, this does not mean that we should simply drive just any car.

Cars are not all the same. Some cars are more fuel-efficient than others. For instance, on a gallon of oil, an SUV can travel about 17 miles. In contrast, a fuel-efficient vehicle, such as the Honda Fit, can travel 27 miles. The figure is even higher for a hybrid: 50 miles.

In recent years, we have seen a trend toward more and more fuel-efficient cars. Nowadays, even SUVs and Hummers come in hybrid form. The Toyota Prius and Honda Insight, two amazing hybrids, are all the rage. Older models, with their shameful fuel-guzzling record, languish in garages.

So what do you do with an old car? Do you drive it to a dump? You’re simply contributing to our rising landfill. Do you sell it? Firstly, if you sell it, it will continue to be driven, and to pollute the environment. Secondly, who would want to buy a battered, five-year-old van? The meagre income will not be worth your time.

Why not recycle it? We throw empty milk cartons and plastic bottles into the recycling bin, without giving it a second thought. Recycling has become the obvious solution to used materials. Why not do the same for cars?

Can your recycle cars? Absolutely. Several environmental charities in Ontario accept used cars, and recycle its materials for new industrial use. Check out Car Heaven, a recycling program from the Clean Air Association. The Ontario Automotive Recyclers Association will also direct you to appropriate recycling services.

Recycling cars has several advantages. Firstly, and most evidently, it removes a fuel-guzzling vehicle from the road. Secondly, it forces you to buy a new, and hopefully more fuel-efficient vehicle. This purchase stimulates the ailing economy, and signals to car manufacturers that fuel-efficient vehicles are in demand. Finally, your new vehicle emits fewer noxious gases.

But the most fundamental aspect of recycling lies in the word itself. Recycle: to place something back into the cycle. When the car has been taken apart, its plastic, metal, glass and rubber become reusable again. Instead of mining for new iron, and destroying an ecosystem, companies can use the iron from your recycled car.

If you recycled your car, you become part of a major movement to better our health and our environment. You, personally, have reduced carbon emissions, starting us on a road to slow down global warming. You, personally, have improved our air quality, and have saved children and seniors from asthma and bronchitis.

However small your contribution may be, it is valued, and it is significant. After all, it takes many small steps to walk a mile.