Sustainable energyBY THE IMMORTALS

Imagination at work Universiti Tenaga Nasional

Sustainable energy? Is it as what you think as….?

Sustainable energy at a wholesome point would refer to the usage and consumption of electricity and also the usage of proper clean, green energy in an efficient manner. The need for proper clean energy is rising high in todays modern world. Countries are in the race for producing top class energy efficient products and also battling themselves to be the best in reducing carbon footprint**. As part of the world citizen , we as participant of this years competition held by General Electric(GE) would like to pen down our visionary methods in creating a better environment consisting of clean green energy whilst embedding the cost efficiency in the long run. Our visionary points would involve major factors such as water efficiency, reduced carbon emission and sustainable development to name a few. With the implementation of all these said above points, we believe a better and cleaner city could be developed and all the benefits would be siding both parties especially mankind.

Introducing urban agriculture

Food consumption has been increasing from year to year , whereby the need for crops and agricultural products are also increasing. Farmers and distributors need to transport the items from rural areas to urban areas. This transportation contributes to a major increase in carbon emission and also fuel consumption. With current hike ups of world petrol prices , farmers and distributors tend to increase the price of their products as well. This effects the people living with a modest lifestyle.

Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. Urban agriculture can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, and horticulture. We believe that with the implementation of urban agriculture , we are able to reduce the needs of long distance transportation of this products. We would like to emphasize on the major point which would be carbon footprint and energy efficiency.

Statistically it was proven that when the locally grown food was initiated there a was a drop in volume of emission produced by the vehicles on the road .In a study by Marc Xuereb and Region of Waterloo Public Health, they estimated that switching to locally grown food could save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50,000 metric tons of CO2, or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.

Implementation of urban agriculture

There are many empty lots, which has turned out to be pure victims of the illegal dumping of hazardous materials and chemicals. This poor habit of the society has lead to many problems such as soil erosion and water pollution especially acid rain. To overcome this horrendous problem, the implementation of urban agriculture would the best fitted solution as there very little land left for agriculture to be cultivated in the urban area.

In a process known as “Phytoremediation,” plants and the associated microorganisms are selected for their chemical ability to degrade, absorb, convert to an inert form, and remove toxins from the soil. This solution would benefit in a few ways , including in the reduction of soil erosion and better cleaner air due to photosynthesis process. The society can use this opportunity to volunteer themselves in helping to maintain the well being of the plants used in this concept.

As this concept would literally reduce the needs of vehicles to transport the agriculture products , it would drastically reduce noise and air pollution. It is believed that , in todays modern world people have been suffering from excessive noise pollution effects. Noise from these vehicles would increase the overall noise pollution and with the significant drop it would help in a way.

Introducing hybrid ventilation

Ventilation is where proper air flow runs through a building whilst keeping the users cool and overcomes “sick building syndrome”. Proper ventilation would help in reducing the usage of commercial air conditioners at a high rate. Sick building syndrome refers to where the users in a building would literally suffer from suffocation or lack of oxygen due to improper ventilation. Poor ventilation would also allow contamination to stick around a closed area at a longer period of time, for instance when a person or user is feeling under the weather , he or she may contaminate the surrounding air and somehow effecting other users.

Proper ventilation would mean where air is allowed to enter and leave a system of a building without any distraction. Hybrid ventilation is the most effective way in saving energy whilst keeping the building environment properly ventilated. Its common to hear hybrid cars , but what about hybrid ventilation? Hybrid ventilation is the combination of natural and powered ventilators.

Implementation of hybrid ventilation

Powered ventilators could be started either manually by humans or thru automatic sensors when natural ventilation fails out. Natural ventilation is the typical ventilators include of windows, doors , roof vents, ridge vents and soffit vents.

When in certain conditions this natural ventilators fails to provide appropriate air flows, a powered ventilation is abruptly needed. An automatic sensor will detect the air changes per hour and if it is lower than the desired level, it will trigger the whole-house fan system. This brilliant and cheap system works as creating a lower vacuum effect in a house or building ,and sucks in cooler air from external environment thru windows and vents. There will be a few windows, or vents fitted near the fan, which opens automatically when needed to expel hot air out of the building. This fan is usually located at the central location of the building positioned at the highest point on the celling at the top most level. According to the US Department of Energy, replacing an air conditioner with a whole-house fan can lead to a potential 30% saving in cooling costs.

Introducing incineration

Singapore and Japan has incorporated this extremely efficient way of disposing waste materials with the usage of incinerators whereby the waste disposals are burned at a very high temperature and thus converting it into electrical energy which can be used to power electrical applicants. Incineration is considered a very smart way of converting waste disposals into clean energy. Very little cost is needed for a start up and also maintaining an incinerator. Every day it is estimated about 4.5 pounds of solid waste is thrown by an average person, and a staggering amount of 1.5 tons per year. With this huge amount of disposals higher amount of grounds are needed for dumping sites and higher costs are required to manage these wastes. To add up, such waste can also take up to years to properly decompose and when it is dumped into the ground it releases hazardous chemicals which not only harms the ecosystem but also the human population.

As mentioned above , incineration would require waste disposals which are totally unwanted by people, and instead of using the conventional method of disposing ,this incineration method would be best fitted for a better and cleaner environment.

Implementing incineration

Incineration as mentioned in the previous slide , tend to be one of the best solution to a greener environment. Incinerators can be built at land filling areas and especially waste dumping areas. Waste trucks just need to dump the waste collection into this incinerators and allow the burning process to do the rest. When the waste are introduced to high amount of heat it disintegrates and the energy released from this process is then stored . The energy produced by this process is usable as electric energy. The saved energy is converted to electrical energy via a converter specially designed to allow heat converted to electric current.

Homes and commercial factories can use this electrical energy to power their places. The basic necessity for this would be a land filled area and loads of garbage.in a way it’s a win-win situation and it would greatly benefit both parties. The environment would also be much better as in the land would not be polluted by the inert chemicals released from the waste materials. One time budget is only needed for the building of this incinerator.

Introducing smart lighting

As we all are aware of , the conventional lighting system being used at this very moment tend to require higher amount of electricity and the efficiency is not up to the par. Fluorescent bulbs and tubing produces higher amount of heat and when compared to light emitting diodes (LED), it is far way better to use the light emitting diodes (LED).Smart lighting would be the proper usage of lighting whereby all conventional lighting changed into these smart lights especially lights which takes up high amount of current.

The usage of LED would reduce the heat dissipation from any materials or objects using lights and concurrently reduces the energy consumption. Households and offices are the biggest users of lightings and it is the best place to start with. Apart from that , street lighting are the next biggest energy consuming system. Street lighting should be fitted with LED’s instead of the conventional bulbs, thus reducing the energy consumption and total heat produced. Alternative methods for smart lighting would also include the usage of heliostats and also solar based light tubes.

Implementing smart lighting

Light tubes are tubes or pipes that transport light to another location through reflection. The loss of light can be drastically reduced within this process. It is a very simple and clean process and it requires one energy source and a simple material for instance a plastic tube or a plastic water bottle. As we are about to implement this in a rather big scale, a properly designed tube with the aid of heliostat is to be deigned and produced.

Heliostats is a device which has photovoltaic cells which tracks the movement of the single light source. The reflecting material used are plain mirrors. These reflectors, reflect light to one source which is the light tubes. The major advantage of these heliostats are that it can be used day and night even without the presence of the sun light, as even with the light source from the moon would easily suffice to power up this device. With this advantage, during the day the usage of lights can be reduced in a strong manner as this device would easily provide sufficient lighting to the surrounding. During night, less lighting device are needed as the this light tubes are to able support the back up lighting for the surrounding.

The light tubes acts a efficient product as it uses the concept of total internal reflection whereby the loss of light is at a very minimal point. Light gets reflected into this device and it is dissipated to the surrounding uniformly.

In a nutshell

In simple words , we believe the above stated points are the best solutions which should be implemented in order to create a sustainable city. As stated above, the said solutions are best in two major components , first cost efficient and second would be easy implementation with immediate positive impact. Transportation may seem like one of the best moves in creating a sustainable city , but we believe with the high cost ,long duration and lack of immediate positive impact of developing an integrated transportation system may hinder us for now. Not forgetting the current buildings which are there, the building managements should regularly maintain their check up’s to ensure all fittings and devices are in working condition , so that in case there is a faulty device or a leak somewhere in the building it should be taken care off. Appliances in the building should also be replaced with Energy Star certified materials such as air conditioners and light bulbs. Its pretty obvious that with all of this brilliant solutions , a great amount of money can be saved. The money saved can be used in the usage of implementing proper transportation. This concept can be used as a recycle type of system whereby every time money is conserved it can be used in the funding of not only transportation but also for the wealth fair of the community.