Hong Kong Museum : Energy From Wastewater

Hong Kong -- Many energy experts predict that hydrogen will replace fossil fuel as the main source of energy supply in the near future as it is an ideal fuel that produces only water upon combustion. To enable the public to learn more about this technology, the Hong Kong Science Museum launches a new exhibition entitled "Bio-hydrogen production from wastewater" at its Science News Corner through January 17, 2010. 

The exhibition, with information provided by Professor Herbert H P  Fang, Chair of Environmental Engineering of the Department of Civil Engineering at The University of Hong Kong, introduces the use of biological technology to produce hydrogen from wastewater.
 
Hydrogen is an ideal and environmentally friendly energy source. It has very high fuel value and produces only water upon combustion. Many economists and scientists believe that the economy of the 21st century will be powered by hydrogen, just as petroleum did in the 20th century and coal in the 19th century. 

Although petroleum had been used since the early 20th century for motor vehicles and airplanes, it took about 50 years for petroleum to overtake  coal as the main energy source for the world economy. Currently, using hydrogen is only at the embryonic stage. It is, however, believed that hydrogen will eventually replace petroleum as the main energy source for the world economy.

Hydrogen can be used directly as fuel for internal combustion engines. Hydrogen cars and buses are already in use in Europe and America. It can also be used for airplanes as demonstrated by the Russians in the 1960s. Furthermore, converting hydrogen into energy is a mature technology in which hydrogen reacts with oxygen producing electricity at an ambient temperature. 

The full scale application of hydrogen as fuel is presently hampered by the lack of technologies for its safe storage and an infrastructure for its convenient supply to users. Today, hydrogen is mostly produced by gasification of fossil fuel or by electrolysis of water.

Hydrogen can also be produced anaerobically by microorganisms under proper conditions. However, people can hardly detect hydrogen in the natural environment because the hydrogen produced is readily consumed by many hydrogen-consuming microorganisms which have developed the appetite. Researchers found that if engineers can control the anaerobic reactor condition to suppress the bioactivities of the hydrogen-consuming microorganisms, they should be able to harness hydrogen from wastewater.

Energy and environmental protection are two of the most significant issues for sustainable development today. Hydrogen-producing treatment technology is still in its infancy. Environmental microbiologists are looking for new microorganisms with substantially higher energy recovery efficiency. 

Meanwhile, many research teams are developing various hybrid two-stage processes — generating bio-hydrogen from wastewater at the first stage and using phototrophic bacteria for further hydrogen production or the well-established methanogenic process at the second stage. A lot of work remains to be done, which may take another 10 to 20 years, for bio-hydrogen production from wastewater to become a widely accepted treatment technology.

Source: http://www.lcsd.gov.hk

Fossil find gives hope for animal life in ‘lost cities’

The world’s oceans could be littered with thousands of undiscovered ‘lost cities’ housing communities of creatures that thrive in some of the Earth’s most extreme conditions, a new discovery suggests.

A team of French and UK scientists have unearthed fossilised remains of mussels, clams and snails from the sea floor over a kilometre away from their usual home - the 'black smoker' hydrothermal vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  

The find suggests that communities of larger invertebrates like mussels, clams and snails can survive away from the spreading ridge axis, at locations such as the famous 'Lost City'. These communities are of particular interest to scientists, because they would lead to a better understanding of how life first evolved on Earth, and potentially other planets.  

Dr Crispin Little from the University of Leeds, a palaeontologist and co-author of the study, said: "We've known since the 1970s that high temperature vents along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge can host amazing communities of weird and wonderful creatures which feed on bacteria that thrive in the extreme conditions.  

"But these diverse communities have not been observed at Lost City, which has been a bit of a mystery for scientists because there are plenty of these bacteria there for them to feed on."  

The Lost City hydrothermal vent field was discovered in 2000 by chance during a National Science Foundation expedition to the mid-Atlantic. The field, located 15km away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, is populated by around 30 large mineral chimneys, some up to 70m tall, which spew out highly alkaline methane and hydrogen-rich fluids.  

The vents in Lost City are very different to the black smokers that exist at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which form when superheated water from below Earth's crust comes through the ocean floor.  

At Lost City, exposed mantle rock reacts with the sea water to form calcium carbonate minerals that stack into tall cream-colour chimneys. The reaction - called serpentinization - also produces methane and hydrogen-rich gas, which is a good source of food for chemosynthetic bacteria.  

Unlike high-temperature vents, which only occur where there is volcanic activity or mid-ocean ridges, serpentinization can occur anywhere where the mantle is exposed to the sea. Therefore the researchers are hopeful that living vent communities could be found in many locations in the global oceans.  

"Our findings provide the first evidence that the serpentinization reaction, producing hydrogen and methane, which is probably quite common on the sea floor, can support dense communities of specialised animals in addition to the high-temperature hydrothermal vent sites related to spreading ridge axis or volcanic activity.  

"The other interesting thing is that sites like Lost City would have been more common in the early history of the Earth when more mantle was exposed. Therefore the communities of animals found at serpentinization sites could provide clues about how life itself could have first formed in a purely geochemical environment on this planet, and potentially others."  

The discovery confirms that specialized deep-sea animals can be very efficient at using various kind of chemical energy that is made available on the deep-seafloor, which is deprived of photosynthesis, according to Nadine Le Bris, a chemist specialised in the interactions of biota and fluids at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and holder of the UPMC-Fondation TOTAL Chair in 'Extreme environment, biodiversity and global change'; and Franck Lartaud, a geochemist specialised in biomineralisation, both from the Benthic Ecogeochemistry Laboratory, Oceanologic Observatory of Banyuls, from the Université Pierre and Marie Curie and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

"This unique discovery further expands the hydrogen-driven world, described by microbiologists at serpentinite-hosted high-temperature vents, to disperse and abundant communities of multicellular organisms," added Nadine Le Bris.  

The team made their discovery while studying the high-temperature Rainbow vent ecosystem, in a joint cruise with geology groups on board the R/V Atalante that involved dredging the ocean floor along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge as part of a geophysical survey.  

Within their dredge they unexpectedly found chunks of white carbonate mineral similar to the chimneys observed at Lost City. Their unique mineralogical composition was characterised by Dr. Franck Lartaud and Dr. Marc de Rafelis from UPMC.  

They were particularly surprised to discover that the carbonate lumps were full of large shells, which were analysed by Dr Little in the UK. The fossils were found to be snails and mussels of the same species normally found at high-temperature hydrothermal vents along the ridge, and clams more common at sedimented vent fields. The carbonates samples were dated at 100,000 years old.  

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 


Source: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/2089/fossil_find_gives_hope_for_animal_life_in_lost_cities

Push for 'Great Green Wall of Africa' to halt Sahara

 

African leaders are meeting in Chad to push the idea of planting a tree belt across Africa from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. 

The Great Green Wall project is backed by the African Union and is aimed at halting the advancing Sahara Desert. 
The belt would be 15km (nine miles) wide and 7,775km (4,831 miles) long. 

The initiative, conceived five years ago, has not started because of a lack of funding and some experts worry it would not be maintained properly. 

The BBC's Tidiane Sy in Senegal says the initiative has the full backing of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who is in Chad with 10 other heads of state to discuss desertification. 

His government has created the website dedicated to the Great Green Wall. But our reporter says many other leaders seem ready to forget the project. At the Copenhagen Climate Change summit last year, for instance, the Senegalese delegation made a presentation on the project. 

It is envisaged that the belt would go through 11 countries from east to west. The trees should be "drought-adapted species", preferably native to the areas planted, the Great Green Wall website says, listing 37 suitable species. The initiative says it hopes the trees will slow soil erosion; slow wind speeds and help rain water filter into the ground, to stop the desert from growing. 

It also says a richer soil content will help communities across the Sahel who depend on land for grazing and agriculture. Senegal says it has spent about $2m (£1.35m) on it and communities are being encouraged to plant trees. The BBC's former Chad correspondent Celeste Hicks says older people in N'Djamena - where the conference is being held - talk anecdotally about how the capital city has become a dustbowl over the last 20 years as the Sahara Desert has encroached southwards. 

The country has made efforts to plant a green belt of trees around the capital, and tens of thousands of young trees are being grown in nurseries on the outskirts of the city, she says. 

But so far little has been done to transplant these trees to the northern desert areas to become part of the Great Green Wall. 

Source: BBC

ICRC sounds alarm over water in Gaza

GAZA, March 22 (UPI) -- Water and sanitation problems in Gaza are compounded by the fact that building materials are restricted, the ICRC warned.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said that every day, hundreds of gallons of wastewater are dumped into local waterways that trickle through urban areas in Gaza.

Failing wastewater treatment networks in the region increase the risk of waterborne parasites that threaten the health of the local community.

The ICRC said Israeli restrictions on the import of construction materials were eased last year, though spare parts and raw materials are at a premium.

"It's a great challenge to carry out construction projects in the Gaza Strip, as building materials cannot be imported," said Marco Albertini, an ICRC engineer working in the area, in a statement.

The Red Cross called on governments and other interested parties to make sure those living in conflict zones like Gaza have access to clean water and basic sanitation.

"The water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza is in dire need of a comprehensive upgrade," added Albertini.

Source: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2011/03/22/ICRC-sounds-alarm-over-water-in-Gaza/UPI-23421300799849/

The Big Switch Off 2011 .. Don't Miss It .. Help your Plant

This Earth Hour 2011: 8.30pm, Saturday 26 March, celebrate your action for the planet with the people of world, and add more to your Earth Hour.

From its inception as a single-city initiative -- Sydney, Australia - in 2007, Earth Hour has grown into a global symbol of hope and movement for change. Earth Hour 2010 created history as the world's largest ever voluntary action with people, businesses and governments in 128 countries across every continent coming together to celebrate an unambiguous commitment to the one thing that unites us all -- the planet.

Sign up to earthhour.org, switch off your lights for Earth Hour 2011, and share the positive actions you will sustain for earth beyond the hour.

Save the EARTH humans

My own visit for science museum in London

It's was my second time to be in London. So I got a lot of plenty time for checking London museums with all various kind of museum majority but frankly speaking the Scientific museum is the one which attracted me. I made this video while I was checking the recycle stuff and production in green environment section of the museum. Check this video to see how an amazing software life cycle assessment for a T-shirt from it's cradle to grave process. This video was taken by friend Ramy Salemdeeb who joined me in my trip to London. Salemdeeb is doing his master in Environmental Management and Technology in Oxford Brooks University.

Then I took a lot of photos which related to the environment check them below:

Check the website of the Science Museum :

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/