Environmentally Friendly Cruise Ship Development
January 23, 2010 by Go Green Tips · Leave a Comment
Cruise lines have recently come under a great deal of pressure from governments to clean up their act and make cruising a more sustainable and environmentally friendly activity. A number of damming environmental reports that showed cruising to be one of the most eco unfriendly forms of transport helped many cruise companies to reassess their operations. Additionally, there is added incentive from the fact that carbon emissions above a certain level are soon to be heavily taxed, which of course no cruise company will like. Below are details of three great innovations in making cruise ships more eco-friendly.
Improved Ship Efficiency. The effect of ship design and construction on the environment was not top priority twenty years ago, but now ship builders are using clever materials and efficient designs. The materials are getting lighter so less energy is needed for propulsion, soft sails are often being included, and a company in Ireland have pioneered a biogas-powered engine, set to soon be used by Cunard Cruises. A very clever hydrodynamic hull that turns the energy from waves into propulsion energy is also the brain child of the same Irish company.
Hybrid Boats. A number of cars and trucks have been developed with hybrid fuel-battery engines now and have integrated very well with the more traditional vehicles. Now ship builders such as those making boats for Silversea Cruises are getting in on the action and making boats that couple the traditional diesel power with electrical power. When a ship comes into harbor it is connected to the shoreside power source and gets a quick charge up of its huge batteries
Cargo-Pooling. A great idea being trialled by Oceania Cruises is ‘cargo sharing’. When a cruise ship has spare room onboard, they effectively rent it out to companies wishing to transport cargo to the destination on the ships path. A few extra bucks are earned by the cruise companies who would have otherwise wasted space, the company who are shipping the cargo massively save on costs and less pollution is released into the environment. Everyone’s a winner.
Biomass Wood Along With Stove Pellets As Well As Heating
January 19, 2010 by Go Green Tips · Leave a Comment
Biomass is any form of organic matter which can be used as a energy source. There are therefore many different kinds of wood, including straw, grasses and energy crops. Energy crops are purpose grown forms of wood for the sole purpose of fuel construction. An additional large reserve of biomass material is the waste from food crop construction, for case wheat straw, corn stalks as well as cobs. Hemp is an additional wood material being used more as well as more for building materials. The residue left over is an excellent wood fuel as it share many of the combustion characteristics of wood. However, at present with far the well-liked form of wood energy is biomass. Visibly using biomass as a heating energy is nothing new. Yet upgrading biomass into pellet produced a much more efficient in addition to convenient fuel source for stoves / boilers.
Learn more about Biomass Wood
Wood energy can play a key role in dropping our reliance on foreign oil, plus also dropping carbon emissions. One of the reasons that our use of biomass can diminish the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, is because it is already component of the carbon cycle. Fossil fuels such as oil as well as gas as trapped carbon, and are not part of the current cycle. Wood during growth absorbs carbon dioxide, and during combustion the carbon released means there is the same amount of carbon present. In fact, after biomass biomass incineration, there is a percentage of residual ash. This ash can be used to improve the condition of soils, in addition to help more biomass grow. By means of placing wood ash in to the soil, this is trapping some of the carbon from the atmosphere into the ground. This therefore means that wood can be carbon negative form of fuel.
Read more about Pellet Mill Equipment
Biomass in its raw form, is not a practical energy source. Differences in fuel density along with moisture content are just a few examples between different wood resources. Therefore is is very hard to create burning systems which can use all these unlike fuels. With processing the raw materials into pellets give them similar characteristics in terms of energy density, size, shape plus moisture content. It is then much easier to design compact pellet burners to use a wide collection of wood in pellet fuel form. There are still differences in terms of how the pellets burn based the diverse biomass materials. For case in point wood process very little ash, where grass generates more. There are a mixture of dissimilar forms of heating systems and energy sources. The boiler market over the last 40 years has been heavily dominated by oil, gas as well as electric boilers. On the other hand there has been a steady mounting interest in wood biomass boilers since the beginning of the 21st century. There are log plus biomass chip wood boilers, on the other hand one of the faster rising plus most in style types of biomass boiler is the biomass pellet boiler. Biomass pellet boilers are a very low maintenance type of wood boiler. This means they are most wanted by many people who are used to the low maintenance of their oil, gas or electric boiler.
More information on Wood Pellet Heating
Pellet Range And Heating As Well As Gas Alternatives
January 6, 2010 by Go Green Tips · Leave a Comment
Pellet stove heating is seeing impressive growth in the 21st century. The growth of the pellet market is being driven by two factors. Firstly the increasing price of fossil energy energy such as oil along with gas. The prices of these fuels is driven by means of unstable supply and limited resources to meet mounting global demand. Fossil fuel prices are also set to rise due to increased taxation due to the carbon emissions created. The continued rise in fossil energy heating solutions will continue to produce pellet stove heating solutions more affordable in addition to appealing. Pellet Energy is also preferred to fossil fuels, are pellet fuels from biomass resources are a carbon neutral form of fuel. As biomass plus other biomass materials are already part of the current carbon cycle, their burning does not place any additional carbon into the atmosphere. Wood fuel pellets can even be carbon negative, by using the ash shaped as a soil conditioner.
Learn more about Wood Pellet Stoves
By way of far the most common type of fuel pellet used for house heating is the biomass pellet, or more specifically the premium biomass pellet. Premium biomass pellets create around 0.5% ash, along with are therefore the lowest maintenance pellet energy obtainable. However you will clearly have to pay for this convenience, as premium pellet fuels are the most expensive pellet fuels on the market. Other grades of wood pellets are obtainable, though as they generally contain small brush residue as well as bark, their ash percentage is usually more around 2%. No contaminated wood residues should be used for energy pellet use, as the contaminates during combustion could produce a health and environmental risk. If you purchase fuel pellets which generate a strange smell during burning, contact you local authority to have the pellets tested. Other wood materials such as switchgrass as well as straw can be used to make fuel pellets. In fact one of the most promising raw materials is hemp. Hemp energy pellets are very low ash, plus pose no increased corrosion risk or form clinker formations in the pellet stove.
Read more about Harmon Pellet Stoves
Not all pellet stove heating solutions are equal, far from it. There is a wide assortment of abilities in the pellet stove market from product to product. Yet these differences are not well known or understood. The core focus of these differences related to the stoves abilities to handle unlike types plus grades of energy pellets. The main differences in stove design which affect these issues is the design of the burn pot plus pellet feed system. These features when choosing a pellet stove heater are over looked, yet impact directly on the efficiency in addition to reliability of the pellet stove. Most pellet stoves are built around a drop down burn pot. Manufactures prefer this design, as it is the cheapest to produce, on the other hand has running issues by means of all but perfect pellet fuels.
More information on Pellet Stove Heating
