BlueCool: An Eco-Friendly Way to Cool Big Trucks

Anyone who’s ever been at a truck stop even for a few minutes knows how polluting these monster vehicles are, even when the drivers are sleeping.  To keep their air conditioning running so their cabs stay cool, drivers keep their engines running at all times. That makes for an awful lot of exhaust fumes. So, a company called Webasto Products began working on a solution, which has been described as ‘high-tech ice’.

From CNN:

Webasto calls the system BlueCool. The heart of the system is a 300-pound black box that’s mounted on the truck’s frame rail. As the trucker drives, the system sends refrigerant through a matrix of graphite and a water/glycol mixture inside the box, creating blocks of ice.

When the truck is stopped, the driver turns on an air handler that circulates coolant around the ice and blows cold air from the unit into the bunk area of the cab. The fan and circulation pump use only 3.5 to 10 amps from the truck’s battery — which means there’s no danger of draining the battery, Webasto says.

“When it’s running it doesn’t have any emissions or use any fuel,” said Thomas. He said BlueCool can maintain a comfortable bunk temperature for up to ten hours.

The EPA has estimated that idling trucks consume nearly a gallon of fuel per hour, while emitting nitrogen oxides and particulates, which contribute to smog.  This problem incited Webasto to launch a campaign to raise awareness of the issue, called Make a Leap.  As part of the campaign, a trucker took a BlueCool-equipped truck on a summer-long publicity tour of truck stops across the nation.  Truckers are excited about the prospect of using less diesel, and the system would pay for itself within a year.

Link [CNN]

Beijing is Even Smoggy on Google Maps

There’s no hiding this kind of nasty funk in the air.  Beijing authorities might try to tell everyone it’s ‘mist’, but take a gander at the dirty lookin’ air hovering above the city on Google Maps.  Yuck.  How’d you like to breathe that in every day? Olympic athletes only have to deal with it during the games; Chinese citizens have to deal with it for life.

Link [Google Maps]

No More Eco-Guilt on July 4th- Chemists Developing Green Fireworks

This is spectacular news- scientists are developing green fireworks. I love a big night of fireworks as much as the next guy, but the fact that the smoke produced by the show was chock full of toxic chemicals and gases always bothered me. Conventional fireworks leave behind a cloud of lead, barium, chromium, chlorates, dioxins, CO2, nitrogen, sulphur oxides, as well as smoke and particular matter.

Inventors Spot has it:

Conventional fireworks draw their energy from the oxidation of carbon. Clean fireworks, on the other hand, would get energy from the high temperatures that occur with the formation of nitrogen-rich compounds. Some possible compounds could be tetrazoles and tetrazines, which are made of four nitrogen atoms and either one or two carbon atoms, respectively.

To produce different colors, chemists could use aminotetrazole salts with specific non-toxic metals. For example, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium and cesium result in red, orange, violet, purple, and pink flames, respectively.

Somewhat ironically, the most difficult color to produce with “green” fireworks is green. The researchers are looking into green-burning salts based on copper compounds.

Link [Inventor"s Spot]

Photo credit: Flickr user Michelle Jones UK

China’s Making the Thneeds That Everyone Needs: Cue Smogulous Smoke

Yuck. I thought Moscow looked bad, check out how polluted China is. The entire middle of this satellite photo is filled with thick smogulous smoke. It’s the Lorax on a grand scale.

Link [Econbrowser: China's air pollution] Via Treehugger