Energy from Sin

The
Australian beer maker, Fosters, is installing a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-australia-beer-power,0,2942622.story?coll=chi-bizfront-hed">prototype
fuel cell.  Nothing remarkable about that, except
this fuel cell uses wastewater from the manufacture of beer.
 The carbohydrate-rich effluent is expected to generate 2
kilowatts and make the water cleaner in the process.



In tangentially-related news The BBC is reporting that hemp can be used
to produce eco-friendly concrete.  

Production
of concrete, that staple of modern building, alone accounts for up to
10% of man-made greenhouse gas, US scientists believe...



...Sustainable rotation crops like hemp are the cost-effective future
of building, according to Tom Woolley, a professor of architecture at
Queen's University Belfast.



One hectare of land can produce enough hemp stalk to build a house, he
told the BBC News website, and using about 12% of the UK's set-aside
land, you could grow enough hemp to build the 200,000 new houses the
country needs. Then you have the fibre and oil for other products...

A building material made from lime and hemp is similar to concrete, but
lighter,
less environmentally damaging and is inherently resistant to the
development of href="http://irc.cordis.lu/content_db/cddb.cfm?action=article&publication_id=2761&appId=3&is_article=1">toxic
mold.

Woolley
says the hemp-based product makes a high performance alternative to the
gypsum used in dry lining.



The hemp and lime solid composite can be used to make building blocks,
cast like concrete into solid walls or applied wet to the walls of
buildings.



It is both environmentally friendly and has the useful quality of
reducing the problem of the production of ‘toxic
mould’.

Now if only we could find something positive about the href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=191882">sins
of our politicians.