Geothermal Air-Conditioner

A local initiative by an Estonian inventor, Heiki Jüris, invented the Geothermal Air-Conditioner. This device is in use and working. Dr. V. Viljasoo of Estonian University of Life Sciences is collaborating with Mr. Jüris on the testing of the device.

The principle is simple. Two "boxes" are built under, or in extension of the foundation of the house and connected with several sloped tubes. The device is then covered with earth, or built upon. In principle the circulation of the air through a heat pump (much like normal ground heating using a liquid to absorb the heat) the air in this device obtain the ground temperature (around 7 degrees), and returning to normal atmospheric electrostatic air and humidity before pumping it back into the house.

The Geothermal Air-Conditioner seems to be a cheap way to create a healthy air conditioning and heat for the house. It potentially takes up a less space than normal ground heating (if placed under the house), and the space can still be used for storage to some extent. The backside is that is best to include in the initial building phase (though it can be added later as well) and that it is still in (final) experimental phase. The device requires a little manual cleaning every year.

Now, this is not all advertising. The reason for entering this into my blog is that Mr. Jüris seems to be fitting my archetype of a local "alchemist". From what I am told he is a pleasant and modest person who does not do much advertise himself and his invention. He is not a scientist per se I understand (but collaborate with local ones). The principle of the device is simple, clever and cheap (mainly if put into building of a house foundation). Mr. Jüris is one of many brilliant inventors with better solutions to status quo, but chance is that his invention will suffer the same fate as most other of our solutions: little or no impact. The reason? Well, if you read about the conference in the last blog entry you might find one answer. If the focus of government, and thus the scientists (funding is needed by the governments), is on heating with biofules or wood/plant materials ("renewable energy source") then that is what people will use in the future. If the perspective is small in the leadership, and the small man (Mr. Jüris) is not raising massive public awareness on his own, I would sadly predict his invention to become a another future note in the patent office.

Interview with inventor (Estonian)

Power Point presentation of the Geothermal Air-Conditioner

Renewable Energy Sources Conference

The 15th November Estonian University of Life Sciences held their 9th coference on "Investigation and Usage of Renewable Energy Sources" in Tartu. I attended as part of the university, but mostly out of curiosity.

The conference had leading researchers in renewable energy from serveral countries and officials of the Estonian ministries. There seemed to be a strong focus on the countrys vast unused biomass and its applications. Estonia have a lot of unused agricultural land after U.S.S.R. occupation (3 hectar per inhabitant of which 200.000 hectar is abandoned), and a though they are not raping their huge resources of trees, firewood is a common heating source, and has been for hundreds of years. I could not help noticing that firewood is part of the term "renewable energy", but I did not notice references to the enviromental implications, only the economical rentability.


The goverment did, not supprisingly, bring out that they wished to focus their funding, and welcomed researchers who volunteered to state outdated or fields with too low cost-benefit. They also asked for more structured or exact research, since the last 30 years in some fields had given little clarity of the situation regarding renewable energy. On the other hand researchers gave an official plea to the goverment for guidelines to what they should do. Little news there I guess.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications gave some interesting data on the status of different renewable energies, but focused on the use of forest resources (biomass conversion, direct energy production and waste uses). I could not help raising a few questions on heat pumps. I asked if they had considered using deep sea water for heating Tallin like the plan in Stockholm? It had not been considered, but they had noticed that the last 5-10 years the sales and use of heat pumps were doubling every year in Estonia. They could not answer why most of the deep ground energy heat pumps were rejected in most cases in Estonia, but speculated it could be due to protection of ground water ressources.

I know that Tartu already has a great initiative that makes heat and ventilation to a house - basically ground heat that does not use electricity. But it is one of these initiatives that has an modest inventor with humble ambitions. So I think very few will see this technology - like others. I will write about the Geothermal Air-conditioner later.

Several fine initiatives were presented at the conference. The best in my opinion was a German initiative by Michael Wachendorf and his team, who focus on using the increasingly abandoned German farm lands. The abandonment is against EU regulations (which is worth a thought), but the farming is no longer financially sound in some areas. So in their initiative they harvest the wild plants growing and converted them into biofuel. I liked this project because it not only tries to produce sounder energy, but also invoveld a growing problem caused by a changing culture.

Estonia is third in Europe (following Lithuania and Finland) in use of renewable energy resources (including firewood) with a set goal of 5.1 % for 2010; a goal that has already been surpassed. Unfortunately this kind of statistics, I think, probably would not change the fact that Estonia is also one of the most polluting countries in EU. So I left with the feeling that the focus was on "renewable" rather that "greener" or perhaps just "sounder" energy. No leaping for Estonia, but small safe steps with the crowd.

Further reading:
 

WorldWideScience - A Step towards Open Science?

The 22nd of June 2007 the Department of Energy (USA) and The British Library of the United States of America opened the new search portal www.worldwidescience.org which has a Declaration of Intention that moves in the direction of Open Science.

The portal has ambitions of becoming a similar gateway as I suggested in my manifest the 29th July, the need for releasing the holds on Science is needed for a dynamic development. This is clearly also the intent of WorldWideScience:

WorldWideScience.org is the prototype for a global science gateway connecting you to national and international scientific databases. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching (see advanced search) of global science sources.

Though I welcome this initiative as a step in the right direction, it is still just a collection of databases, made searchable, containing existing information. It undoubtedly (if used) will bring project partners closer to each other in their field of interest, but not necessarily improve or accelerate scientific discovery in its present form.

I wish their project the best and hope to see it develop.

Science Fiction, or the next Frontier

I thought it important to bring a little personal flashback on recent technological jumps I, and many others, never thought to meet in their lifetime. This is important because we easily forget yesterdays breakthrough when it flickers off the TV screen and just how far we are able to push the limit for what is possible these days.

Space Exploration

Remember the saying "the sky is the limit?", well, that limit was broken when landing on the Moon marked possibly the most fantastic achievement of the 20th century. It was a realization of one of mankind's oldest science fiction dreams. But who actually believed a manned mission to the mythical planet Mars would be executed within a lifetime after that? We now have permanent space stations, orbital telescopes reaching far into space and plans of using satellites in grid technology.

From the indivisible atom, to something smaller

When I was a student of biochemistry and learned quantum mechanics, the atom (meaning indivisible) was about to loose its status as the smallest element materials could be broken down to. Quarks were the new buzz word of physics back then (though it was introduced in 1961). So though I was taught that atoms was the smallest "thing" everything was build out of, it is now fairly accepted that we have something called quarks, and that we can build of atoms (nanotechnology). You may even heard about the theory of vibrating strings that is supposed to make even smaller building blocks (still theoretic science). So the smallest thing in the world seems to shrink as the perception and knowledge increases.

Stopping light

One of the most undebateable constants from last century is Albert Einsteins speed of light. Though I have heard claims of people arguing for something travelling faster than light, I have seen no proof of such yet. But it was an eye opener for me when the news brought the news of the Dane Lene Haus teams efforts in slowing down light beams. They later announced they could totally stop and restart light in its path. I think this is a good example of how "constants" may be dangerous (in the perspective of progress) to view as taboos that has been carved into our civilizations history. The only truth I know is that there are no single truth.

Teleportation

Moving objects over great distances, broken down into elementary particles, must have been a technology found in the far future for the most of us, if ever possible. I must have been as ridiculous to think of these technologies as a possibility a few years ago - as it must have seemed to build machines of atoms and altering humans on gene level must have been to a scientist 50 years ago. Never the less, last year (2006) professor Eugene Polzik and his team at Niels Bohr, Denmark, published the results of their teleportation experiments in Nature. This is a technology in its infancy, but no less a reality. Remember than nanotechnology is only 20 years old as an active science, but you can now buy products in the shop today where nanotechnology is used to manifacture it.

Industrial Diamonds
Alchemy was a special mix of philosophy, nature, and spiritual aspects. The chemical aspects in some alchemist studies involved the search for the Philosophers Stone, a legendary substance that was supposed to produce silver and gold from other substances. But if someone today say they can produce diamonds most would shrug and say "off course". Well now days we can make diamonds of our pets or lost family members if desired as a matter of fact. So, maybe the claim that "one can not create gold" should be added a "... , yet".

As you can read here, I do not make this up, it is actual technologies in development. Sometimes I have even given up on convincing people some of these technologies exist, even though they have the luxury of being acknowledged by the science community and media. This is another plea for people to keep their minds open when encountering crazy technology that defies what you know and have learned. I doubt all people are crooks and frauds who want to decieve you.

Fiction is just the next limit our imagination can push our abilities! There ARE people working on time machines (on theoretical level mostly) - but whether they will succeed (or should) can depend on whether people can accept it.

Open Science - Free Inventions for Everyone

This is the first time I suggest the concept Open Science directly. I have been working on this concept for some months, and it is not finished, but please comment!

Open Science my suggestion to a concept that is thought to get around many of hindrances of the technological advances discussed in this blog, by making it free and available for everyone (indicated by this blog that it is currently not).

The Main Concept:
The prime objective of Open Science is that the inventions reach the users who can benefit from them and not get blocked in the process by third parties (inventors being first and users second parties).


Open Science is to be similar to Open Source, but developing openly on inventions rather than text code. A forum is needed for this development, and I imagine a net database would be best suited for this. The inventor/scientist uploads his blueprints, supportive investigation reports, comments, guides and other supportive information to the forum, thus giving up the idea as a protected patented and make it free to use and alter for all.

Money!
The forefitted claim to hypothetical financial gains from an expensive patent can be gained by voluntary donation economy, consultant work and product specific advertisement (like Googles ads) that can help interested builders to get parts from dealers through the forum. If people get into the habit that they can get the best technology, free, it may be hard to pay for unnecessarily high priced products (energy for example).

The social advantages:
Making inventions and build-yourself-guides available without restrictions on the net, potentially makes it accessible for anyone with Internet access; even third world countries. Hopefully, more people with similar ideas and input for a good invention can feed the project to improve making more people involved in developing (and accepting) important technologies, regardless of their background.

The disadvantages:
Third parties may have an interest in stopping an initiative as Open Science. Governments may find it dangerous that technology is globally available, since every technology can be abused as well as bring the civilization a step up the ladder. Companies with competing products will most likely feel threatened by free (and perhaps better) alternatives and attempt lawsuits. This is one of the reasons for keeping the concept free is crucial. If none are selling, there is no physical product and the know-how is free and documented (and thus unpatentable) - it should be difficult to build a case.

Other Open Science projects:
On the net an Open Science project already exist creating open source software (for free) for science applications. However this is not open science, but applications, and since I have not found a better term for this idea, I will stick with Open Science until a better alternative present itself. Journals also use the term for scientists publishing for a larger fee making it free to download in contrast to subscribing to journals. This is the opposite of open science in my opinion. The closest thing I found to my own idea so far is the Open Notebook Science (idea by Jean-Claude Bradley) that simply lets anyone read your science notes, not just the publications.

Warning:
Many have given me the feedback that they think I want to start a movement or change the world. Not really. Too many have tried and failed in getting people to do more than nod politely in consent from the arm chair. My idea with Open Science is to appeal to the industrial countries national sport: apathy. The idea is like Wiki books, that gives the knowledge directly to those who are willing to receive it, around economical interests and politics (I don't even want to fight them). People can get the solutions to what they need, if they can get out of their arm chair. If western countries don't - then let the Chinese take initiative, or someone else. In the end things are what we make of them. I can not predict what a successful outcome looks like for Open Science to the world.

Educational Blocks - Amazing what We do not Know

In my highschool advanced physics class of my final year, I asked my physics teacher while working with thermodynamics: "Aren't there a device that can make electricity of heat (explaining that I did not mean heating something, but heat itself)?" I never forget the look on my teaches face, I could see he struggled with himself to put his words in a way where he would not wound me in my ignorance (I liked my physics teacher, he is a good person). He told me kindly that if anyone would ever invent such a device they would be filthy rich. I naturally interperted this answer as a "no".

It is not until now, during my investigations for this blog, I know that this device were invented years earlier than my question to my teacher. This device was developed by Dennis Lee and his team and went into production in 1984 originally ass a low temperature phase change system (any weather) for producing heat. It was named The Alternative and is one of the technologies that actaully came into production and use in USA, and as it claimed. It was a little later that is device was discovered to produce energy as well with some modifications involving a modified Sterling engine, originally invented by Dr Robert Stirling in 1816. The device however went out of production in a competitive struggle with athoroties and cooperations that I will let the reader investigate themselves, since it is hard to present it objectivly. Read for yourselves (1, 2) about this product. The short story is that the inventor had to go to jail for selling the device on some very odd charges (if any).

As I wrote previously, my teacher and others teachers, have a lot of responsebility in molding our minds to be able to believe in greater advances. I am certain they do not do it intentionally. But I also had an opposite statement, to the skeptism I got in school, from a professor in the university, that opened my eyes again. When I asked him supportive questions to the class that had ended, he suprisingly said "we don't know!" I was in the begining of my studies and professors were like small gods of knowledge - how could they not know? I was curious and asked him to speculate. To this he replied: "It is amazing what we scientists do not know! That is what makes it so fun!" I can only wish more scientists, teachers and people were like him. If we do not know, it does not mean it can not exist - just that we have not discovered why it can work!

Movement Blocks - The road the Hell; a bridge of good intentions

During my biochemical studies I followed a course in Environmental Chemistry instructed by lector Søren Toxsværd (Copenhagen University, Department of Chemistry). During his lectures he often shared his vast knowledge of chemical history. This story he told us when explaining the chemical properties of cement.

As most people now know, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), also known as Freon, are bad for the environment but a good refrigerant. It is a odorless, nontoxic, colorless and nonflammable gas that makes it very safe to be around. But in 1972 F. Sherwood Rowland and Mary Jose discovered that once the released CFCs reached the stratosphere the ultraviolet light could release chlorine. The chlorine has a long term effect on the atmoshperic chemistry in breaking down ozone. But what we probably remember before the bans of CFCs was that freon is bad!

But once the bans were in place, a lot of existing equipment were left with CFCs and nobody knew where to put them. Releasing them would mean destroying the ozone. Clever engineers came up with a solution. The CFCs could be chemically bound in common cement, would chemically be altered and not released as harmful CFCs again. Easy solution to a big problem. But the inventors were too ambitious. They wanted to make the factory that would inactivate the CFCs and produce cement in Africa - giving the country an unique technological advantage. Unfortunately, the intention was misunderstood as exploiting a third world country with a western country chemical waste problem. Media had been pounding the message that Freon is bad into our heads - so the activists saw the initiative as exposing the Africans to a directly harmful chemical to humans (which is untrue).

The movement succeeded in closing the African factory initiative before it was completed, moving the solving of the problem back to square one. A paradox; a brilliant solution to pollution was smothered by the most people who most passionately wanted a solution.

I love this story because it shows how good intentions can turn against ourselves if we do not keep an open mind.