TriTriumph

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Archive for the ‘Science’ category

The Ultimate Computer

July 18th, 2010

In the 60′s and 70′s there were movies about powerful computers coming to life and destroying people. Star Trek had “The Ultimate Computer” that Captain Kirk talked to death. 2001: A Space Odyssey had the HAL 9000 that thought it knew better than the astronauts and started killing them. A few years later was Colussus: The Forbin Project where a super computer is put in control of America’s nuclear arsenal to eliminate irrational human actions. It links up with a Soviet computer designed for the same purpose and enslaves mankind under the threat of nuclear holocaust. In 1979 the film War Games had a weapons control computer WOPR that learned nuclear war was unwinnable.

These movies have dropped off since computers have become ubiquitous to daily life. Any evil is due to human misuse of a tool, not a silicon conscience.

Which brings us to the point. Ultimate computers do not remain ultimate for long. Today’s most powerful computer will be a punchline at a computer convention in 5 years. “You’ve got one of those? My cell phone has more capability!”

Computer power is measured in floating point operations per second, or flops. A Teraflop is a trillion flops. Powerful data center computers used by Google and credit card companies use run 100′s of Teraflops. Just as home computer power progressed from Kilo to Mega to Giga, super computers are jumping from Tera to Peta. A quadrillion flops.

What does one do with such a computer? For one, chemical reactions can be simulated in a computer. Not adding baking soda to vinegar reactions, but vastly complex reactions such as adding an enzyme to a carbohydrate to create a sugar that can be fermented into ethanol. Instead of running numerous test-tube trials to find the best result it can be done in a computer much faster. I do not know how these reactions are turned into mathematical equations and computer code but they are.

My employer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is planning a super computer and being the Department of Energy prime Save Energy Lab its goal is to be the most energy efficient data center in the world.

An IBM representative explained the rapid progress in the last few years.

2005: 100 Teraflops; 34 computer servers, 10,000 square feet, 3,400 kilowatts electric load. (A kilowatt will run an average American house.)

2008: 100 Teraflops; 8 servers, 2,500 square feet, 875 kilowatts

2011: 100 Teraflops: 1 server, 800 square feet, 175 kilowatts

While space and power needs have decreased the hunger for more computing capacity is limitless. With every generation more computing power is packed into the same computer room. Less energy is used for each flop but the equipment is packed denser and denser. A single computer server that once used 5 kW now uses 60. The limit is cooling the microprocessor. Home computers use fans. Super computers use cooling water piped right to the chip. The 175 kW server is an 8 foot cube yet it produces enough waste heat to warm 8 large houses on a cold winter day. There is no way to blow enough air over the chip to cool it. Like a car engine, it needs a radiator.

When NREL first discussed its computer with IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Cray in 2007 they said our proposed 400 Teraflop computer would be in the top 12 in the world. Yes, but we won’t actually get it until 2012. Oh, by then 400 Teraflop wouldn’t make the top 100 list.

NREL is building a new research facility to study integrating large amounts of renewable energy onto the electric grid. It will open in 2012. Part of the project is $12 million for a super computer. NREL will wait until the last moment to get the latest generation machine. Once in place it will busily sort 400 trillion 1′s and 0′s every second. It will toil for a few years and then be replaced with a Petaflop-scale machine. That machine will run a few years and be replaced a yet more powerful computer.

In the future veteran NREL computer guys will be telling stories about when this super computer center opened in 2012 it had 400 Teraflops “and we thought that was really something!” A young new hire will snort, “Teraflops? You’re kidding me. My cell phone has more power than that!”

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Posted in Business, Environment, Science, Technology

A miracle? Man moves robotic hand like a real hand — by using his thoughts

December 2nd, 2009

This is really miraculous stuff — an Italian man who lost his forearm was able to control a robotic hand with his thoughts.

“It’s a matter of mind, of concentration,” Petruzziello told the Associated Press. “When you think of it as your hand and forearm, it all becomes easier.”

This isn’t the first time someone has controlled a prosthetic limb with their thoughts. What makes it so remarkable is the level of complex movements achieved by Petruzziello’s mind on an artificial limb.

It’s major progress — and it’s the type of thing that makes you glad you live in this era. It seems like a miracle, because it is a miracle — one achieved through hard work, dedication and a desire to improve the human condition.

Miracles come in a lot of different forms and a lot of different ways. Keep you heart and mind open, focus on doing good things for people, and you’ll see miracles coming your way. You’ll also create a few of your own in the process, sort of like these Italian scientists. And it doesn’t have to be something as complex as an artificial limb controlled by a person’s thoughts. Miracles can happen in your day-to-day living — changing and improving the lives of the people around you.

Look for the good, work for the good, and amazing things can happen.

Turn on a light, thank a cow …

November 2nd, 2009

Ever see a cattle feedlot? You’d remember if you had. It’s one of the few sights along the highway that comes with a smell. Feedlots go on for acres, filled with cattle and the stuff cattle leave for people to clean up. When driving by, your first thought usually is, “Wow, look at all those cows.” Your second thought, shortly after a unique odor hits your nose, is, “Wow, look at all that cow [blank].” Actually, depending on the wind, that might be your first thought.

It seems like such a waste to waste all that waste. Especially when you consider that a lot of non-renewable natural gas is used to power electrical power plants, rather than coal, since natural gas is a much cleaner fuel energy. And especially when cow manure can be turned into renewable methane, the equivalent of natural gas.

Cow - Penn States Department of Dairy and Animal Science

Cows - Penn State's Department of Dairy and Animal Science

The good news is that in the not so distant future, cow manure may help fuel an electric power plant or heat a building near you – that is, if Chris Gaul, Energy Engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, has his say in the matter.

“You can generate electricity using uranium, coal, natural gas, oil, rivers, wind, sunshine, oceans, and biomass,” Gaul said. “How are you going to heat 100 million homes and businesses without natural gas?”

Good question. Known reserves of non-renewable natural gas in the United States could last another 40 years, according to Gaul. And looming on the horizon is an executive order, signed by President George W. Bush, mandating that Federal facilities eliminate fossil fuel use by 2030. Many of these office buildings have no other practical heat source other than natural gas. Retrofitting to some other fuel source may not be feasible. With renewable natural gas no equipment changes would be needed to convert a building from fossil fuel to renewable energy.

“Biomethane” fits easily into existing distribution system

The process of turning manure into energy involves building “digesters” near the source of the waste, and then getting the methane (natural gas) produced by the digesters into the gas pipeline system. The digesters can convert not just cow manure, but also other organic wastes (such as from food processing) into methane, which can then be used just like non-renewable natural gas.

Renewable natural gas can be transmitted a long distance with little loss, unlike solar, wind, and biomass, where the end user typically has to be near the renewable resource.

The beauty of cow manure is that it’s an abundant renewable resource. Plus, we could take a smelly eyesore that has its own environmental problems and make it useful. Turning cow manure into methane to heat homes, offices, and run power plants makes perfect sense, especially when it can fit so neatly into the existing marketing and distribution systems.

So let’s wish Chris and the other engineers at the NREL luck. Let’s hope they can find a way to turn all that cow [blank] into renewable natural gas.

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Posted in Environment, Science, Technology

Tags: biomethane Environment NREL renewable energy

Alchemy for the 3rd world – turning sewage into drinking water

October 20th, 2009

Imagine a town without clean running water. Not something disastrous such as New Orleans, which eventually benefited from the government trucking in water. Imagine the daily struggle involved with just finding clean water – day after day after day.

Never mind, stop, after all, how can we even fathom such a life? I lived in Des Moines when a flood knocked out the water treatment plant for two weeks. It was a pain, but bearable. I even have some fond memories from the experience. But for so many people in 3rd world countries, finding clean water amounts to a daily struggle, and there’s nothing fond about it. According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, more than 3.5 million people die every year from water-related diseases and almost 900 million don’t have access to a safe water supply.

Slingshot water purifier (photo from CNN)

And you thought the Segway was brilliant

Inventor Dean Kamen and his team at DEKA invented the “Slingshot,” a device that takes undrinkable water and makes it drinkable. This may surprise you, but these are the same guys who invented the Segway — and now they’ve created a remarkable environmental solution that borders on alchemy (the ancient “science” of turning various metals into gold).

The Slingshot’s not all that big. Just take a look at the picture (the guy’s hand gives you a nice indication of scale.) A “vapor compression distiller” sits between two empty tanks connected by hoses. One tank contains contaminated liquid – which could even be raw sewage – the other is for the newly clean water.

The Slingshot boils, distills and vaporizes the impure liquid, delivering pure water to the other tank. And it does it all on less electricity than it takes to run a hair dryer. Of course, electricity might be a problem in some areas of the 3rd world, but according to Newsweek, Kamen has a solution for that too. It’s a generator that runs on cow dung (can’t find a photo of this one — maybe that’s a good thing!).

Slaying the giant problem

The name “Slingshot” comes from the Biblical story of how David slew Goliath using a slingshot.

“We believe the world needs a slingshot to take care of its Goliath of a problem in water,” Kamen told CNN. “So we decided to build a small machine and give it to the little Davids.”

Cost is a huge issue right now — $200,000 for each Slingshot. Kamen hopes to bring the cost down to $1,000 – $2,000 a unit with engineering improvements and more demand.

This is a truly remarkable idea. Earth-shattering, if you ask me. Something that seems like it would make the world stand up and really take notice.

What’s surprising is that this idea’s been around since 2003. Yet we still just talk about it?

If you want to go green, look towards the blue …

October 14th, 2009

… the blue sky, that is. For the second time in a week, good news on the green front involves what’s over our heads – our roofs.

This time, instead of solar roofing shingles, it’s the Ridge Blade®, “an innovative, affordable and effective way of harnessing the wind’s power to produce renewable electricity.” The Power Collective in the United Kingdom came up with the idea – it’s designed to maximize energy potential, even in low wind, while being visually discreet.

From the pictures, the The RidgeBlade looks like it will be barely noticeable. It sits right on the ridge line on the top of buildings. Wind is forced over the surface, pushing air through the turbine to generate electricity.

The Power Collective is getting some positive attention for this great idea – it’s a finalist in the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s Green Challenge, which means they could win 500,000 euros to help them market the home wind turbine system.