Solar Power

A solar array in the USA

Welcome to Solar Power: The Energy Efficiency Podcast – episode 8, the podcast that brings you a mix of energy efficiency news, products and tips all year round. We’re interested in profiling people and products involved in promoting energy efficiency habits, products and information, so please do get in touch if you have something to contribute.

Before we get on with our advertised features, on Monday morning the Guardian reported on a scheme to generate domestic fuel from dirty plastic waste.

Dirty recycling

Items for recycling should be clean and contain nothing non-recyclable. This is why mixed materials are such an issue. Recyclable materials are wasted and go to landfill if they’re mixed up with non-recyclable materials in the same item. If recycling is dirty it can’t be used.

The worst culprit is food. That’s why silver foil is not usually recyclable. It’s infinitely reusable if it doesn’t get dirty as such, but the foil with bacon fat all over it has to go in the bin. If a householder knows this then contaminated waste won’t enter the recycling foodchain, but mistakes happen all the time. That’s distinct from aspirational recycling, when items go in the green bin in the hopes they can be recycled. Or perhaps the belief that they should. Even paper and glass can be contaminants if they go in the wrong bins. To quote Rubicon Global,

“Contaminants turn your recycling into nothing more than trash.”

This is an entire subject with global repurcussions and one we’ll return to at a later date.

Hydrogen

Help may now be at hand. Work at the University at Chester has been looking at how to use this dirty recycling to create fuel. Researchers have found a way to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen can fuel homes and cars without emitting greenhouse gases. Waste is burnt at 1000 degrees in a glass kiln. The waste instantly breaks down to release gases including hydrogen.

Two waste energy business have come together to develop this research commercially. Later this year production will begin at a plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. Owner of the plant Peel Environmental reckons that a walloping 25 million tons of contaminated recycling will be kept out of landfill and the seas.

Why is hydrogen such a big deal? Hydrogen can take over tasks currently met by traditional gas. Hydrogen can be used for cooking, heating homes and hot water, and fuelling vehicles. It could play a huge part in the UK meeting its climate targets.

There is a downside however. The production of hydrogen emits powerful greenhouse gases including methane. Methane is a disaster, but the plant plans to trap it and use it to generate electricity. The Guardian article describes this process as no “more polluting than the UK’s existing gas-fired power plants”. That’s not a ringing endorsement, but it goes on to make the point that it means no more gas need be pulled from the ground. It highlights again the need for effective carbon capture technology.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The technology has been developed in collaboration with Asian companies. Hydrogen fuel is already commonly used in Japan, as we looked at in episode 3. Increased production of hydrogen in Asia would make strides in reducing their dependence on coal burning plants. Ep 3 looked closely at fuel use and generation in Japan.

 

 

Solar Energy

Mid-morning on Monday 22nd July, renewables are providing 15% of the UK’s power requirements. Wind is producing about 2/3 of that, solar power most of the rest. It’s a bright sunny day in parts of the UK and it’s windy. We’re using no coal or oil just now. So would fitting PV panels to your home keep you in electricity all year round? Let’s look at the facts.

Photovoltaic cells – PV cells – work by turning sunlight into an electric field. More sunshine means more electricity but PV cells don’t need brigh