Harvesting Steel Wire

December 15, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Reuse, Steel, Trash, Tyres

harvesting steel wire

“There is a huge need for construction materials, at the same time the planet everywhere is littered by millions of used car tires. A way has to be found for re-using the materials that car tires are made of: rubber and steel. Large scale processes for this are well known. At the smallest scale of use better methods of recuperation have to be developed.”

“Each car tire contains 70 meters of steel wire with a 1 mm cross section. When the properties of the composing parts of a used rubber tire are well understood, then the practice of recuperation can be adapted to it.” Illustrated manual at Demotech.

Pack Goats

December 13, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Animal power, Cargo, Pack animals, Random, Travel

pack goats

“Goats can be excellent pack animals. A good pack goat will carry at least twenty-five percent of his body weight (a two-hundred-pound wether will pack about fifty pounds), will follow you like a dog, will feed himself along the trail and around camp, and will be a pleasure to have around. Goats have been used as a beast of burden in Europe and Asia for thousands of years.”

Read more:  1 (quote) / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5.

Picture found at American Goat.

Related: Pack camels / Pack horses.

Jet Stream Wind Power as a Renewable Energy Resource

December 13, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Renewables

“Jet streams are regions of sustained high wind speeds in the upper atmosphere and are seen by some as a substantial renewable energy resource. However, jet stream motion is associated with very small generation rates of kinetic energy to maintain the high wind velocities, and it is this generation rate that will ultimately limit the potential use of jet streams as a renewable energy resource. We have calculated that the maximum sustainable extraction from jet streams of the global atmosphere is about 7.5 TW. This estimate is about 200-times less than previous estimates and is due to the fact that the common expression for instantaneous wind power merely characterizes the transport of kinetic energy by the flow, but not the generation rate of kinetic energy.”

Climate change

“We also find that when maximum wind power is extracted from the jet streams, it results in significant climatic impacts due to a substantial increase of heat transport across the jet streams in the upper atmosphere. This results in upper atmospheric temperature differences of >20 °C, greater atmospheric stability, substantial reduction in synoptic activity, and substantial differences in surface climate. We conclude that jet stream wind power does not have the potential to become a significant source of renewable energy.”

Jet stream wind power as a renewable energy resource: little power, big impacts. Earth System Dynamics, November 2011.

The Lost Art of Lashing

December 4, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Knots, Random

the lost art of lashing

“Stable and strong – you can almost make anything with lashing.”

Illustrated manual at makeprojects.

Previously:

Solar Powered Sun Tracker

November 28, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Solar

Instead of installing an expensive motor, former Princeton student Eden Full is making a simple part that expands with heat, automatically moving a panel to its most electricty-generating position: The SunSalutor.

Celebrating the Luddite Uprisings

November 28, 2011 by kris de decker Filed Under: Low-tech living, Luddites, Random, Technology

celebrating the luddite uprisings

“November 2011 – January 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprisings, in which artisan cloth workers smashed machines which were destroying their trades, undercutting wages and forcing them into unemployment and destitution. Today, the industrial system that the Luddites were rebelling against has led to climate change and huge losses of biodiversity, and its new technologies, such as information technology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology raise equally profound issues. Yet anyone who raises concern about the price and side-effects of new technologies is harshly condemned as a ‘luddite’, someone supposedly irrationally opposed to technology and progress.”

“In fact, the Luddites were not ‘luddites’ in that sense: the idea that they were opposed to all technology is a history written by the victors. In fact the Luddites opposed only technology ‘hurtful to Commonality’, ie. to the common good, rather than the narrow interests of the few. They destroyed some machines whilst leaving alone others in the same workshop. So being a luddite today means being a sceptic about the dogma of technology as progress, not about denying the real benefits of some technologies. It means insisting that the crucial decisions about which technologies are developed are made democratically, not just imposed by corporations and technocratic elites. And it means standing up for our own ideas of what progress really is.”

Help celebrate 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprising: Luddites at 200 website. See also: “Lessons of the Luddites“.