Haze, Haze, Go Away, Don't Come Back Another Day

Howdy folks? It's been a hazy day in the South East Asia region, especially Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. This phenomenon is caused by the forest fire in Indonesia. It actually did hit above 200 for the Air Pollution Index at one time. We have to actually wear a protective mask to filter the smoke from entering our lungs.

At the same time, the sales of air purifier have also shot up tremendously due to this air quality problem. But the consumers need to know which air purifier to buy and which to avoid. I will share not on the specific air purifier that gives out a better air quality but I will share on which types of air purifier is energy efficient and provide long-term investment for the homes or office buildings.

How Does It Work?

Although they may seem like a new innovation, air purifiers have been around for more than 200 years. What started as protective masks for fireman, air purifiers have now evolved the ability to protect you and your family from airborne pollutants.

As allergies and asthma now affect more than 50 million of people around the world, the concern for safe indoor air quality has rapidly increased. Allergens like smoke, mold spores, pollen, bacteria, viruses, pet dander, and other pollutants damage your lungs and immune system. Unfortunately, most of these irritants cannot be seen by the naked eye. Air purifiers filter allergens and pollutants seen or unseen by the human eye. To remove these objects, air purifiers typically use filters, electrical attraction, or ozone.

Air filters utilize fine sieves that filter particles from circulating air. As air flows into the air purifier, the finer the sieve used, the smaller the particles it traps. The accepted benchmark for air filters has been set by the High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters, which are guaranteed to trap 99.97% of airborne particles larger than 0.3 microns. Microns are the standard unit used for measuring air particles. Each micron is equivalent to 1/25,400 of an inch. The naked eye cannot see anything smaller than 10 microns, so pollutants like bacteria and viruses escape detection. Room air conditioner filters only capture particles 10.0 microns or larger. HEPA filters remove smaller allergens like dust, smoke, chemicals, asbestos, pollen, and pet dander.

The more times the air passes through the HEPA filter, the cleaner the air becomes. The room capacity of a HEPA air purifier will determine whether the air cleaner can handle your air purifying needs. 

In addition to the HEPA filter, there's an optional medical grade ultra-violet (UV) light system, used to quickly kill viruses, bacteria, and fungi upon entry into the air purifier. UV light also protects the HEPA filter from biological and viral contamination.

Electrical attraction is another technology utilized by air purifiers to trap particles. Three types of air cleaners work using electrical attraction: electrostatic precipitating cleaners, electret filters, and negative ion generators.

Electrostatic precipitating cleaners or electronic air purifiers draw particles in by fan and charge them with a series of high-voltage wires. Several plates (precipitating cells) carry the opposite electrical charge and attract the contaminants as they pass by the plates. Electronic air purifiers are perfect for individuals who don't want to worry about the costly replacements of HEPA filters. The downside to these units is that many create a nasty byproduct, ozone.

Electret filters in air purifiers use synthetic fibers that create static charges to attract particles. Electret filters are offered in a variety of types including plain, pleated, disposable or reusable. Depending on the type of filter you need, will determine how often the filter requires replacement.

Negative ion generators or ionic air purifiers use tiny, charged wires or needles to create gas molecules with negative charges or ions that adhere to the airborne particles and collect in the filter. However, many ions end up back in the air, sticking to furnishings and other surfaces that may be stained by them.

Ionic air purifiers only remove certain types of particles and aren't always effective against gases, chemicals, or odors. Some ionic air purifiers have been shown to re-circulate the same dirty particles that they draw in, making them much less effective than traditional air purifiers using HEPA filtration.

Types Of Air Purifier

It may come as no surprise to see that air purifiers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors. What’s more important to notice, though, is not all air purifiers work the same. In fact, different types of air purifiers employ different technologies when cleansing the air you breathe.

It is vital to know and understand how each of these technologies work, so you can be sure to choose the right air purifier for your specific needs. Of course you will also need to know which air purifier is working efficiently with the energy consumption.

Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) is a measure of the amount of contaminant-free air delivered by the room air cleaner. When considering the purchase of an energy efficient room air cleaner, the comparison should not solely be based on CADR. The CADR of a specific air cleaner model is affected by a number of factors included the size of the model; larger units often have higher CADRs.

First, find the AHAM suggested room size noted prominently in the label. This suggested sizing should match the size of the room you are trying to clean. Next, compare CADR numbers from manufacturer to manufacturer and from air cleaner to air cleaner. Higher ratings for the dust, tobacco smoke and pollen CADR numbers indicate that the unit will filter the air faster than a unit with lower ratings. If the ratings are same from one unit to the other, then the air filtering performance is similar.

Return Of Investment

Room air purifiers - sometimes referred to as "room air cleaners" - are portable, electric appliances that remove fine particles, such as dust and pollen, from indoor air. A standard room air purifier, operating continuously, uses approximately 550 kWh per year in electricity. This is more than the energy used by some new refrigerators!

Energy efficient room air purifiers are 40% more energy-efficient than standard models, saving consumers about 225 kWh/year. These savings could add up to RM800 over its lifetime!

A Windy Season

Hello everybody and welcome back to my blog "Towards A Greener World". Hope you guys have a great time during the long weekends. I went for a short trip to a place called Mount KK and it was such a nice view. The people is nice, the food is fantastic and the weather is great. We even went to Kundasang (it's the closest town to Mount KK).

Imagine the outside temperature is below 20 degrees Celcius and I actually bathed cold water during the night. It was freezing and quite windy. When I was sitting down there relaxing and enjoying the skies, I can see the trees and leaves are moving vigorously due to the strong wind. Then the idea comes in: why didn't the locals install a wind turbine to harness the free energy?

Maybe they did not know about this recyclable energy and I believe some of the urban people also do not know about this. So I would like to share more on this energy source with you so that you can have some knowledge about it and maybe, just maybe, that you can install one on your roof to save on the energy bills.

How Does It Work?

So how do wind turbines make electricity? Simply stated, a wind turbine works the opposite of a fan. Instead of using electricity to make wind, like a fan, wind turbines use wind to make electricity. The wind turns the blades, which spin a shaft, which connects to a generator and makes electricity.

Wind is a form of solar energy and is a result of the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the irregularities of the earth's surface, and the rotation of the earth. Wind flow patterns and speeds vary greatly across the world and are modified by bodies of water, vegetation, and differences in terrain. Humans use this wind flow, or motion energy, for many purposes such as sailing, flying a kite, and even generating electricity.

The terms wind energy or wind power describe the process by which the wind is used to generate mechanical power or electricity. Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy in the wind into mechanical power. This mechanical power can be used for specific tasks (such as grinding grain or pumping water) or a generator can convert this mechanical power into electricity.

Types of Wind Turbine

Modern wind turbines fall into two basic groups: 

1. the horizontal-axis variety, and 
2. the vertical-axis design

Horizontal-axis wind turbines typically either have two or three blades. These three-bladed wind turbines are operated "upwind," with the blades facing into the wind. Wind turbines can be built on land or offshore in large bodies of water like oceans and lakes. 

Utility-scale turbines range in size from 100 kilowatts to as large as several megawatts. Larger wind turbines are more cost effective and are grouped together into wind farms, which provide bulk power to the electrical grid. 

Single small turbines, below 100 kilowatts, are used for homes, telecommunications dishes, or water pumping. Small turbines are sometimes used in connection with diesel generators, batteries, and photovoltaic systems. These systems are called hybrid wind systems and are typically used in remote, off-grid locations, where a connection to the utility grid is not available.

Return On Investment

The price of a home wind turbine could fetch from RM1075 minimum. However, do take note that a wind turbine is a relatively large device and it is not so suitable for urban or small-lot suburban homes. The economics of a wind system are determined by the average wind speed in the area, the availability of rebates or tax credits, and the cost of electricity. As a general rule-of-thumb, we recommend that you have at least a 10 mph average wind speed and be paying 10¢/kilowatt-hour or more for electricity. 

Will it help the environment if I install a wind turbine at my home? Wind turbines produce no pollution and by using wind power you will be offsetting pollution that would have been generated by your utility company. Over its nominal 30 year, life it will offset approximately 1.2 tons of air pollutants and 200 tons of greenhouse gases.

The return of your investment on wind turbine depends on your cost of electricity and average wind speed. The wind system will usually recoup its investment through utility savings within 6-30 years and after that the electricity it produces will be virtually free. Compared to purchasing utility power, a wind system can be a good investment because your money goes to increasing the value of your home rather than just paying for a service. Many people buy wind systems for their retirement because they are concerned about utility rate increases.

What To Consider When Buying?

What size would you need for your home? Homes typically use 1,000-2,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. Depending upon the average wind speed in the area this will require a wind turbine rated in the range 5-15 kilowatts.

You do not need to take the wind measurement for a year before buying it. For residential systems the cost of taking wind measurements is not justified in most situations. Wind resource data published by the local authority is sufficient to predict performance. In a very hilly or mountainous areas, however, it may be prudent to take wind data before purchasing a system to ensure that your site in not in a sheltered area.

Are wind turbines reliable, and what about maintenance? The turbines have only 3 or 4 moving parts and do not require any regular maintenance. The turbines are designed to last 30-50 years or more and they operate completely automatically. Small wind turbines do make some noise, but not enough to be found objectionable by most people. They do not interfere with TV reception.

Pros & Cons

So how good or bad to install a wind turbine at your home? I have listed a few of them to help you decide on whether or not to install a wind turbine.

Wind Energy Pros

• Wind energy is clean, and harnessing it does not produce any harmful by-products.
• Wind is free and 100% renewable.
• Turbines pay for themselves within a few years.
• The power company pays you back if you produce extra electricity.
• Tax incentives may be available from local or the federal government for those who install wind turbines.

Wind Energy Cons

• Upfront costs are high.
• You must have enough land to accommodate a turbine.
• Not all geographical locations are suitable for wind turbines so have to check with your local wind speed averages.
• Building codes may restrict turbine installation.
• Wind turbines make noise and some people (possibly your neighbours) find them to be ugly.
• Turbines typically operate at only 30 percent capacity (but to put that in perspective - solar panels operate at only 15 percent efficiency).
• Blades have been known to kill birds.
• Turbines can be damaged in lightning storms.

So as you can see, the renewable energy of wind is not for everyone. It still depends on few external and internal factors before installing it. But one thing for sure, as the electricity cost is going and with more introduction of tax rebate, this wind energy could be the next big thing for a smart home.

Futuristic Automotive Industry

Hola, ¿cómo estas?

It's been a long time since I wrote my last blog post because was on a business trip. It was a fun and challenging experience, meeting with different people in a totally different culture. In case you are curious, I was in Yangon, Myanmar for the "Renewable Energy Conference 2015". It's a networking event that invites industry professionals that aims to build a partnership networking through face-to-face meetings and open discussions to build and further strengthen guests' networks.

While I was in Myanmar, I did saw some electrical cars that not only looks impressive on the outside but on the inside as well. The interior design looks sophisticated and it is comfortable while driving it. I checked on the Internet and it's truly an energy efficient hardware that's worth sharing with the masses.

How To Define An Energy Efficient Vehicle?

The car which has been with us since the 19th Century, has evolved tremendously over the decades. The year 1886 is regarded as the birth year of the modern car. In that year, German inventor, Karl Benz built the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. It had been through many histories, wars and technologies era. We have seen the emerging of many brands such as Toyota, Honda, Ferrari, and many more.

So how do we define an energy efficient car or vehicle? The answer is in the term called Fuel Efficiency. Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the efficiency of a process that converts chemical potential energy contained in a carrier fuel into kinetic energy or work. Overall fuel efficiency may vary per device, which in turn may vary per application fuel efficiency, especially fossil fuel power plants or industries dealing with combustion, such as ammonia production during the Haber process.

In the context of transport, fuel economy is the energy efficiency of a particular vehicle, given as a ratio of distance traveled per unit of fuel consumed. Fuel economy is expressed in miles per gallon (mpg) in the USA and usually also in the UK (imperial gallon). There is sometimes confusion as the imperial gallon is 20% larger than the US gallon so that mpg values are not directly comparable. In countries using the metric system, fuel economy is stated in kilometres per litre (km/L) in the Netherlands, Denmark and in several Latin American or Asian countries such as India, Japan, South Korea, or as the reciprocal ratio, "fuel consumption" in liters per 100 kilometers (L/100 km) in much of Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Litres per mil are used in Norway and Sweden.

Fuel consumption is a more accurate measure of a vehicle’s performance because it is a linear relationship while fuel economy leads to distortions in efficiency improvements. Weight-specific efficiency (efficiency per unit weight) may be stated for freight, and passenger-specific efficiency (vehicle efficiency per passenger).

Fuel efficiency is dependent on many parameters of a vehicle, including its engine parameters, aerodynamic drag, weight, and rolling resistance. There have been advances in all areas of vehicle design in recent decades.

Hybrid vehicles use two or more power sources for propulsion. In many designs, a small combustion engine is combined with electric motors. Kinetic energy which would otherwise be lost to heat during braking is recaptured as electrical power to improve fuel efficiency. Engines automatically shut off when vehicles come to a stop and start again when the accelerator is pressed preventing wasted energy from idling.

Design

Cars are the primary mode of transport with most households having at least one. The current generation of cars emit greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. For every litre of petrol used in a motor vehicle, 2.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from the exhaust. The new breed of efficient cars and hybrids are increasing fuel efficiency by significant margins and with electric cars emerging onto the market, we have cars with zero net carbon emissions.

As one of the major investments for most families, car efficiency also means lower running costs, better insurance rates and even green loans. The efficiency of the vehicle (design, engine, weight, etc) determines the fuel consumption and the amount of greenhouse gases and airborne pollution released per kilometre, so there are many factors to consider when aiming to reduce the emissions you create. Here we shall take a look into two types of energy efficient car: Hybrid and Electrical

Hybrid - A vehicle is a hybrid if it utilizes more than one form of onboard energy to achieve propulsion. In practice, that means a hybrid will have a traditional internal-combustion engine and a fuel tank, as well as one or more electric motors and a battery pack. Hybrid cars are sometimes mistakenly confused with electric vehicles. Hybrids are most often gasoline-burning machines that utilize their electric bits to collect and reuse energy that normally goes to waste in standard cars. Theoretically, diesel-electric hybrids would be even more fuel-efficient, but hybrid systems and diesel engines both represent extra cost. So far, installing both in the same vehicle has proven to be prohibitively expensive.

Electric - also known as electric vehicle or EV, it uses energy stored in its rechargeable batteries, which are recharged by common household electricity. An electric car is powered exclusively by electricity. Historically, EVs have not been widely adopted because of limited driving range before needing to be recharged, long recharging times, and a lack of commitment by automakers to produce and market electric cars that have all the creature comforts of gas-powered cars. That has changed. As battery technology improved, simultaneously increasing energy storage and reducing cost, major automakers introduced a new generation of electric cars.

The Good, The Bad & The Not-So Ugly

With all the technology that is getting improved by the seconds, we all know that they bring more benefits than harm to the environment and living beings. However, we still need to know what is the upside and downside of using an energy efficient vehicle and it can be depicted  in the table below:

Prices vs Saving

Who doesn’t want clean air, clean water, a comfortable climate and a healthy environment for today and for future generations? Although most folks agree that hybrid and electric cars contribute to all of these society blessings, if they also save us money, they’ll grab a bigger share of the market.

Each person’s green car payback will be different. The comparisons are based on an average of 15,000 miles (1 mile = 1.6 km) driven annually, with 45 percent of that on highways and 55 percent within cities. If you drive more than that in the city, you could stand to save a ton of dough by driving a hybrid or all-electric car. Stop-and-go driving and relatively slower speeds require less energy from the cars’ batteries, maximizing the already stellar energy efficiency of electric drive.

If you drive more than 15,000 miles a year (that’s about 1,250 monthly, 312 weekly or 45 daily), you’ll definitely break even sooner. Gas prices are volatile and it’s difficult to predict their roller coaster rides. But there can be no disputing that the faster gas prices rise and the higher they go, the more you’ll save. Below is a simple worksheet devised to help you calculate your own potential payback period with whichever vehicles you’d like to consider and whatever gas price you want to input. (See How to Calculate Your Own Green Car Payback). The calculations and worksheet consider only prices and gas mileage, but you should also look at the cost or savings associated with insurance, maintenance and local incentives.

The Verdict 

Saving money doesn’t have to be the only determining factor when it’s time to buy a new car. People consider comfort, safety, performance, capacity, reliability, resale value, style, color and even whether a car has an iPhone dock. The bottom line is how well does a particular vehicle meet your particular needs and desires? The decision comes down to cost versus value: How much are you willing to pay for the features you want to get? What about the early adopters of the personal computer, Palm Pilot or iPad? They probably hoped those devices would serve their needs, but we’ll bet they didn’t expect those gadgets to pay for themselves. Many consumers simply enjoy the ability to invest in technologies they value.

Greener cars have been proven to be well made, durable and long-lasting and to save their owners thousands of dollars. Depending on the price of gas and what you want or need out of a good set of wheels, you may have to wait a few or even many years to realize your savings. How long will you have to wait? When it comes to green car payback, it all depends. But as they say: Patience is a virtue.