Thurston County to reuse waste gas for heating
A partnership of the cities of Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater, plus Thurston County, has approved a $2.6 million contract to install a cogeneration system that will supply about 11 percent of the heat and electricity for its new complex.
Officials tell The Olympian newspaper that the energy output will be 2.36 million kilowatt-hours — enough to power about 250 average-size homes.
Currently, the sewer utility simply burns off much of the methane.
The new system is expected to save the utility about $190,000 a year. It is expected to be operating in about 15 months.
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The Cool Way Scientists Turned Falling Raindrops Into Electricity
HONG KONG - Scientists at the City University of Hong Kong have used a Teflon-coated surface and a phenomenon called triboelectricity to generate a charge from raindrops. “Here we develop a device to harvest energy from impinging water droplets by using an architecture that comprises a polytetrafluoroethylene [Teflon] film on an indium tin oxide substrate plus an aluminium electrode,” they explain in their new paper in Nature.
Triboelectricity itself is an old concept. The word means “friction electricity”—from the Greek tribo, to rub or wear down, which is why a diatribe tires you out—and dates back a long, long time. Static…
