Not-So-Glamorous Technologies Still Green

November 12, 2006 – Vol. 11 No. 34

NOT-SO-GLAMOROUS TECHNOLOGIES STILL GREEN.

Much of the focus on finding ways to cut energy consumption or switch to renewables is often on sexy wind turbines, stylish solar systems, and the slick technology of hybrid, fuel cell or electric cars. But the real work of utilizing green energies often falls into the hands of hard working but fairly simple technologies: A pellet stove, for instance, provides carbon-neutral heating.

There are always new, relatively simple products coming down the pike. For instance:

Northwest Manufacturing, of Red Lake Falls, Minnesota has launched the WoodMaster PLUS Natural Energy (tm) furnace. It’s not another wood-fired furnace that would be relegated to the basement. It’s a biofueled outdoor furnace that will run on corn, wood or paper pellets, as well as barley, beet pulp, sunflowers, dried cherry pits, soybeans and you name it, as long as it can be fed through the furnace’s hopper.

The furnace heats water for radiant heating systems (in floor, baseboard or radiators) or domestic hot water. Through an additional heat exchanger it can also provide hot air for forced hot air heating systems. Hot water made from burning pelletized lawn clippings can also provide hot water to a pool or spa, or circulate hot water under a driveway to melt the snow.

(Pelletized lawn clippings aren’t really available. Are they?)

Northwest says heating costs can be reduced by as much as 75 percent and the PLUS burns so cleanly that it’s neighborhood friendly.

(Though neighborhoods with restrictions on what homeowners can put in their yards might get unfriendly when it comes to the outhouse-looking metal shed that encloses Woodmaster PLUS.)

Delphi Corporation of Troy, Michigan, better known for its car parts than house parts, announced this week that it has started production of the Delphi Heat and Mass Exchanger (HMX) -- the "engine" behind new water-fueled, high-efficiency air conditioners.

According to Delphi, the HMX is a rethink of the very common water evaporative cooler (sometimes called swamp cooler) found mostly in dry climates around the world. The difference in the technology is that the air used to cool the home or business in the HMX is not in contact with water, thus humidity inside the building is the same as the outside air.

It’s quite different from conventional air conditioning systems as well. The air cooling the building is fresh air from the outside, not recycled interior air. And there is no refrigerant and no compressor in the system. Fairly simple technology, in other words.

The technology works the best in dry climates and the hotter it gets (the faster the evaporation) the cooler the air inside. But damper climates, such as the East Coast of the US, can use the technology for other work such as energy recovery in industrial applications.

The air-cooling thermodynamic cycle in the HMX is known as the Maisotsenko Cycle or M-Cycle named after Dr. Valeriy Maisotsenko, chief scientist of Idalex Technologies which developed the technology .

Delphi says that air cooling systems using the technology should have an Energy Efficiency Rating (EER) in excess of 40, compared with the best conventional systems that have a rating of about 13. The efficiency gains could cut 75 percent from air conditioning bills.

The HMX components from Delphi will be provided to Cooler Air Systems LLC (CAS) of Arvada, Colo., which will be world's exclusive manufacturer of these of heat and mass exchangers. Products will be marketed by affiliate Coolerado Corporation.

The units being sold are modular and can he combined to cool any size building.

The performance of the HMX was confirmed by the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL), Pacific Gas & Electric, and the Sacramento Municipal District.

Visit Northwest Manufacturing at http://www.woodmaster.com/ Delphi at http://www.delphi.com/ , Idalex at http://www.idalex.com/ , Coolerado at http://www.coolerado.com/ .