Articles by Sarah K. Burkhalter

And even more fun if it’s recycled

This site is pretty awfully designed, but I like it because it's called news.com.com. Hee hee. Oh, and also because it brings news(.com.com) of an Israeli firm that's experimenting with extracting oil from sewage sludge.

"Sludge is a major problem in the world. Cities pay $50 a ton or more to get rid of it," [Eco Energy CEO Amit Mor] said. "And it's good-quality light oil."

A ton of high-quality sludge can produce about 30 kilograms, or 66 pounds, of such oil, Mor said. The process can also convert pulp, agricultural waste, plastics and tires into oil.

Recycling: good. Producing conventional oil: bad. Chances of this going mainstream: about as good as the chances of fighting global warming with floating white plastic islands.

Where in the U.S. are they?

MapMuse can help you find the country's ethanol 85 and biodiesel filling stations.

650ish E85 stations, 350 biodiesel stations, and counting.

From Poop to Pod

Forest dump If you drop some logs in a national park and no restroom cleaners are around to hear it, does it make a sound? We’ll soon find out, as budget crunches are forcing cutbacks on park luxuries … like clean bathrooms. Said one pooper of a Yosemite restroom, “It looked like nothing had been […]

A cool technology, and fun-sounding to boot.

So, like, this is cool and stuff:

A water desalination system using carbon nanotube-based membranes could significantly reduce the cost of purifying water from the ocean. The technology could potentially provide a solution to water shortages both in the United States, where populations are expected to soar in areas with few freshwater sources, and worldwide, where a lack of clean water is a major cause of disease.

The new membranes, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), could reduce the cost of desalination by 75 percent, compared to reverse osmosis methods used today, the researchers say. The membranes, which sort molecules by size and with electrostatic forces, could also separate various gases, perhaps leading to economical ways to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.

Cleans up water, works against climate change. An amazing technology indeed. And will it come into widespread use anytime soon? My Magic 8 Ball (which always tilts toward skepticism) is skeptical.