Statement blog paper

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Dear readers,

I found a very interesting video on TED. Most of the things you will already know if you followed my blog. But i think that the part of batteries is very interesting. And for this applications wireless energy can bring a great solution. i know that it will be for in the future that you see such a system in your kitchen or living room but i’m pretty sure that it will. At the end you see a working wireless system, i hope that it can give you an image about what already possible is with wireless charging.

The first wireless transformator

Dear reader,

Everybody knows Nicolas Tesla. He was de scientist who invented the alternating current. But that was not without any annotation. the big competitor of Tesla was Thomas Edison. They fought the “war of currents”. On the one side you had Edison with his DC – current. On the other side you had Tesla with the ac – current, and they both wanted that their technology would be implemented in the american electricity transportation net. Victory was for Tesla at the end of the war, because Ac-current is much more efficient to transport than dc-current.
Here a funny movie about the two’s rivalry.

After that Tesla went his own way and started a lab in colorado. Their he could do his experiments with his high voltage and high frequency current. He chose that place because the polyphase alternating current power distribution system had been introduced there and he had associates who were willing to give him all the power he needed without charging for it.
He builded an enormous transformator wo went true the roof of is lab. witch that he could produce electrical ignitions of several meter long. The produced magnetic field was so big that he could light up bulbs at 100 meters distance.

But The people of Colorado started to complain because of the noise at night due to the discharge of the transformation. Also horses where hurt because they conducted the electricity due to their iron hoofs. Eventually when Tesla had burned up the generator of the electricity company the authorities decided to put an hold on his experiments.

He had plans to build a tower to transport electricity true the air. Like you can see in the picture above. But due to lack of investors his plans where never achieved. That was the end of Tesla’s dream to transport electricity true the air.

Water treatment, why it’s needed and what can we do about it?

Without human activities, water treatment is the result of a cycle of natural cleaning and pollution. If waterplants, algae, organisms die they pollute the water with dead organic matter. In the presence of oxygen, aerobic bacteria will make sure to degrade this material to CO₂, H₂O, NO₃^–,SO₄^2-, PO₄^3- and new microbial biomass. Bacteria will know a local growth and these bacteria will play their part as food for other small micro-organisms(protozoa). At same time plants will grow because of the added amount of nutriënts, sunlight and CO₂. Together with these micro-organisms they form the feed for lots of fish. When those fish die, they form dead organic matter. So the cycle is closed.

You can imagine the impact if one of those steps fail due to human activities. The cycle will stop working and problems will add up.(see my post on eutrophication).

This ability of nature should no be seen as our own recyle bin. The ability of surface water(lakes, rivers,…) to take care of organic material is easily disturbed. The growth of cities and industry has made it impossible for nature to be our garbage disposal bin. In Vlaanderen, the amount of organic matter and other forms of water pollution, greatly exceeds the ability of the natural water treatment. To protect our natural waters, we need to make sure to clean our dirty water to a certain level. All current water treatment processes are based on processes that occur naturally in rivers and lakes. The only difference is that the parameters of certain processes are optimized and thereby a small part of the cycle ocurring in the natural waters is intensified.

So what can we do?

Pre-water treatment processes at your home aren’t really needed, unless you aren’t connected to a sewage line. If you’re not connected to the sewers, a septic pit is a necessity. If you are connected to a sewage line, a septic pit isn’t necessary and it’s even better to not have it, since the water treatment installation of your city is designed to take care of unprocessed waste water.

So what else can we do? The amount of drinking water will be our main concern. We have to be very easy on our water usage and it’s also a great way to save some money and in the future lifes;)

A lot of tips have been circulating throughout the years and you will propably know most of them, but do you use them?

–          Use economical shower heads and make your shower time short

–          Never leave your water running

–          Heat your water as close as possible to where you use it, to avoid spilling water when waiting for it to heat up.( Even better: recycle it)

–          Invest in a pump and a rain water well

–          Adjust the amount of water you flush through your toilet to a minimum(How? Make your water reservoir smaller)

–          …

Do you have any better tips?

For inspiration check these links:

http://www.dewatergroep.be/nl/blocks/760/drinkwater.html there’s an app here to calculate the amount of water you use.

http://www.watersavingtips.org/tips.html here you have some water saving tips.

Eutrophication, a consequence of water pollution

I promised to talk about some of the consequences of water pollution and one that is well known by now is eutrophication. For a quick summary watch the following video, if you want more details, just keep on reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGqZsSuG7ao

Eutrophication is the exponential growth of algae and other waterplants. This growth is caused by high concentrations of fosfates and nitrates(starting from concentration of 0.2-0.3 mg/L N and 0.01-0.02 mg/L P) in the surface water. Because of the large growth all other life inside the water is suffocated. During the day the plants use fotosynthesis and large amounts of oxygen are produced, but at night this process is reversed. The plants keep on breathing and start using oxygen, as a result the concentration of oxygen can hit critically low values for fish life and other plants. When the algae die and are digested by bacteria, oxygen levels will decrease even more, but the nutriënt level(phosphates and nitrogen) will increase once more because of the degradation. These nutriënts will again increase the growth algae. By now you can see that it’s some sort of circle that keeps going and going.

Fish death due to water pollution

The average composition of algae’s biomass can be represented by the chemical formula C₁₀₆H₁₈₀O₄₅N₁₆P. The growth of celmaterial can be described as:

106 CO₂  + 80,5 H₂O + 16 HNO₃ + H₃PO₄ + Energy —->C₁₀₆H₁₈₀O₄₅N₁₆P +149,75 O₂.

Eutrophication is mainly a problem for slow waters like lakes and slow flowing rivers.

A way to keep eutophication from happening is by keeping the fosfate concentration low. Why?

Lowering Nitrogen concentration from pollution sources is good but most algae have the ability to take up nitrogen from the atmosphere when other sources are low. So inhibiting growth through low concentration of nitrogen won’t help. Also phosphate removal easier than nitrogen removal.

Sources of phosphates:

–          Human feces and urine( 1,4 g P per inhabitant per day)

–          Industries producing fosfates and bio-industries

–          Water run off from fertilised grounds

–          Some old detergents used peoples homes( 1,5- 2 g/inhabitant.day)

–          Agriculture

Interesting: Adjusting the food for animals in agriculture could lower the amount of fosfates present. Fosfor is a vital component in the food of animals. Theoretically the amount of fosfor present in normal plant material should be enough to fulfill the needs of the animals eating those plants. But for pigs and chickens there’s an amount that’s not digestable, so farmers add extra fosfor to the the feed. The addition of an enzyme fytase to the feed, that degrades those hard to digest fosfates, could provide a solution to reduce fosfate levels in the feces of those animals.

Further reading:

http://books.google.be/books/about/Control_of_Eutrophication_in_Inland_Wate.html?id=MgAfAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytase

Dissolved oxygen and organic matter polution sources:

In my previous posts, I talked about some parameters that are applied in waste water treatment installations. This post is all about the dissolved oxygen and how it’s influenced by polution sources of organic matter.

First let’s talk about the different sources. In studies they make a difference between point and non point pollution sources(see figure ). An outlet of a pipe from industry or homes are considered point sources. The runoff of water from fields with kettle or crops are considered non point pollution sources, these sources tend to carry a lot of nutrients and organic matter.

Point and Non point pollution sources

A lot of studies have been conducted on the influence of these pollution sources to the ecological state of surface waters(rivers, lakes,..). The degradation of organic matter in a river starting from a point pollution source has been described in terms of dissolved oxygen, nutriënt and organic matter concentration over the distance from the point source. The curve obtained from plotting Dissolved Oxygen(DO) vs distance from pollution source is called the “DO sag curve”.

DO Sag Curve Schematic

The dissolved oxygen as you can see in the figure above, directly influences the organisms living inside the river. The curve for BOD(biochemical oxygen demand) is also present in the above picture. As previously explained the BOD is a measure for the amount of oxygen that is needed by bacteria to digest the present organic matter, so indirectly it’s a measure for the amount of organic pollution. So now it’s easy to understand why the dissolved oxygen lowers(oxygen sag) and the BOD lowers as well. The amount of organic materials from the point source is digested and oxygen is used to do so. Below I have a few examples:

General equation: organic matter + O₂ –(Bacteria)–> CO₂ + H₂O

General equation for BOD: glucose + 6 O₂ –(Bacteria)–> 6 CO₂ + 6 H₂O ( 1 g glucose consumes 1,07 g O₂)

General equation for nitrogen(nutriënt): NH₄⁺ + 2 O₂ –(Bacteria)–> NO₃ + H₂O + 2H⁺( 1 g NH₄⁺  consumes 4,57 g O₂)

As you can see it’s possible that the oxygen concentration gets to low and fish can’t life in those conditions. Pollution sources containing large amounts of organic matter and nitrogen can lead to fish deaths, especially in slow running water.

For example: eutrophication is a direct result of pollution sources containing large amounts of phosphates, nitrates and organic matter.(more on that in a later post).

For further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streeter-Phelps_equation

And a DO sag calculator applet:

http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/maidment/gishydro/ferdi/webedu/webdosag/webdosag.html

Still a long way to go?

The breakthrough of electric cars definitely  not only depends on the technology issues. The purchase of an electric car is more expensive, in spite of the fact that your driving cost is a multiple times less than a combustion car.

To compensate this additional cost, some countries give tax benefits when buying an electric car. For example: in Norway is an electric car cheaper than a combustion car!

Unfortunately, Belgium doesn’t want to support electric mobility enough. ASBE (the Belgian section of AVERE, the European organization that suppliers, importers and distributors of electric vehicles unites) states that the 15% tax benefit on the purchase amount isn’t sufficient to close the gap between an electric and a combustion car. This is a sad fact cause electric mobility also offers opportunities to local economy, improve the living environment and can perfectly use renewable energy sources in order to limit climate change. Belgium would in this way be more independent of oil.

In the beginning of this year, all parties involved signed a National masterplan with the intention to support electric mobility. Instead of supporting this, the Belgian government toke a step back by not maintaining the tax benefits.

This is sad news… but not kills the electric car. We need bigger countries like Norway who support electric mobility! After all… Belgium is a small country…

To finish this blog, I want to show you a special electric sports car.

It has over 1,000 hp and accelerates from 0 to 100 in 2.8 seconds… said enough? Interesting fact is that some parts (lights, steering wheel and interior light strips) are made by Materialise, which is a 3d printing company located in Haasrode. You can find more info of this nice car on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimac_Concept_One

Reference article blog: http://www.knack.be/nieuws/auto/belgie-keert-elektrische-mobiliteit-de-rug-toe/article-4000220024080.htm

Sci-fi is already here!

Hello fellow bloggers,

I regret to inform you all that this will be my last post (for now). Maybe I’ll pick up blogging again when all my deadlines are over and I have time.

In this final post, I’d like to do a quick recap of the ongoing evolution in computer use. As I showed you all in previous post, we live in fast times, 20 years ago cellphone’s didn’t exist and 1 megabyte was an infinite amount data storages. We lived to see the rise and fall of the compact disk and most people don’t even know what a floppy disk is anymore. We even were the pioneers of Walkmans and chat-rooms.

Today, technology has evolved at an incredible speed. I’d like to state Moore’s law to illustrate this.

Moore’s law is the observation that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore’s_law)

Simply said, Moore’s law says that in computer technology, every 2 years the number of electronical components on a chip double. This means that every 2 years you can build the same computer on a chip that’s half the size. Or make a computer that is twice as fast on the same chip!

Now we all know where we came from, and where we are now with everybody using smartphones and tablets. If you can imagine it, there problaby exists an application for it. A more important question is what’s next? 

To be completely honest, I don’t know and I don’t think anyone really knows. Experts at microsoft predicted that touchscreens will be integrated in all platforms. Going from wall’s, to desks and even windows! Touch everywhere! If you have seen Cloud Atlas already, in the future there is a scene in wich an appartment seems to have a nice view. However it’s just a screen that gives you this illusion.

= Table tablet

But it goes further! Samsung predics something similar, they really are taking the screen to a whole new dimension! In the next movie this is nicely illustrated.

Fancy huh? did you know technology was this far? Do you think this technology is far away to be implemented in everyday stuff?

The world is a dynamic place in everyway imaginable. I remember the time were all phones were alike, color screens where sci-fi and the only thing that made your cell phone any different from others was the provider you were with. By the way, did you know that when SMS was invented, they didn’t think it would have any succeses and the creators didn’t even bothered to patent it?

As I said before, I don’t know what the future will bring. Maybe the koreans will blow up the earth, maybe we will live to see cars flying, interaction trough google-glasses, cloning, cyborgs and more.

It’s no use living in the past or future, but we live today. What started as a blog about Android and iOS became a reflection about evolution in technology related to cell phones. Nothing is certain, live today!

I wish you all good luck with your master thesis.

Peace out!

Raf

Volatile fatty acids(VFA’s): indicators of process imbalance in anaerobic waste water treatment

Jeroen Boonen mentioned the importance of VFA in the interview I previously posted. In this post I’ll talk about the importance of this parameter.

Since the start of implementations of anaerobic processes, research has been done to find a reliable measurable parameter to check the metabolic state of the process. This parameter should be easy to determine. Early studies showed that VFA accumulation in anaerobic reactors was the result of process imbalance, not the cause of inhibition, thus justifying the use of VFA as process indicators.

Biogas production is key in an anaerobic reactor and thus is a good parameter to check. The methanogens, the bacteria that are responsible for the methane production are a little more vulnerable to pH and Temperature changes. Temperature is kept at an optimum artificially in real large installations. pH could be seen as a parameter for process imbalance, but when a huge drop occurs, you are propably to late to intervene and it will take days before your reactor is back up to speed. Most anaerobic reactors are naturally bufferd, so huge pH drops mean huge problems.

What are the main causes of a process imbalance, since pH and temperature are monitored constantly? Changes of the influent are the main culprit: hydraulic organic overloading(this means you are feeding to much organic material to the reactor), the presence of inorganic or organic toxins, substrate changes,…

What are VFA’s?

It is an end product of one of the bacteria present in the anaerobic digestion process. It is also a substrate for the methanogens, the bacteria that produce the methane gas.

Check this link for more information:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_fatty_acids

Why check the VFA’s?

The anaerobic digestion process is a cycle of different bacteria working together, each doing their part in digesting the organic matter. All different bacteria have their own optimum working conditions and if the operating conditions fall outside their working range, the process will stop working correctly

If the VFA’s concentration gets to high, it can influence the pH(once the natural buffer of the reactor is gone). When the pH drops below 6.5, the activity of the methanogens will stop instantly and there will be no biogas. The VFA’s will not stop increasing, since there are no longer any bacteria active(methanogens) that degrade the VFA’s.

I hope this explains it.

Further reading:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00218466#

wireless charging, solution to many problems

Dear readers

To come back to the fact that the efficiency of wireless charging is less than the classic way of charging your devices. Wireless charging makes it possible to transfer energy without wires between the device and the charging station. This bring u a lot of opportunities.

Like your automatic toothbrush. It is possible to completely close the body of the brush what makes it waterproof, completely safe for electrocution. A lot of nice benefits to make your device more reliable and safe.

It’s also a solution for the newest technology like “the smart basketball”

http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/powerhouse/archive/2013/03/12/march-mania-with-wireless-charging.aspx

In the movie you see the possibilities of the system. But this all wouldn’t be possible without wireless charging.