R&D News: Firefly-inspired LEDs

Personal Interest Background

 As of late, I have been fascinated by LED light technology because this technology has the potential to drastically reduce energy consumption for lighting solutions. In this quest for more efficient lighting, I found 40W replacement LED lights that use only 6 Watts while producing 400 lumens equivalent to a 66.6 lumens/W. That's not bad considering that an equivalent CFL consumes at least 9 Watts which equals a 44.4 lumens/W. The cutting edge of technology commercially available can be seen in the Phillips L-Prize LED 60 W replacement LED light which produces 940 lumens with only 10W (94 lumens/W!!!). For comparison, CFLs at this range have an efficiency of roughly 61.3 lumens/W. It appears that LED technology still has room to improve which it must to produce lighting solutions at the 100W replacement range. Companies like Osram, GE or Phillips have all announced their first entrance into these market segments. However, the consumption ranges from 20-27 W and the efficiency is at most 80 lumens/W (1600 lumens for 20 Watts). This is only 10% better than current CFLs that have an output of roughly 70 lumens/W (1600 lumens/23Watts). CFLs seem to get more efficient with increasing light output requirements whereas the challenges to keep LEDs cool seems to decrease efficiency at the high end.

In Other Words: Energy from Floating Algae Pods (Ted Talk)

Here is an interesting Tech Talk on Algae Pods which has a significant amount of research done already.

 

Sustainable Living – One Step At A Time: Water Conservation

I want to apologize to my readers for not having posted anything in a long time. Ironically, working within the sustainable chemicals field sometimes makes posting about new topics even harder. I have become even more busy over the last couple of months. But my determination to keep this page going has strengthened even more since I have become a father. And the reason for this is simply that preserving the environment or at least helping to setup a frame-work that makes sustainable living possible in the future has become even more important to me now that my son was born.

Concept Discussion: What is Forest Agronomy?

I listened to an interesting podcast a few weeks ago and just wanted to share what I learned by listening to "Wissenschaft im Brennpunkt" which translates into "Science in Focus". Today's topic: What is forest agronomy?

Following is a partial transcript and summary of this podcast.