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By Jorge Moreno, Environmental and Building Technologies, Frost & Sullivan With more end users focusing on reducing energy costs, energy-saving water-to-water heat pump (WTWHP) chillers are being deployed to reduce a facility's utility bills. A WTWHP chiller is a water-cooled chiller that is designed to produce hot water at a specified temperature. The use of a WTWHP chiller is very similar to a conventional centrifugal chiller except for the fact that it uses two compressors, slightly different piping configurations, and more advanced controls in order to balance cooling and heating loads. In a conventional chiller, cold water is produced for comfort cooling, and the hot water that is extracted from the refrigeration process goes into a cooling tower and is released into the atmosphere. In a WTWHP chiller, this hot water is captured and relocated to a second heating stage, where the temperature is raised and the water is used as a heating source for a building's heating requirements. The key strength of WTWHP chillers is the high coefficient of performance (COP) that translates into significant energy savings and a shorter payback period. On the other hand, the key weakness is that it can only provide such benefits in a narrow range of applications primarily due to its coincident need for cooling and heating requirements throughout the year to ensure efficiency. A coincident need means that the application demands sizable water heating load along with the typical high cooling requirements in summer, and a sizable chilled water load along with the typical heating requirements during winter. Cooling output is directly dependent on the demand for heating, and vice versa. Consequently, in the absence of sufficient heating requirements, there is only a limited amount of cooling that can be produced. Any excess heating or cooling cannot be stored and hence, it is critical to align the cooling with the expected heating requirements. Coincidentally, in the absence of suf

Oh, it can be done. There are no scientific laws that say you can't run a car on water. In fact, a Japanese company is the latest to claim they have pulled it off. See the video here: Water-fuel car unveiled in Japan However, what you can't do is run a car on water without energy inputs greater than you get from splitting the water.

I've been mindful of the amount of water I use when making a pot of coffee ever since learning that one-third of the tap water used for drinking in North America is actually used to brew our daily cups of joe-and that if each of us avoided wasting just one cupful of coffee a day, we could save enough water over the course of a year to provide two gallons to every one of the more than 1.1 billion people who don't have access to freshwater at all.

Penn State University scientists and the Virginia Commonwealth University have found something that is the ultimate dream and hope of alternative energy researchers: use water as a fuel. Their findings show that water can be split into its two constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, at room temperature and without any external energy addition. For that matter, they expose water to selected nano-engineered clusters of aluminum, acting as catalysts. What's shocking and interesting is the new approach, detaching from the centuries-old premise that water can only be split by electrolysis, using a high amount of energy.

"The owner of a defunct uranium mine leaking pollution along a creek that flows into a Denver Water reservoir has launched a cleanup as ordered, state officials confirmed Thursday. Cotter Corp. installed a system that can pump and treat up to 50 gallons per minute of contaminated water from inside its Schwartzenwalder Mine, west of Denver in Jefferson County. Water tests in 2007 recorded uranium levels in mine water exceeding the human health standard by 1,000 times. Elevated levels in Ralston Creek also were recorded. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ordered the action. State natural-resources officials also are monitoring the mine, which produced uranium for weapons and nuclear power plants."

It seems cruelly ironic that tapping into Southern Nevada's vast solar energy potential could slowly drain our desert. Traditional solar thermal power plants that use wet cooled technology require millions of gallons of water over time in the process of converting solar rays into clean, renewable power for our community. Southern Nevada received some good economic news last month when Solar Millennium, a division of one of the world's top solar power generators, announced new plans to use a "dry-cooling" system on two proposed solar power plants in Amargosa Valley, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This dry-cooling system will use 90 percent less water than previously planned.

Normally these academics would be fine without our fascination. They weren't looking for glory when they decided to study organisms most people either can't see or wish they hadn't. But when the Deepwater Horizon exploded in April 2010, our collective bias toward cute big creatures started to matter a great deal. That's because the instant the spill-cam was switched off and it became clear that there would be no immediate mass die-offs among dolphins and pelicans, at least not on the scale of theExxon Valdez spill deaths, most of us were pretty much on to the next telegenic disaster. (Chilean miners down a hole-and they've got video diaries? Tell us more!)

"MIT professor Daniel Nocera earlier worked on a catalysts that can divide water molecules which can be utilized to store energy. "

taking advantage of energy-packed vortices that are formed when water flows past a cylindrical object, even at low speeds. Salmon and trout are known to leverage the force created by these naturally occurring water swirls so that they can swim upstream. A new mechanical device designed to economically harvest that energy and convert it into electricity could turn waterpower into a much larger part of the world's renewable-energy mix.

Scientists at the Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University in Maharashtra, India, say solar-powered water heating systems are the most efficient use of solar energy, providing a payback of two years and a lifespan of 20.

A recent study was published yesterday by researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute quantifying a bunch of different factors in water use in the energy industry. Some of the figures are staggering. Using America's current power mix, it takes up to 6,000 gallons of fresh water to keep a 60 watt light bulb lit for 12 hours a day for a year. Most of this energy is consumed as a cooling fluid at power plants.