Early this summer on 27.05.2015, Esko Tusa was granted the Finnish Engineering Award for his persistent and far seeing work on NURES® (Nuclide Removal Solutions) [2]. Why was it worth the award and why only 35 years after the innovation? The answer is that the world has changed and become more environmentally conscious. The invention removes radioactive contaminants from water, at thousand times the efficiency of its most competitors. When it was developed during the 1980s, it was made with cost efficiency in mind for Loviisa Nuclear Plant. At the time, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents had yet to happen. Today, deployed NURES® units are used to purify 1800 cubic meters of contaminated wastewater daily [7] at Fukushima and elsewhere, with approximately 60 users [1]. The system is based on ion-exchange and one kilogram of the ion exchange mass can process hundreds of tons of water, leaving only one kilogram of solid radioactive waste behind. The full system consists of three ion-exchange beds, separate ones for Cesium, Strontium and Cobolt and it can be combined with regular methods, such as active carbon filtering, mechanical filtering etc. Despite its initial narrow focus of handling contaminated water at Loviisa NPP more efficiently, the sustained development past the initial deployment has let the innovation evolve into something that can be used or modified to suit any task where decontaminating water is needed. For example, mobile units, see figure 1, were used to purify primary circuit waters of nuclear-powered ice breakers in Murmansk [8]. It is this long-term development that created a method of decontaminating water to potable levels in almost any circumstance that granted Tusa the Finnish Engineering Award for his lifework. It should be noted that other contaminated substances can also be purified in this matter, assuming they are water soluble. To not sound like a broken marketing record, it should be highlighted that Fukushima still sadly has an issue of stored radioactive water in the form of Tritium which is not covered by the ALS system in place [3]. NURES® and the picture provided are property of Fortum Corporation. Usage based on the terms presented on the legal notice for press releases and other documents for public use on Fortum Ltd website [6]. Sources accessed on 6th of October, 2015:
It is true that nowadays everybody wants to stay closer with their friends and relatives, wherever they are, but sometimes it is not possible, because of some reasons. One of them is that your smartphone is just “dead” and you start from that point looking for a place to charge your gadget, which sometimes, could be too difficult to do so. However, let’s forget about the negative sides and go directly to the solution. In that case, people all over the world are looking for portable device, which could fit into a backpack, and that particular device could charge your smartphone or laptop couple of times in any situation without a socket. Next fact is that it should be environmentally friendly and saves energy. Taking everything into consideration, portable solar recharger is one of the easiest solution nowadays. PICTURE 1. Portable solar rechargers (Smirniotis M.) As it has been tested, a basic solar charger could refill 13,000 mAh battery pack in about 8 hours, in addition it could directly charge smart phone and fill most of its 2,000 mAh battery in less than 90 minutes (Smirniotis M., 2015). Meanwhile, there are many different models of solar chargers right on the market. To choose the best one for yourself, take the following into consideration: power, portability and price. So, if you want a compact charger with a high power you need to pay a lot for it (Pierotti et al, 2015). It is true that there are different options to charge your phone. For instance, use the charger, which is consuming the electricity. From the environment point of view, it can be said that the solar chargers are environmentally friendly gadgets. The fact, that they are not consuming electric power, and use only energy taken from the sun, prove that case. It has been calculated, that the general 5 Watt/hour phone battery and a 2-Watt output solar charger you would needed 3 hours of direct sunlight to fully charge your battery. In addition, if you have 18 Watt solar charger, only 30 minutes is nedded. Even a solar phone charger could be done at home. Start by taking apart your solar lamp, the top usually snaps off, and then you have to unscrew the portion with the led and circuit board, unscrew the circuit board, and the light sensor, being careful not to damage any of the wires. Use the pliers to cut away excess plastic from around the battery casing, and to remove the on/off switch. You want it intact. After that, carefully remove the solar panel. Discard the led. Repeat with each solar light. Solder the battery compartments positive to negative, in a chain using some extra wire. Remove the part of your charger that plugs into your phone, soldering the wires to each end of your solar panel chain. Glue the panels around the record. Charge your phone using the sun (Goal Zero, 2013). All in all, solar power from a portable panel is still generally more expensive. However, if you do not have access to the grid and you need to power your device, a portable solar panel is often the only option. Finally, when you are generating your own power, you usually use way less. The usage of such charger is growing and in the nearest future, the prices will fall down and such devises will be easily accessible in the Third World countries. References Goal zero. 2013. GoalZero company http://www.goalzero.com/. Read Sept. 2015. Pierotti L and McNamara C. Jan. 2015. How to Choose the Best Solar Charger. OutdoorGearLab, Outdoor products. http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/. Read Oct. 2015. http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/Solar-Charger-Reviews/Buying-Advice. Smirniotis M. July 2015. The Best Portable Solar Battery Charger. The Wirecutter, a list of the best gadgets. http://thewirecutter.com/. Read Oct. 2015. http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-portable-solar-battery-pack/. ”This is Finland, we don’t have sun here” Just a few years back this was a very common sentence from basic Finnish house owner when discussing about the possibility of solar panels or solar collectors. In 2005 the amount of Finnish households that had solar collectors was minimal, but in recent years the amount has increased drastically. The technology to collect energy from the sun in a small scale is one of those fields that has advanced and is still advancing fast in recent years. The trend in recent years has been that the price has been dropping by 20% every other year while the efficiency has been improving by 40% at the same time, this has changed the tone in many Finnish consumers. When in the past there were doubts about whether or not the expensive system will pay itself back in time. Nowadays, good estimates depending on the place you live and some external factors are that it takes roughly 5-7 years for it to pay itself back, which makes solar collectors a viable choice, since their estimated life span is around 15 years. Of course solar collectors by themselves are not sufficient to warm up a whole apartment or summer cottage but when used in combination with wood or electricity they can be very efficient. As the older population (40-60 years old) has become more familiar with the Internet the pros and cons of the solar technology have become more known. The industry still suffers a bit from old preconceptions coming from early 2000 when the technology was young and trying its wings on a small scale. The systems back then were not reliable or very effective so most people who invested ridiculous amounts of money ended up getting a bad deal and rumors started to spread. On the positive side nowadays since solar collectors are becoming increasingly popular those who try them and are pleased will then boast to their neighbors who in turn will start to develop interest in the subject. All in all there is a long way for the technology to become a dominant form of heating in Finland but the potential is there. After the prices drop a bit more and efficiencies get better this will be a viable option for even the most skeptic house owner. The biggest challenge in the recent years will be whether to invest now or wait a year or two and invest then. Good bad phosphorus Phosphorus is an essential structural component in almost every forms of life. In human body phosphorus is needed all the way from cell and bones formation to energy production (1). So how something so essential to us can also be dangerous? Well, in natural phosphorus cycle plant captures phosphorus as a nutrient from soil then insect or algae eats the plant. After this animal consumes insects and algae as nutrient and eventually animal dies and its body and phosphorus in the body decomposes back to soil. But modern agriculture is another story… Phosphorus in agriculture The problems with phosphorus appear when phosphorus is mined and used as a fertilizer in order to guarantee good crop which can feed our growing population. From soil phosphorus leaches to river and lake waters due to over use and rains. This leads to growth of algae population that used to be limited by lack of this nutrient. Even though algae is just as important in the food chain as phosphorus, when its population grows oxygen consumption in the water raises hand in hand with it. Lack of oxygen leads to fish mortality (2). The beautiful irony in the fact that we destroy our food resources, at the same time as we are trying to make it bigger has been troubling minds of scientist and engineers for a while. Luckily answer have been also found. Collecting phosphorus with Päästösieppari (Discharge catcher) Phosphorus has been collected from our waste water in treatment plants for tens of years already by making water dissolved phosphorus form precipitate in reaction with ferric sulphate. But collecting it from lakes with tolerable costs has been much trickier. 1.8.2012 Project RAKI was started in order to decrease amount of phosphorus in lake waters. Just like in water treatment plants, Päästösieppari (discharge catcher) is mainly based on sedimentation reaction between ferric sulphate and phosphorus. In All-season chemical feeding picture (below) you can see the whole process of eutrophicated water turning back into natural water and valuable phosphorus turning into sludge that we can re-use in farming again. And all this is powered by gravity (3). Results and future
The results from RAKI project have been successful. Reduction of dissolved phosphorus has been excellent medians from two lakes has been 94,8% and 85,2%. Nutrient rich sludge that comes as a ‘’side product’’ of cleaning the lake is not capable in competing with commercial fertilizers but when phosphorus mines of our planet start to dry out recycled phosphorus comes more and more valuable (4). References
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