Green Building Elements

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Two years ago Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and brought enormous devestation to the city and the region. Since then, numerous agencies and programs have been working on projects to rebuild and revitalize this region. An architect and online friend of mine wrote an excellent article about the recently publicized pictures for Global Green’s proposed Holy Cross development for the redevelopment of New Orleans.

This guest post is by Sarah Nagy. Sarah is in a position to be a much better critic of proposed New Orleans construction because she, too, lives in a hurricane-prone region (the Florida panhandle), and is directly acquainted with appropriate design for a Gulf Coast environment. I think her analysis offers an excellent review of this project, balancing the applause for what she calls ‘Sleek Contemporary Prefab Housing Solutions’ with some pointed criticisms of some of the apparent problems in the design.

The complete essay can be found on Sarah’s blog, Front Step Design.

[Disclaimer: As critical as this post will be, I want to applaud the folks involved with this project for their initial feelings of goodwill, their obvious effort, and all the good green decisions that lie under the aesthetics.]

To look at the images of these houses, Holy Cross is clearly located on the rural prairies of Southern Louisiana. Each of these houses will survey 20 acres. But enough sarcasm. The situation, to anyone who has been there, looks more like the pictures below (from The Urban Conservancy).

The Holy Cross graphics show a narrow house that might fit in an empty shotgun lot. It’d be nice if they showed other houses around it. It’d also be nice if they could ‘age’ the finishes - because as in the Urban Conservancy bottom left photo, everybody in town knows what the ordinary weather does to buildings, and that if those buildings don’t look more charming with peeled paint, mildew and warped wood, they’ll be regarded as slummy. Remember, new and shiny doesn’t last. ‘Sustainable’ means ‘last a long time’.

On to the building. I suppose that monoslope roof w/solar panels faces south, for best solar orientation. Fine. And the next building to the north, #98, its roof will reflect light into those clerestories of #100. Is that okay? Speaking of clerestories, are they operable, to heat-chimney the famously sultry New Orleans air through the structure? Doesn’t look like it. Let the house be a ‘machine for living’ - don’t make people live in a machine.

Cross-ventilation was all the pre-AC shotgun house had - again, windows don’t look large enough to encourage this effect? I can tell you from experience that awning windows suck at letting a breeze in. How about a nice double-or triple-hung with the top sash up against the ceiling, like those oldies in the French Quarter? Examine historic solutions and benefit from generations of testing.

Daylighting: You’re okay here, mostly due to the skinnyness of the form. Good. Overhang on the south side looks pretty good for summer - but your heat gain on the east/west upstairs is going to be tremendous. Better spec solar shades and maybe some sort of awning. However, that south overhang looks too deep for winter heat gain, and there isn’t enough glass on that side to get it. But perhaps there’s enough appliances and people to heat the house in the winter. It does actually get cold enough for central heat in New Orleans. Plan for all expected extremes, not just the famous ones.

Materials: All those thin horizontal slats had better not be local pine, since they’ll warp beyond recognition. And if they’re exotic, you’ve blown your green credential. Perhaps they’re recycled something. Foam insulation, BluWood, PVs, water cisterns, recycled flooring, low-VOC paints = all good. Fiber-cement siding~ iffy. Great for durability and users know what to do with it (paint it! not too often!), but the Portland cement manufacturing process is hugely polluting, and the stuff is awfully heavy to cart around the country. Do they make this stuff local to New Orleans? I don’t know. At least they can bring it in directly from the port. Pursue ‘technological improvements’, but with skepticism.

Systems: A SEER of 10??? [Referring to the energy efficiency rating for the air conditioning equipment.] Hello, what year is this? Illegal in Florida, where 13 is the minimum. 20 if you can afford it (and these government programs should be financing such purchases). Tankless water heaters, good - but solar water heaters are the same initial cost, can be multi-tasked for space heating, and are not mentioned. Use money efficiently, in every direction you can think of.

All that said, I am really an optimist (surprise!). Therefore I have perfect faith that people will pick and choose lots of wonderful ideas that are featured in this program and recombine them into better and better holistic solutions than any architect can devise by himself. Hold off the hurricanes for another couple years, and stand back - housing is finally going to change.

Link: Front Step Design

Construction, as many of you know by now, is one of the biggest single sources for waste and may be responsible for as much as 30% of the volume used in some landfills. And, because commercial space is turned over more frequently, the interior build-out of office space is one of the biggest sources of construction debris and waste. As companies change their staff, the space they occupy fluctuates, and often old spaces are torn out and new spaces built with different configurations.

Since the spaces in an office are not part of the structure (in most cases), the walls that divide offices and meeting rooms can be relatively quickly disassembled and rebuilt in a new configuration without affecting the building structure. This flexibility appeals to building owners and tenants alike, because space can be easily customized to meet the particular needs of any tenant. But it leads to an awful lot of waste, as well.

A new system of wall construction devised by Sean Dorsy, a graduate architecture student at The Catholic University of America, uses standard 4 x 8 sheets of plywood cut with slots so that the panel can be unfolded like an accordion to make a wall structure to replace standard stud construction.

This wall system provides savings of weight (138 lbs versus 245 lbs), wood (since plywood uses trees more efficiently than 2×4s), and money ($51.89 for the plywod system versus $55.89 for an equivalent section of stud wall). But also, unlike the standard wood stud construction, the system is much easier to disassemble, and therefore easier to re-use when the time comes to reconfigure the space.

A number of office furniture companies produce panelized wall systems that are used to allow businesses and building owners to quickly install and reconfigure spaces. These wall panels are also demountable and reusable, so that a space can be reconfigured rather than demolishing and rebuilding walls to reconfigure space as companies’ needs change or building tenants come and go. In addition to saving materials and reducing waste, these panelized systems are typically quicker to assemble.

Panelized systems have their drawbacks, as well. The look is usually not as nice as a gyp board wall, with more exposed seams and a less refined appearance. They are also frequently covered with vinyl wallcoverings, which have their own environmental costs many people would rather avoid.

Dorsy’s wall system makes somewhat less sense for residential uses, because in most typical home construction some of the interior walls are structural, and the walls are not moved as frequently. Building some walls with standard stud construction and others with the expanded plywood method might turn out to be more costly than having all walls built in the same fashion and from the same materials.

The problem with any system of demountable walls (whether using Dorsy’s system or a commercial panealized wall system or some other scheme) is that interior spaces rarely work out perfectly evenly within a space. If you have 4-foot-wide panels and you need 14 feet of wall, you still end up cutting pieces and producing waste. And then, when the time comes to reconfigure the space again, those already cut pieces are usually seen as waste and are consigned to the landfill at that point. Still, this typically produces less waste than a full build-out and tear-down would create.

via: Architect Magazine

Home Power magazine has collected information about a wide range of different wind turbines that are available for home or small business use. The 2007 Wind Turbine Buyer’s Guide is a small but information-packed article with a wealth of information about available turbines for small wind systems.

The review has information on 19 different small wind turbines ranging from 7 feet to 56 feet in diameter, including systems for battery charging, as well as batteryless grid-tie systems. The list concentrates on some of the more widely available turbines, though many other manufacturers are selling turbines these days. Models from Abundant Renewable Energy, Bergey Windpower, Eoltec Wind Turbines, Kestrel Wind Turbines, Proven Energy, Southwest Windpower, Vestas, and Wind Turbine Industries are included on the list.

"Small wind," in our definition, starts with turbines with rotors (turbine blades and hub) that are about 8 feet in diameter (50 square feet of swept area). These turbines may peak at about 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt; KW), and generate about 75 kilowatt-hours (KWH) per month with a 10 mph average wind speed. Turbines smaller than this may be appropriate for sailboats, cabins, or other applications that require only a small amount of electricity. But if you want a significant amount of energy, you need a rotor with significant swept area—it is, after all, the wind turbine’s "collector."

In addition to the comparisons, there is good information about what the various components of a wind turbine system are, explanations about how the rating information was gathered, and a short section on wind turbine basics, that briefly covers the internal workings of a wind turbine (like what a ‘yaw bearing’ does).

This guide certainly doesn’t substitute for more comprehensive guides about installing a wind turbine, but it provides the best comparative data on different models of wind turbines that I have found to date. The guide lists several comparative pieces of information about each model covered. A background graphic for each model shows the comparative size of its rotor area. In addition to providing the rotor diameter and the swept area, the guide lists the predicted energy output at average wind speeds for 8, 10, and 12 mph. This makes it very easy to do direct comparisons between two models.

Even more useful to many people who are wondering about whether or not to invest in a wind power system are the costs for these turbines (as well as an indication of what each system includes). These range from $1,995 for the 7-foot diameter Kestrel 800 (without controller or inverter) to $180,000 for the 56-foot diameter Vestas V-17 installed on a 132-foot tower. More than half the models included are under $10,000, and several of these are in the range of $3,000.

Application and warranty information for each model is also included. Some models designed for battery charging are suited for more different voltages than others are. A few models are suitable for either battery charging or batteryless grid-tied connection.

In addition to the information in this guide, you will need to collect a lot more information before going ahead and taking the plunge with a wind turbine for your own home or business. Knowing local regulations and requirements, as well as the wind profile for the property where you are considering putting a turbine, is also essential before spending thousands of dollars to put one up. But, since the turbine is the core element in a wind power system, an evaluation of the different models available is a good place to begin figuring out the right system for your own needs.

Links:
Wind Power Buyer’s Guide

Home Power Magazine

In this past weekend’s local newspaper’s Real Estate Section I saw an article with a number of “award winning” homes, including a 5 bedroom, 6,400 square foot house that was touted as the winner of a green building award. The principal basis for its green claim appeared to be that it was an Energy Star home.

A generation ago, that much square footage would have built a comfortable four-plex in which four families would have lived. Today, it is likely that this house will be occupied by a family of four.

To be truly green, the house cannot be thought of as a mere building whose impacts on the world stop three feet out from the face of the outside walls, but must take into consideration the impacts of the resources that will be consumed by dwelling in the house, as well. Life cycle, manner of use, and supporting infrastructure required are also matters that need to be examined.

The Audubon Society built one of the first explicitly green buildings in the country when they built a new headquarters building for themselves in the early 1990s. Rather than building a new structure on a greenfield site surrounded by trees and a lush lawn, they instead chose to renovate an existing 19th century building in downtown New York City. This choice allowed the use of existing infrastructure for building services and transportation, as well as the recycling of an existing structure and the savings of thousands of tons of material.

A new house built out in the exurbs quickly outweighs any green benefits it may have with the miles of roads that are built to reach the house and connect it to the existing grid of roads. The miles of travel required to travel between this house and the stores, workplaces and other places its inhabitants must go to quickly offset any potential benefits of greener construction for the house itself.

Some years ago, ISO 9000 quality management was all the rage in industry, but it only addressed the manufacturing process and following standards and procedures. It did nothing to address the fundamental quality of what was being produced. Within the system, it was completely possible to produce ISO 9000-compliant concrete life-jackets.

We need to encourage more rigorous expectations for terming something green. Lloyd Alter has written a couple of recent articles for TreeHugger touching on this same theme both for houses as well as for new commercial building. It’s a positive sign that more and more people are recognizing the value that green building labels offer. But, along with that, we are also seeing more and more cases like this where things are being little more than greenwashed by promoters who are trying to, as Lloyd so poetically put it, put lipstick on a pig.

Standards and systems such as LEED, Green Globes, Energy Star, and BuildAmerica can be used to improve the construction of a building as compared to a baseline standard, but the baseline is a pretty low standard. It is a tragedy that Energy Star is seen as a badge of distinction rather than being a requirement for all new construction. As Randy Croxton, the architect for the Audubon House renovation said, a building built to code only means that it is meeting the minimum standard. If you did anything less, it would be an illegal building.

The LEED for Homes final release version is reported to have a formula that will penalize “bigfoot” houses that are beyond a certain size by reducing the credit for each improvement, making it harder for such buildings to become LEED certified. A house that is 20% larger than the allowable size would only get 80% credit for each point of improvement within the system. This will help improve the credibility of the LEED-H standard and make it harder for outsize houses to be greenwashed with the LEED system.

Green building needs to be more about a wholesale approach to how the building is built and consideration about all of the impacts that the building has on the environment. It should be less about whether or not some labeling system can be gamed enough for it to earn a particular label.

The World at Home: A Household Guide to Building was produced by the Citizens Environmental Coalition, a non-profit environmental advocacy group based in Albany, NY. This is something between a book review and a website review, because this book is actually a 100 page PDF that is free for download. It is filled with good information about greening your house, particularly for remodeling or new construction. While it is full of good information, it is not overwhelmingly detailed or complicated. It is a well-balanced guide that covers its material with sufficient detail, but at the same time without becoming overly technical.

The guide is timely and up to date. (This is actually a recently revised second edition of the guide. The first edition was produced in 2004.) In discussing various materials or approaches to construction, the guide is very comprehensive in trying to include as many things as possible. Both the positives and the negatives behind each choice are addressed, and while the information is not exhaustive, it is an excellent starting point.

“This guide is meant to enable you to compare building materials and make your own educated choices to affordably seek out safer, more sustainable products. It is also meant to help you evaluate the larger life cycle implications of all the products that you buy and use.”

A section on “Talking with your Designer and Contractor about Building Green” is one of a number of sections that is excerpted on the website as well. This section approaches the beginning of a project in much the same way that I would: by asking questions. This helps to direct in figuring out your particular green goals and determining what is most important for you in terms of Energy and Water, materials and Toxins, and Space Use, Appearance and Purpose. It also addresses the (unfortunately all-too-frequent) view of green building as an add-on or a commodity, rather than as a fundamental and integral part of any building project.

“Don’t start by asking yourself: “Do I want a green building?” This inadvertently suggests that you can treat sustainability as an add-on process. If sustainability is the real deal (and it is!) it needs to be a part of every project in some way and it should be as natural to all of us as breathing. The rest of the green building guide will give you a great starting place for talking more with professionals about your building choices.”

The book is divided into sections. A preliminary section talks about “What We’re Up Against” and lays out the issues surrounding a number of materials and chemicals found in construction and discusses them both in terms of the problems they can cause and the possible alternatives that can be used.

The main focus of the book though is construction. Here the sections address issues to be considered “Before You Build” including site issues and the size of the building, renewable energy options, the selection of building materials, and the aforementioned “Talking with your Designer and Contractor about Building Green.” “Time to Build” addresses green aspects of a range of building materials and helps with some guidance for making good green choices for material selections. Materials from the basement to the roof are presented along with information about the various options in each case. A small third section deals with “Building Outside” and covers outdoor decks and landscaping issues.

The book also contains a number of resources for finding suppliers, further information, and professional advice, but is specific to the state of New York in most instances. Though there is some regionalism in the guide, it is so full of good information that it is worthwhile no matter where you live.

If you aren’t inclined to read an entire book like this online, this is one instance where printing out an online document makes good sense. This is a manual that I am going to refer to again in the future. More importantly, I am going to recommend to clients and friends who are interested in building or expanding their homes that they read this book.

Advocates of green building, and specifically of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED program, have maintained that green building does not have to mean extra cost. An exceptional case for this argument is found in a recently completed multi-purpose university building. The less-than-poetically named Education Building III (SG III) at the University of Maryland’s Shady Grove campus was built with the intent of attaining LEED Silver certification and ended up being certified as LEED Gold, but without an increase in the budget.

The Universities at Shady Grove (USG) is a collaborative effort by eight institutions in the University System of Maryland, begun in 2000. Due to its popularity and convenience, the demand for classes and services at the Shady Grove location grew quickly and necessitated the construction of a new, multi-purpose building with classrooms and services.

The SG III building is a 5 story multi-purpose educational building. It incorporates 41 classrooms (including 10 computer classrooms and 2 distance ed classrooms), 81 faculty offices, a 20,000 sq. ft. library and media center, student lounges, 2 open computer labs, a bookstore, administrative offices, and a recreation center/gym.

The building incorporates a green roof and native plantings to help control site runoff. Water conservation was a key concern for the SGIII building, and the building even earned a credit in the LEED rating system for innovation for achieving savings 44% below LEED baseline models for potable water use.

Energy conservation measures for connectivity included providing bike racks, designated car pool parking spaces, electric vehicle refueling locations, online carpool coordination, and easy access to bus and metro systems. And the building utilized high-efficiency HVAC systems and demand ventilation control so that mechanical systems only provide conditioned air where it is needed. Natural daylighting is also incorporated into the building. These measures enable the building to offer energy savings of more than 25% below the LEED baseline.

The building also makes extensive use of recycled materials, including insulation, recycled glass in the atrium, and the exterior blue panels. Other sustainable materials used in the building include wheat board and cork wall coverings, bamboo and linoleum floors, and tables made from banana fiber.

The building was able to be built in this way without incurring any additional cost by incorporating planning for green features at the outset of the project. Energy modeling, to calculate how the building would perform, and cost modeling, to predict the construction costs for different options, were both used to develop the building and evaluate the design for the most efficient and cost-effective solutions. More than 90 percent of the energy saving options proposed by the design team were able to be carried out with no cost increase to the building. "Through the use of sunscreens, improved glass, improved wall U value, improved roof U value, reduced lighting (watts per square foot) level, added daylight control in classrooms, VFD in chillers, and CO2 sensors, the design/engineering team projects a total net-energy cost savings of 29 percent."

Even though its name isn’t much, with the wide array of green features it posesses, and the manner in which it achieved these goals without any added cost, the building is going to make a name for itself.

Building Information:
Size: 192,000 sq. ft.
Location: Rockville, Maryland
Architect: Cannon Design

via: Environmental Design + Construction Magazine

Instructables.com is currently holding a ‘Go Green’ contest for green projects. The contest is being co-sponsored by Popular Science and Treehugger. Prizes include a hybrid commuter bicycle, subscriptions to Popular Science, and T-shirts (what contest doesn’t have T-shirts as prizes?). Full details and guidelines for the contest can be found at the Instructables site.

If you aren’t already familiar with it, Instructables is a website that offers step-by-step instructions on creating all kinds of DIY projects, ranging from relatively easy crafts to complicated robotics projects. While they are focusing on green projects for this current contest, they regularly have all manner of do-it-yourself projects. The site’s focus is on not just making things, but on showing other people how to make the cool things you have made, and how you did it.

There are many green projects on the Instructables site, beyond those that are already entries in the current ‘Go Green’ contest. Anything that you can create, and more importantly, that you can show someone else how to create, is a candidate for this contest:

"You can reuse vintage floppies, make your own cloth grocery bags, build some recycled modular shelving, a sun jar, a solar heater, or a wind generator. Move onto solar energy, worm compost, or even ditch your car for an electric bike!
Need more ideas? Check out TreeHugger’s great list of simple ways to Go Green, and the green coverage on PopSci.

"So, reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle, and rebuild, then show us what you are doing to make your life a little bit greener!"

The contest is open through August 19, 2007. If you have submitted an entry to the contest, be sure to let us know about it in the comments.

After the competition results are announced, we are planning to feature some of the most appealing finalists as part of our Weekly DIY series here on Green Options. The top prize winner is going to be featured in a brief write-up in Popular Science magazine. But we are going to offer our own Green Options highlights and a bit more coverage to some of the most intriguing projects we see, as well.

"Greenfear" is a term I first recently came across in an article on The Daily Green: ‘Building Green? Your Neighbors May Block You. Is It Greenfear?‘ The premise is that people are afraid of new and green technologies, and that they will act to block it. In this particular case, a couple in Marin, California wanted to build a house with a number of green features. Neighbors raised objections that "the modernist home would severely clash with the more traditional feel of the neighborhood. Some dubbed it ‘trailer like.’ A petition against the home was launched."

While the green elements of the design may not have endeared the plan to the neighbors, the objections seem less about the fact the house was incorporating green technologies and more about just the appearance being out of character with the rest of the neighborhood. In this particular case, the house in question is a rather attractive, contemporary, modular home. It includes such green features as "solar panels, recycled materials and a living ‘green’ roof." But, it is more likely that the resistance against this house was based on its general appearance, rather than specifically wanting to prevent a house from having the green features that its owners wanted.

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitudes have been around for decades. It applies to everything from opposing commercial expansion to constraining the appearance of a neighbor’s house. Concern about anything new is bound to arise. There will never be a situation where new construction is not going to be objected to by someone.

While some technologies for developing greener buildings are neutral to the building’s appearance, other elements are tied to the building’s form. Green buildings do not have to look "weird" in order to be efficient, their appearance often responds to a wider range of factors. Elements such as adding more insulation to a home to increase its efficiency will work well for any given building. Very few people will look closely enough to tell whether the glass in your windows is an uninsulated single pane or triple-pane, Low-E glass. But some features are going to respond to external requirements and site conditions. Passive solar buildings need to have windows along the south elevation. They don’t need to have the entire south wall covered with windows (that would lead to overheating in almost every circumstance). Solar panels are going to be at their most efficient when they are placed at the appropriate sun angle for a location’s latitude. Designs that incorporate passive cooling methods may have projections through the roof for solar chimneys.

In the case of the Breezehouse in Marin, the local board ultimately voted unanimously to permit the construction of the house. Limiting the appearance of houses is an issue that goes beyond green building. It applies to neighborhoods that have covenants with all manner of restrictions. Tract builders promote developments with covenants and restrictions that impose limits on the materials that may or may not be used in constructing a house. But these restrictions are increasingly coming into conflict with green values. Clotheslines are prohibited in some communities by these deed restrictions. Alternative power systems such as wind and solar are going to come into conflict with neighbors who find them unsightly. Designers can take some steps with the appearance of green elements. But greater familiarity with the new features of the greenscape of the 21st century is going to require a greater understanding and acceptance of the range of features that our homes and buildings are going to have.

 Image source: Michelle Kaufman Designs

Today was a big day for GM’s concept Chevrolet Volt. First, they announced an official partnership with A123Systems for the creation of the Volt’s batteries, then they told Reuters they had a firm production schedule that includes a 2010 sale date. If they stick to it, it will be the first plug-in electric hybrid from any major manufacturer. GM vice chairman of Global Product Development Bob Lutz announced that GM and A123Systems have agreed to co-develop battery technology for the forthcoming Chevy Volt (and other GM E-Flex vehicles) using A123’s nanophosphate battery technology.

"A123Systems is considered a forerunner in the development of nanophosphate-based cell technology, which, compared to other lithium-ion battery chemistries, provides higher power output, longer life and safer operations over the life of the battery."

This does not necessarily mean that LG Chem is out of the running to supply batteries for the Volt or other GM vehicles. The press release from GM notes that both A123Systems and LG Chem are potential suppliers for E-Flex vehicles. "A123Systems and LG Chem are both top-tier battery suppliers, with proven technologies," said Denise Gray, director of GM’s Energy Storage Devices and Strategies. "We’re confident one, or possibly both of these companies’ solutions will meet our battery requirements for the E-Flex system." But the close cooperation between GM and A123 for the development of batteries specifically for GM’s needs makes it more likely that A123Systems will end up as the major supplier for the final product.

Development of these batteries will, of course, have implications in fields other than just plug-in/hybrid vehicles. Presently, much of A123Systems’ battery production is used for power tools. But ongoing developments in battery technology will have ramifications for all kinds of devices that use portable power from cordless tools to laptop computers and other portable electronics.

After the press conference Reuters caught Lutz, and asked him more specifically about the Volt’s time line. Lutz replied "We’ll have some on the road for testing next spring, and we should have the Volt in production by the end of 2010." That’s the firmest language we’ve yet heard, and the only date currently set by any manufacturer for a plug-in hybrd.

You can find the whole press release in the article at GM-Volt.com.

Hank Green contributed to this article. Cross-posted at EcoGeek.org.

Also on Green Options:

Will GM Revive the Electric Car? Parts 1 and 2.

Right now, a uniquely modified pickup truck is making its way across the country. Starting from Detroit and heading to San Francisco, the vehicles developers are seeking to draw attention to an overlooked fuel alternative. The truck uses a special fuel, something widely available throughout the country, but until now, not widely considered as a fuel for transportation: the truck is carrying three tanks of ammonia in its bed. In addition to being an economical alternative to petroleum fuels, the ammonia fueled vehicle has much cleaner emissions and almost no greenhouse gasses.

The NH3car (NH3 is the chemical formula for ammonia) is a demonstration project of a University of Michigan graduate student in physics who is studying the use of ammonia as an alternative fuel. The test vehicle can be run either on 100% gasoline or on an 80% ammonia/20% gasoline mixture, and can be switched from one to the other at any time. According to a news story, the test vehicle gets 27 miles per gallon whether it is running on gasoline or the gas/ammonia mix. When gasoline is higher that $2.10/gallon, it becomes more economical to use the fuel mix.

More importantly, however, the vehicle produces much cleaner emissions than a fossil fuel burning vehicle. Moving to an ammonia fuel system would drastically cut transportation CO2 emissions. Because there is no carbon in ammonia (molecularly, ammonia is one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms), there is no carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide in the emissions from the ammonia combustion. According to the vehicle team, the only by-products are water vapor and nitrogen gas.

"Onthe basis of either weight or volume, ammonia’s the next best thing when liquid petroleum fuels can’t be used,” said Grannell, a University of Michigan doctoral student of applied physics. "I believe this is the only economically viable … replacement for liquid petroleum fuels, especially for transportation use."

One drawback to the ammonia fueled vehicle is that commercial ammonia needs to be manufactured. Unlike fossil fuels, it is not a resource that can simply be mined or pumped from the ground. And most commercial processes for manufacturing ammonia rely on natural gas as a feedstock.

An interesting synergy might be in place here. Presently, ammonia is used extensively as a farm fertilizer. Using ammonia as a fuel, when its principal use is as fertilizer, would be a cause for concern about the food versus fuel dilemma this causes, much the same as people have concerns about food versus fuel regarding E85 ethanol being derrived from corn, and about food cropland being taken away to be used instead for fuel cropland. However, as more farms move to organic production, the need for ammonia fertilizer should decline, and rather than having to worry about a slumping market, the excess production could be diverted to direct fuel use instead.

Ammonia fueled transportation may be a viable possibility. The NH3car team has also stated that the conversion from gasoline to ammonia could cost consumers less than $1,000. An important question would be whether or not the price of ammonia would remain stable if it began to be widely used as a fuel, or if its price would rise to make it uneconomical to use. Distribution would be another issue. As with other alernative fuel scenarios, the storage and distribution infrastructure for ammonia is not widespread and readily available for transportation uses. Ammonia needs to be stored in pressurized tanks and at low temperatures in order to remain as a gas. Like liquid natural gas or hydrogen, a whole new range of storage and distribution equipment would be needed in order to have widespread use of ammonia as a fuel. But with all of the potential benefits it offers, it may be worth exploring the possibilities it offers.

via: Ann Arbor News

Cross-posted from EcoGeek.org