ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
Distant early warning
Hurricane Rita before her 2005 Texas landfall.
A new, Texas-driven initiative aims to help coastal communities and state and local officials weather the worst effects of the next perfect storm.
The 80th Texas Legislature created the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster Center, or SSPEED. The program is a unique collaborative effort based at Rice University involving six other Texas universities, the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and the Houston-Galveston Area Council of Governments.
“The main mission is to address the issue of severe-storm prediction and link that to both coastal and inland flooding, infrastructure risk and evacuation,” says center director Phil Bedient, a Rice University professor of engineering. “Right now, a lot of those functions are in separate state and federal agencies, and there’s not a lot of dialogue between them. We’re attempting to bring that all under one umbrella and get the different groups talking to one another.”
Bedient, nicknamed “Dr. Flood” by peers, says SSPEED will supplement official weather warnings with predictions of onshore flooding and other effects. “Instead of just relying on the National Weather Service to talk about where the hurricane is going to go, we’ll be bringing the predictions inland and talking about exactly where flooding is going to occur,” he says.
For more information, contact Philip Bedient, bedient@rice.edu, or visit the SSPEED site at http://hydrology.rice.edu/sspeed.
MATERIALS SCIENCE
From waste to the tank
U.S. ethanol production is nearing 7 billion gallons annually, with the majority of that made from sugar-laden food crops such as corn and sugar cane. California-based RangeFuels. is attempting to diversify the ethanol supply through cellulosic ethanol, says Mitch Mandich, chief executive officer for RangeFuels. Cellulosic ethanol can be produced from lawn clippings, sawdust, agricultural and municipal wastes and almost anything else that contains cellulose.
RangeFuels plans to build a commercial scale plant in Georgia that will ultimately produce 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually, at about the same price as corn-produced ethanol.
RangeFuels expects to break ground at the facility in November 2008.
For more information, contact Mitch Mandich, Info@rangefuels.com, (303) 410-2100, or visit www.rangefuels.com
ENERGY/UTILITIES
Cool technology
New York City, with its predominantly concrete, steel and asphalt construction, is typically seven or eight degrees hotter in the summer than surrounding areas.
Credit Suisse is cooling its offices with ice in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Life building. Large steel holding tanks, each storing thousands of gallons of water, are frozen overnight when energy demands and costs are low. During the day, the melting ice provides chilled air that circulates through the offices.
William Beck, head of critical engineering systems for Credit Suisse, estimates the ice-cooling system will save the company $1 million annually in energy costs.
For more information, contact William Beck, bill.beck@credit-suisse.com
EDUCATION
Too cool of a school
The University of Texas at Austin has purchased a 2.4-acre, $1.5 million site for its 50,000-square-foot UT Elementary School campus, the first university–school–community partnership of its kind in Texas. The 260-student public charter school, which opened in 2003, has been rated “exemplary” by the Texas Education Agency based on its spring 2007 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) scores.
“We are committed to a delicate balance between rigorous academic expectations and a nurturing educational environment that respects each child, parent and teacher,” says Ramona Treviño, the school’s principal.
“We are changing the lives of students in our school, but UT’s motto is, ‘What starts here changes the world,’ so we’ve got more work to do.”
For more information, contact Ramona Treviño, ramonatrev@austin.utexas.edu, (512) 495-9705, or visit www.utexas.edu/provost/elementary.
A real winner
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality awarded IdleAire a 2005 Texas Environmental Excellence Award in the “Innovative Technology” category.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
A quiet night on the road
Trucks are the delivery backbone for U.S. goods. But truck engines often idle all night while their drivers sleep, producing tons of engine emissions and lots of noise as they wear down engine parts.
Tennessee-based IdleAire has the answer. The IdleAire service module, installed at 130 locations, including 21 in Texas, attaches to the truck’s cab allowing the driver to plug in a television and laptop computer and enjoy Internet access, cable TV, electrical outlets, a telephone connection and heating and air conditioning.
The module lets drivers unwind with comforts similar to those they would have at home, says John Doty with IdleAire’s Corporate Communications. “From a benefits perspective, IdleAire provides higher-quality rest or sleep without the noise, vibrations or emissions of an idling engine,” says Doty.
IdleAire designs the layout for each site, installs the units at no cost and shares profit with the truck stop. The standard rental rate for using the service is $2.18 per hour. The company claims its installations could eliminate about 12.5 million tons of emissions and save about 2 billion gallons of fuel annually.
For more information, contact John Doty, jdoty@idleaire.com, or visit www.idleaire.com