Five Emerging Green Technologies

It's not bad enough the natural resources are in limited supply; the population is expected to add nearly three billion people by 2025, putting an additional burden on an already limited supply of resources. Energy requirements are anticipated to increase by as much as 60 percent by 2030 and new methods of producing power, or finding or refining new ways of providing power are needed.

Some of the technologies of the future are in the planning stages and some may not get off the drawing board. Some of those methods may seem a bit strange, but with the pending shortages, many are being developed, or at least considered.

Thermo-DE polymerization is a process that uses heat and pressure to transform carbon-based waste into oil. Much the same as nature has done over millions of years; the process can use modern technology to hasten the outcome. Researchers claim that waste, anything from turkey dung to old tires can be used for this process, estimating that 600 pounds of petroleum product can be had from 2,000 pounds of waste from turkeys.

Combining oxygen and hydrogen results in water, generating electricity in the process. The challenge is combining water and alcohol to produce hydrogen in order to power hydrogen fuel cells. Technology has been realized that enables small devices such as laptop computers that operate using hydrogen fuel cells, but the development of power equipment that produces emissions of water are still in the development stage.

Extracting clean water from the oceans' salt water has been an ongoing effort, but the issue with this is that most processes use a substantial amount of energy in the process. Desalination of sea water is under continued investigation and new processes that use inexpensive fuels that heat the water to evaporation is in the works. The water is evaporated before pushing it through filtering systems to remove salt and other minerals and is a promise for the future, but currently is too expensive to be considered a long-term solution.

A true "greening" effort is by planting rooftop green space, much like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Rooftop gardens are being pushed to help reduce the amount of heat from the sun absorbed by the buildings while turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. Additionally, they can absorb rain water while cutting back on the amount of energy required for air conditioning. Currently, Chicago is experimenting with this on the roof of city hall.

Electronic paper is another ambitious technology being developed in which flexible, thin plastic is embedded with tiny capsules with electric charge-carrying materials that, when activated, produce either white or black images. This technology would in effect, allow the same "paper" to be used to display the local newspaper in the morning and then be turned into a book, depending on the charge administered to the steel foil to which it is bonded.