Friday, September 10, 2010

Virginia Tech's Prototype Home for the Future

The New York Times has featured Virginia Tech's entry for a prototype energy efficient home for the future in an international design contest: at this link. While "concept" anything is usually impractical in the extreme, most concepts have some good ideas built into them which could be commercialized and used in conventional housing. Its been a long time since I featured any new low energy use housing on this blog and I hope that this post gives some of my readers ideas.

Monday, September 6, 2010

The Scots Find a Use for Whisky Byproducts

A most interesting post here about the University of Edinburgh developing a process to convert whisky byproducts - pot ale and draff - into butanol fuel
for cars. Though Scotland is the biggest whisky producer, the USA, India and Ireland also produce significant amounts of grain whisky. Perhaps, this is an idea that would catch on in other parts of the world as well . . .