ചൂടിൽ നിന്ന് വൈദ്യുതി ഉത്പാദിപ്പിക്കാം! എങ്ങനെ എന്ന് അറിയൂ!

The same researchers who pioneered the use of a quantum mechanical effect to convert heat into electricity have figured out how to make their technique work in a form more suitable to industry.  

Scanning transmission electron microscope image of a nickel-platinum composite material created at The Ohio State University. At left, the image is overlaid with false-color maps of elements in the material, including platinum (red), nickel (green) and oxygen (blue).

In Nature Communications, engineers from The Ohio State University describe how they used magnetism on a composite of nickel and platinum to amplify the voltage output 10 times or more -- not in a thin film, as they had done previously, but in a thicker piece of material that more closely resembles components for future electronic devices.

Many electrical and mechanical devices, such as car engines, produce heat as a byproduct of their normal operation. It's called "waste heat," and its existence is required by the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, explained study co-author Stephen Boona.

But a growing area of research called solid-state thermoelectrics aims to capture that waste heat inside specially designed materials to generate power and increase overall energy efficiency.

"Over half of the energy we use is wasted and enters the atmosphere as heat," said Boona, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State. "Solid-state thermoelectrics can help us recover some of that energy. These devices have no moving parts, don't wear out, are robust and require no maintenance. Unfortunately, to date, they are also too expensive and not quite efficient enough to warrant widespread use. We're working to change that."

In 2012, the same Ohio State research group, led by Joseph Heremans, demonstrated that magnetic fields could boost a quantum mechanical effect called the spin Seebeck effect, and in turn boost the voltage output of thin films made from exotic nano-structured materials from a few microvolts to a few millivolts.

In this latest advance, they've increased the output for a composite of two very common metals, nickel with a sprinkling of platinum, from a few nanovolts to tens or hundreds of nanovolts -- a smaller voltage, but in a much simpler device that requires no nanofabrication and can be readily scaled up for industry.

Heremans, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology, said that, to some extent, using the same technique in thicker pieces of material required that he and his team rethink the equations that govern thermodynamics and thermoelectricity, which were developed before scientists knew about quantum mechanics. And while quantum mechanics often concerns photons -- waves and particles of light -- Heremans' research concerns magnons -- waves and particles of magnetism.

"Basically, classical thermodynamics covers steam engines that use steam as a working fluid, or jet engines or car engines that use air as a working fluid. Thermoelectrics use electrons as the working fluid. And in this work, we're using quanta of magnetization, or 'magnons,' as a working fluid," Heremans said.

Research in magnon-based thermodynamics was up to now always done in thin films -- perhaps only a few atoms thick -- and even the best-performing films produce very small voltages.

In the 2012 paper, his team described hitting electrons with magnons to push them through thermoelectric materials. In the current Nature Communications paper, they've shown that the same technique can be used in bulk pieces of composite materials to further improve waste heat recovery.

Instead of applying a thin film of platinum on top of a magnetic material as they might have done before, the researchers distributed a very small amount of platinum nanoparticles randomly throughout a magnetic material -- in this case, nickel. The resulting composite produced enhanced voltage output due to the spin Seebeck effect. This means that for a given amount of heat, the composite material generated more electrical power than either material could on its own. Since the entire piece of composite is electrically conducting, other electrical components can draw the voltage from it with increased efficiency compared to a film.

While the composite is not yet part of a real-world device, Heremans is confident the proof-of-principle established by this study will inspire further research that may lead to applications for common waste heat generators, including car and jet engines. The idea is very general, he added, and can be applied to a variety of material combinations, enabling entirely new approaches that don't require expensive metals like platinum or delicate processing procedures like thin-film growth.

Source- https://www.sciencedaily.com

           RAT TRAP BOND

                                                            Rat trap bond is a brick masonry method of wall construction, in which bricks are placed in vertical position instead of conventional horizontal position and thus creating a cavity (hollow space) within the wall. Architect Laurie Baker introduced it in Kerala in the 1970s and used it extensively for its lower construction cost, reduced material requirement and better thermal efficiency than conventional masonry wall, without compromising strength of the wall.

CONSTRUCTING BRICK WALL USING RAT TRAP BOND

                                                                 The bricks are placed in vertical position, so that 110 mm face is seen from front elevation, instead of the 75mm face (considering brick of standard size 230 X 110 X 75 mm). Since width of wall remains 230mm, an internal cavity is created. This is where approximately 30% Material (brick and mortar) is saved and thus overall construction cost is reduced. Cavity provides effective thermal and sound insulation. This makes rat trap bond energy and cost efficient building technology.

POINTERS

• Bricks should be of good quality with consistent size and straight edges
• First layer (bottom) and last layer (top) of the wall should be solid (without cavity).
• Layer at sill and lintel levels of opening and sides of opening should be solid (without cavity) for fixing frames.
• Reinforcement bars can be put in vertical cavities at corners and around openings to improve earthquake resistance.
• Reinforcement bars can be put in horizontally to make lintels and to improve earthquake resistance.
• Electrical conduits and plumbing pipes, with prior planning, can be put inside cavity for better aesthetics. 
  
  

ADVANTAGES OF USING RAT TRAP BOND

• Requires approximately 25%  less bricks and 40% less mortar than traditional masonry
• Reduced material requirement results in considerable cost saving
• Strength of wall is not compromised, it remains same as traditional masonry wall.
• Cavity induced in wall provides better thermal insulation, resulting in cooler interiors during summer and warmer interiors during winter.
• All vertical and horizontal reinforced bands, lintels (for standard size openings), electrical conduits are hidden inside wall, resulting in better aesthetic appearance without plastering (exposed brickwork).

Harmonic distortion of the AC power lines in HVAC systems

             

CAUSE OF POWER LINE DISTORTION

Most adjustable frequency drives operate by using a bridge rectifier to convert the incoming AC 

voltage to DC voltage. An inverter in the drive then converts the DC voltage into a precise output voltage and frequency to control the speed of the motor.

Drives today use a diode bridge rectifier to convert the AC line power into a fixed-voltage DC bus . A DC bus capacitor bank is then used to filter out the AC ripple.

While this results in a very efficient drive, it can cause disturbance on the AC power line due to the way the drive draws AC current.

Current cannot flow from the rectifier into the DC bus until the input voltage is greater than the DC bus voltage . This only happens for a very short period of time for each phase.

This causes a non‐sinusoidal current flow created by the input stage of the drive. In order to transfer the energy required by the motor in such a short period of time, the peak current must be high.

source:http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/

ROBOT CLIMBING A PIPE

               

                                                     Robot climbing a pipe

With the purpose of verifying onshore and offshore platforms such as Pemex’s and detect cracks or corrosion, the Mexican Corporation of Material Research (COMIMSA) designed RoboPipe, a robot capable of inspecting the pipes in the chemical and petrochemical industry without risking personnel.

This technology simulates a remote control car with a camera and a measurement device installed; it climbs with the help of magnets and can overcome obstacles, like 90 degree elbows, while the floor personnel registers and monitors data.

Currently, the process pipes that are at a height of more than two meters in offshore or onshore platforms must be inspected by human staff that climbs through scaffolding.

RoboPipe performs corrosion measurements with ultrasound to locate and size the inner pipe damage. The prototype robot equipped with a camera and ultrasound system inspects pipes and visually verifies external corrosion.

Before using RoboPipe in offshore platforms, between four and six meters of pipe were inspected daily using scaffoldings. With the prototype designed by COMIMSA, between twelve and twenty meters of pipe can be inspected daily by control remote, according to tests conducted at Pemex facilities. 

Jesús García Ortiz, from COMIMSA, explained that the camera RoboPipe carries, allows to work under humid conditions, has with good resolution, can record video and take photos; also, through ultrasonic technology it’s possible to measure the thickness of the pipe.

He added that with RoboPipe’s technology it’s possible to reach inaccessible areas of offshore platforms, up to a height of eight meters, and measure pipes of a hundred millimeters of outer diameter.

“In COMIMSA we decided to design a very small robot so it could pass between two pipes, through a space of 88 millimeters; also, it had to have the grip to climb up a vertical pipe passing welded joints and not fall because of its own weight or the weight of the equipment it carries to transmit the signals”, he said.

This project was designed in association with the Institute of Superior Studies of Monterrey (ITESM), Campus Saltillo, which was responsible of the electronic side of the scheme with staff specialized in mechatronics.

The robot first underwent tests at the laboratory; afterwards protocols were developed for tests at onshore and offshore facilities in the environment of chemical and petrochemical industry.
Jesús García Ortiz, said that a survey of the national market was made and RoboPipe can solve other inspection problems in ferromagnetic components inaccessible to human personnel such as buildings and bridges, storage tanks and pressure vessels, among others.

Currently, COMIMSA is improving the prototype and is developing two more robots, one for offshore platforms and one for onshore facilities.
Once both prototypes are validated, this product will be commercialized with licensing or sale options.
“At this moment we are working on bibliographical studies to develop a robot with a laser system that allows in depth measurement of superficial discontinuities on the outside of the pipes”, García Ortiz said. (Agencia ID)

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Investigación y Desarrollo. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Super-flexible liquid crystal device for bendable and rollable displays

                                       

Researchers at Tohoku University have developed a super flexible liquid crystal (LC) device, in which two ultra-thin plastic substrates are firmly bonded by polymer wall spacers.

The team, led by Professor Hideo Fujikake and Associate Professor Takahiro Ishinabe of the School of Engineering, hopes the new organic materials will help make electronic displays and devices more flexible, increasing their portability and all round versatility. New usage concepts with flexibility and high quality display could offer endless possibilities in near-future information services.

Previous attempts to create a flexible display using an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) device with a thin plastic substrate were said to be promising, but unstable. The plastic substrates are poor gas-barriers for oxygen and water vapor, and the OLED materials can seriously be damaged by their gasses. As for flexible OLEDs, there has also been no device fabrication technology established so far for large-area, high-resolution and low-cost displays.

To overcome these challenges, Fujikake's research team decided to try making existing LC displays flexible by replacing the conventional thick glass substrates, which are both rigid and heavy, with the plastic substrates, because LC materials do not deteriorate even for poor gas barrier of flexible substrates.

Flexible LC displays have many advantages, such as established production methods for large-area displays. The material itself, which is inexpensive, can be mass produced and shows little quality degradation over time.

However, in conventional flexible LC displays, one important problem remains. The gap of plastic substrates (100 μm thick) sandwiching an LC layer becomes non-uniformed when the LC device is bent, causing the display image to be distorted.

In their study, Fujikake's team developed a super-flexible LC device by bonding two ultra-thin transparent polyimide substrates (10 μm thick approximately) together, using robust polymer wall spacers.

The ultra-thin transparent substrate is made using the coating and debonding processes of a polyimide solution supplied by Mitsui Chemicals. The result is a flexible sheet, similar to food-wrapping cling film.

The substrate has the attractive features of heat resistance, and the ability to form fine pixel structures, including transparent electrodes and colour filters. The refractive index anisotropy is extremely small, making wide viewing angles and high contrast ratio possible.

The polymer wall spacers bonding substrates are formed by irradiating a twisted-alignment LC layer including monomer component with patterned ultra-violet light through single thin substrate. While the substrate gap is more variable as the substrate thickness is decreased, the stabilization of ultra-thin substrates becomes possible by small pitch polymer walls.

The research team also demonstrated that the device uniformity is kept without breaking spacers even after a roll-up test to a curvature radius of 3mm for rollable and foldable applications.

The above research results show that LC displays with large-area, high-resolution and excellent stability can be as flexible as OLED displays. The super-flexible LC technology is applicable to mobile information terminals, wearable devices, in-vehicle displays and large digital signage.

Moving forward, the team plans to form image pixels and soften the peripheral components of polarizing films, and a thin light-guide sheet for backlight.

Part of the results of this research was first announced at the International Symposium on Society for Information Display held in San Francisco, USA, in May, 2016.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Tohoku University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

GAS INSULATED SUBSTATION

The metal-enclosed gas insulated switchgear inherently follows the criteria for new substation design and offers a higher reliability and flexibility than other solutions. Due to the gas enclosed design, GIS is the most suitable solution for indoor and underground substations.

GIS configurations can be applied to any type of bus bar arrangements:

• Single busbar,
• Double busbar
• Single busbar with transfer bus,
• Double busbar with double circuit breaker,
• One and a half circuit breaker scheme and
• Ring busbar.

GIS performs the same function as AIS. The compact and metal-enclosed design of GIS has prominent advantages and better performance than AIS. However, the high initial investment is a key obstacle in expanding the application of GIS.

In remote or rural area, industrial areas or in developing countries, AIS is still the best choice. In places where the cost of land or cost of earthworks is high or where the sceneries cannot be disturbed by AIS, the solution is to use underground or indoor GIS.

For a better appearance, an underground GIS substation can be design with an aesthetic view that hides its presence. The existence of a substation could be designed so that it cannot even be recognized .

Economics – Life cycle cost (LCC) comparison

Regarding economics, initial capital investmentis not enough to evaluate the overall substation project. Life Cycle Cost (LCC) should be considered, including primary hardware cost, maintenance cost, operation cost, outage cost and disposal costs.

1. Primary hardware

Primary hardware for primary equipment, GIS is more expensive than AIS. However, the price of auxiliary equipment such as support, conductors, land, installation, control, protection and monitoring can lead to a cost difference between the two systems being small.

2. Maintenance

The failure rate of circuit breaker and disconnecting switch in GIS is one-fourth of that of AIS and one tenth in case of busbar, thus the maintenance cost of GIS is less than that of AIS over the lifetime.

3. Operation cost

The maintenance cost of GIS and AIS shall be equivalent. The cost for training in GIS is higher than in AIS.

4. Outage cost

Since the failure rate of GIS is lower, the outage cost of AIS shall be greater.

5. Disposal cost

The cost of decommissioning and disposal after use should be capitalized. The value of future expense must be taken into account.

source:http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/

Birds Inspire Robotic Innovations

From navigating turbulence, to sleeping midflight, to soaring without a sound, animals' flight adaptations are helping scientists design better flying robots.

Airborne drones and the animals they mimic are featured in 18 new studies published online Dec. 15 in the journal Interface Focus. This special issue is intended "to inspire development of new aerial robots and to show the current status of animal flight studies," said the issue's editor, David Lentink, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University in California.

Though humans have been building flying machines since the 18th century, these new studies revealed that there is still much to be learned from looking closely at how birds, insects and bats take flight, keep themselves aloft and maneuver to safe landings. [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature]

Flying drones are rapidly becoming a common sight worldwide. They are used to photograph glorious vistas from above, snap selfies and even deliver packages, as online retail giant Amazon completed its first commercial delivery by drone in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, on Dec. 7, the BBC reported.

But improving how these robots fly isn't easy, experts said. Fortunately, there are plenty of flying animals that scientists can turn to for inspiration. About 10,000 species of birds; 4,000 species of bats; and well over 1 million insect species have evolved over millions of years to spread their wings and take to the air, and most of these species' flight adaptations haven't been studied at all, Lentink told Live Science.

"Most people think that since we know how to design airplanes, we know all there is to know about flight," Lentink said. But once humans could successfully design planes and rockets, they stopped looking as closely at flying animals as they had in the past, he added.

Now, however, growing demand for small, maneuverable flying robots that can perform a variety of tasks has sparked a scientific "renaissance" and is driving researchers to investigate many open questions about animal aerodynamics and biology, Lentink said.

For example, how are owls able to fly so silently? One team of scientists explored adaptations in owls' wings that could muffle noise, finding that the animals' large wing size and the wings' shape, texture and strategically placed feather fringes all work together to help owls glide soundlessly.

Another group of researchers wondered how frigate birds — a type of seabird that can fly without stopping for days at a time — could sleep "on the wing" during long migrations. The scientists collected the first recordings of in-flight brain activity for these birds, discovering that the animals were able to "micro nap" to rest both brain hemispheres at the same time.

Some scientists puzzled over how fruit flies were able to stay aloft even if their wings were damaged, learning that the insects compensated for missing pieces in wing membranes by adjusting their wing and body movements, enabling the bugs to fly even if half a wing had been lost.

Other studies described new robot designs that can plunge into watery depths from midair, flap their way through buffeting winds or bend their wings like a bird, for better control.

Silent flight, energy conservation and renewal, adapting to turbulent conditions, and the ability to self-correct for wing damage are all features that could significantly improve current models of flying drones, Lentink told Live Science.

"They need to become more silent," Lentink said of drones. "They need to be more efficient, and they need to fly longer. There's a lot of engineering that still needs to happen. The fact that the first steps are being made right now is really exciting and shows that there is a great future in this."

Source- www.livescience.com

ഒരു കെട്ടിടം പൊളിക്കുമ്ബൊള്‍ - BUILDING IMPLOSION

Demolition

                 Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use.

For small buildings, such as houses, that are only two or three stories high, demolition is a rather simple process. The building is pulled down either manually or mechanically using large hydraulic equipment: elevated work platforms, cranes, excavators or bulldozers . 

Larger buildings may require the use of a wrecking ball, a heavy weight on a cable that is swung by a crane into the side of the buildings. Wrecking balls are especially effective against masonry, but are less easily controlled and often less efficient than other methods. Newer methods may use rotational hydraulic shears and silenced rock-breakers attached to excavators to cut or break through wood, steel, and concrete. The use of shears is especially common when flame cutting would be dangerous.

The tallest planned demolition of a building was the 47-story Singer Building in New York City, which was built in 1908 and torn down in 1967–1968 to be replaced by One Liberty Plaza

Building implosion

Large buildings, tall chimneys, smokestacks, bridges, and increasingly some smaller structures may be destroyed by building implosion using explosives. Imploding a structure is very fast—the collapse itself only takes seconds—and an expert can ensure that the structure falls into its own footprint, so as not to damage neighboring structures. This is essential for tall structures in dense urban areas.

Any error can be disastrous, however, and some demolitions have failed, severely damaging neighboring structures. One significant danger is from flying debris, which, when improperly prepared for, can kill onlookers.

Another dangerous scenario is the partial failure of an attempted implosion. When a building fails to collapse completely the structure may be unstable, tilting at a dangerous angle, and filled with un-detonated but still primed explosives, making it difficult for workers to approach safely.

A third danger comes from air overpressure that occurs during the implosion. If the sky is clear, the shock wave, a wave of energy and sound, travels upwards and disperses, but if cloud coverage is low, the shock wave can travel outwards, breaking windows or causing other damage to surrounding buildings.

Stephanie Kegley of CST Environmental described shock waves by saying, "The shock wave is like a water hose. If you put your hand in front of the water as it comes out, it fans to all sides. When cloud coverage is below 1,200 feet, it reacts like the hand in front of the hose. The wave from the shock fans out instead of up toward the sky.

Controlled implosion, being spectacular, is the method that the general public often thinks of when discussing demolition; however, it can be dangerous and is only used as a last resort when other methods are impractical or too costly. The destruction of large buildings has become increasingly common as the massive housing projects of the 1960s and 1970s are being leveled around the world. At 439 feet (134 m) and 2,200,000 square feet (200,000 m²), the J. L. Hudson Department Store and Addition is the tallest steel framed building and largest single structure ever imploded.

Preparation

It takes several weeks or months to prepare a building for implosion. All items of value, such as copper wiring, are stripped from a building. Some materials must be removed, such as glass that can form deadly projectiles, and insulation that can scatter over a wide area. Non-load bearing partitions and drywall are removed.Selected columns on floors where explosives will be set are drilled and high explosives such as nitroglycerin, TNT, RDX, or C4 are placed in the holes. Smaller columns and walls are wrapped in detonating cord. The goal is to use as little explosive as possible so that the structure will fail in a progressive collapse therefore only a few floors are rigged with explosives, so that it is safer (fewer explosives) and costs less. The areas with explosives are covered in thick geotextile fabric and fencing to absorb flying debris. Far more time-consuming than the demolition itself is the clean-up of the site, as the debris is loaded into trucks and hauled away.

How Automotive Quality Control Works

Most people probably don't think too much about their cars on a daily basis -- unless he or she happens to be a real car enthusiast, of course. But for the vast majority of buyers, a car is simply an appliance. And, like the toaster or blender sitting on your kitchen counter, cars don't tend to take up a lot of space in their owners' brains. That is, until the car somehow breaks.

The thing is, despite recent high-profile recalls, on the whole, cars are more reliable than ever before. That's because car makers have begun to master a key step in automobile manufacturing: quality control. In any industry, quality control is a process that's used to insure that a product is free from bugs, operational issues and any number of other problems you can think of. In auto manufacturing, that means cars go through rigorous testing to make sure they're well-engineered, safe and comfortable.

The quality control process starts long before the first production models of a vehicle roll off the assembly line. When a car company releases a new product, they build prototypes, which are then tested to find weaknesses, mechanical problems and other details that could be improved. Once the prototypes have been vetted and polished, the design goes into production, where quality control continues on the production line, too. After being built, each car is tested for problems like fluid and air leaks, mechanical problems and proper assembly.

Keep reading to find out just how automotive quality control works and about the extreme tests that your car had to go through before it was allowed to hit the road.

Automotive Quality Control Techniques

Quality control is something that's a key part of almost every industry and every job. You probably engage in your own form of quality control several times a day. If you proofread your e-mail before you send it, that's a form of quality control. Even this article is the result of a type of quality control system. The editor who publishes it onto the HowStuffWorks.com Web site will check the published version for things like spacing issues, image size and position and broken links.

It's a similar process in auto manufacturing. But you can't put something through quality control until it's actually built. So, in automobile manufacturing, quality control starts with the prototype of a car. From there, the prototype is put through its paces.

Engineers have designed several tests to determine how well a car will stand up to real-world (and extreme) use. For instance, they drive the prototype car over specially designed surfaces to test the smoothness of the ride and the durability of the suspension. They also expose the cars to extreme heat and cold weather to test how the various mechanical components will work in all types of weather. They even fill a car with smoke and then check all the window and door seals to insure it's airtight.

One of the most well-known quality-control tests is the crash test. While most people are familiar with government and insurance industry crash tests, car makers also run their own tests to make sure its products and safety systems will work as they were designed to and protect the vehicle's occupants.

Up next, learn about some of the advances made in automotive quality control.

Advances in Automotive Quality Control

So the quality control step of auto manufacturing seems pretty straightforward, right? You design a car, build a prototype, test the prototype and once you've worked out the kinks, start building production models. But, technological advances have made the crucial step of automotive quality control even more involved.

Now, quality controls tests can be more closely controlled, and even more extreme. While car makers still do a lot of testing in the real world (like driving through Death Valley, Calif., to test how well a car handles hot weather), they can mimic and even exceed real-world conditions in their own testing centers. Also, thanks to more precise sensors and computer programs, they can take more detailed measurements of a car's responses to the tests. Finally, they've also been able to add automated quality control systems to assembly lines,so something like a poorly fitted part or a bad weld can be automatically detected and dealt with.

Still, despite the incredible advances in automotive quality control, the most important component in building a quality car is the human touch. As a result, many car makers try to build a corporate culture where every single employee is responsible for quality. If they see a problem with a product, employees are encouraged to come forward so the company can make it right. Of course, that doesn't necessarily prevent all quality issues at the factory, but a sharp set of human eyes and a commitment to building the best car possible helps keep a company's cars safe and running properly.

Source- www.auto.howstuffworks.com

COST EFFECTIVE CONSTRUCTION with ECO BRICK

Ecobricks

                  An ecobrick is a plastic bottle stuffed solid with non-biological waste to create a reusable building block. Ecobricks are used to make modular furniture, garden spaces and full scale buildings such as schools and houses. Ecobricks are a collaboration powered technology that provides a zero-cost solid waste solution for individuals, households, schools and communities.

Also known as an Eco-Brick, a bottle brick, and Ecoladrillo, this local waste solution has come to be known as 'Ecobricks' (non-hyphenated) by a growing movement of communities around the world 

Principles

1. Local Transformation: Using nearby and otherwise polluting and toxic non-biological material to make inert and useful Ecobricks.
2. Cradle-to-cradle construction: Ensuring that at the end of building/furniture/garden's life that the ecobricks can be removed and reused (caution: cemented ecobricks are impossible to extricate without destroying them and releasing the packed plastic).
   
   
   
3. Community Collaboration: The focused collaboration of a household, school or municipality to create ecobricks that will be used to construct something of use to the community.

History

Ecobricking plastic waste into bottles is a method for dealing with waste that has popped up organically around the world. Various simultaneous pioneers have helped shape the global movement and refine the technology. Susana Heisse an environmental activist around Lake Atitlan in Guatemala in 2004. Alvaro Molina began on the island of Ometepe in 2003. The technique builds upon the bottle building techniques developed by German architect Andreas Froese (using sand filled PET bottles) in South America in 2000.

In 2010, in the Northern Philippines, Russell Maier and Irene Bakisan developed a curriculum guide of simplified and recommended practices to help local schools integrate ecobricks into their curriculum. Applying the ancestral ecological principles of the Igorots for building rice terraces, they integrated Cradle-to-cradle principles into Ecobrick methodology: ensuring that Ecobricks can reused at the end of the construction they are used in. Through the Department of Education the guide was distributed to 1700 schools in 2014.

Construction 

All that is needed to make an Ecobrick is a plastic bottle or container of some sort (including paper / laminate milk cartons) and a stick to stuff and compress a whole bunch of random everyday plastic materials inside of it. To start an Ecobrick, take a plastic bottle, rinse it out and leave it to dry. Use a stick to stuff it layer by layer with all of the plastics, non-biodegradables, and synthetics that would otherwise be thrown into a waste bin and eventually the Earth.

Guidelines

1. Pack bottles with non-biodegradables (like plastic, wrappers, styrofoam, etc.)
2. No paper, no glass and no sharp metal
3. Use a bamboo stick to pack bottles with as much non-biodegradables as possible.
4. Use a colored cellophanes first to fill the very bottom and give brick a color.
5. Use soft cellophanes to fill the bottle’s bottom corners and any air pockets.
6. Keep to one brand of bottle. This will make building easier.
7. Smaller bottles work too! Choose the ones that seem to be the most abundant in your community.
8. Make sure each Ecobrick is completely free of wet / food / organic materials that should rather be composted to create new soil.
9. Teachers and community leaders: Record submitted Ecobricks (color, volume, mass). This provides invaluable statistics afterwards.

Completed Ecobricks should be so densely stuffed that one can stand on top of them without deformation.

Context

Plastics are made from petro-chemicals. These chemicals don’t fit back into the ecologies around us. Scientific studies show that these chemicals are toxic to humans— we know this when we smell plastics burning. Eventually, plastics that are littered, burned or dumped degrade into these poisonous chemicals. Over time, these chemicals leach into the land, air and water,^[and are absorbed by plants and animals. Eventually they reach us, causing birth defects, hormonal imbalances, and cancer. Even engineered dump sites are not a solution. Whether it is ten years, or one hundred, these chemicals will eventually seep into the biosphere,affecting our farms & families.

A tremendous amount of plastic waste litters our planet every year and its cost is huge. According to the UNEP 2014 Yearbook, plastic contamination threatens marine life, tourism, fisheries and businesses and the overall natural capital cost for plastic waste is $75 billion each year. Since plastics don’t biodegrade but photodegrade, plastics in the fields or water just break down into small pieces. These toxic pieces are then absorbed by plants and animals and come back to us, which leads to fatal consequences like cancer and birth defects.

Plastics need to be either eliminated, or put in the right place. PET bottles will last for 300–500 years if they are kept from sunlight. When packed tightly with other non-biodegradeables, they make an amazing brick that can be used over and over for building. They also become time capsules— a gift to future generations.

Case studies

1. In the village of Besao in the Northern Philippines, hospital custodian Jane Timbung set about packing one ecobrick a day to revamp her ailing home that her neighbors had been ridiculing. Two years later her home is tourist attraction that has been featured in both local and national media.
2. On the isolated volcano island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua, Alvaro Molina, distraught by the plastic waste that had nowhere to go in his community, began ecobricking at his hotel. His community is now one of the cleanest in the country, with dozens of local schools building with ecobricks and a micro economy formed around ecobrick buying and selling.
3. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, Jo Stodgel is encouraging his community to stuff ecobricks with creative workshops for youth, river cleanup projects, and design / build projects. He is also innovating solutions to make the practice much more accessible and easy, such as using milk cartons instead of bottles.