Concentrated Solar Power and Biogas

Okay, have you guys heard about or see the words "Concentrated Solar Power" and "Biogas"? They're some of the revolutionary ways of sustainably producing electricity and in the case of Biogas, methane. In other words, they are some of the renewable resources this Earth have. Too bad they aren't being used a lot. I don't know why. But the way they worked could help to extend our resources and replace nonrenewable resources.

Concentrated Solar Power systems worked by, well, concentrate sunlight by means of lenses and mainly mirrors (I think so, since all of the Concentrated Solar Power powerplants I read about on Wikipedia or watch on the National Geographic focused sunlight by mirrors) and used them to heat water, which will turn into steam and spin a steam turbine, which in turn spin the electrical generator to produce electricity. One variation of Concentrated Solar Power is focused the sunlight on heating a fluid that can stay hot for a long time, such as molten salt. The fluid will be used to boil water. The steam will turn a steam turbine, which in turn will spin an electrical generator. That way, much more electricity can be produced than solar panels alone. Biogas is also very effective in producing methane and electricity.

Biogas worked by using some types of bacteria to digest the materials for biogas in an oxygen-free environment. This process is known as anaerobic digestion. The materials to be digested are anything living, recently living, or waste of the living things. So the materials could be leftover food, sewage, animal droppings, leaves... The bacteria used for anaerobic digestion produced a gas with more than one half of its ingredients being methane. Methane will be filtered from the gas, and used for cooking, heating, and being compressed to be used as fuel for certain vehicles. Using the gas or biogas to produce electricity is optional. The remaining byproduct of the materials being used for anaerobic digestion is known as digestate, which can be used as fertilizer.

Spinning electrical generators is much more efficient in producing electricity than using solar panels. Solar panels can't convert all of the sunlight into electricity. So using Concentrated Solar Power and Biogas can sustainably produce electricity and in the case of Biogas, methane. You could keep on doing that for a long time (I'm talking about lots and lots of centuries), and they will never run out, since they are renewable resources. They helped to extend our resources and could help in replacing nonrenewable resources with renewable resources.

Nonrenewable Resources and Renewable Resources

Hello guys! These days, the people of the Earth depends way too much on nonrenewable resources. We need to find the alternatives for unrenewable resources. Well, as I have guess, some of you don't know what nonrenewable resources means. Read the next paragraph and you shall see.

Nonrenewable resources are resources that are being used up too fast for nature to produce more to replace the resources that are being used. For example, coal is a kind of sedimentary rock produce from compressing vegetation. Today, coal is mainly use for generating electricity, by burning coal which will produce big amounts of heat. That heat will boil water, which will turn into steam and spin a turbine. That turbine, in turn, will spin the electrical generator, which will produce electricity. Coal's use is in, well, great demand, meaning much of the world's electricity get their fuel solely from coal. Coal's a nonrenewable resource, meaning nature can't produce enough coal to replace the used coal.
Here is a list of nonrenewable resources: crude oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. We depend a lot on them, especially on Coal and Oil. Here are the rankings for how much we depend on them:
Coal and Oil: a lot
Natural gas: somewhere between a lot and medium. Probably a lot.
Nuclear power: Not so much

Why are we depending on them so much? Cause they could produce a lot of heat and some of them, like oil could be split up into it several substances, like plastic (fact: plastic's from oil), that were in great demand. We need heat for a lot of stuff: generating electricity, running our vehicles, heating or cooling our homes, making glass, DVDs, CDs, and a lot of other stuff... So now we need to shift some of our dependence on all kinds of resources away from nonrenewable resources and onto renewable resources.

Today, renewable resources are being used on a small scale compare to nonrenewable resources. Here is the list of some of our renewable resources: water, sunlight, wind, plants, waste (like sewage, leftover food, animal poop and pee...). But we are smart. We, the people, have changed the world into what we see today: from bows and arrows to tanks, military jets, helicopters, and automatic rifles. We could still change the world, if we aren't lazy or stupid.

We need to exploit the full potential of renewable resources. People have used solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. Solar panels produce too little electricity. The solution? Use mirrors to concentrate sunlight into heating a fluid, such as molten salt, that will stay hot for a long time. The fluid will be pumped away to boil water, and you know the rest. That way, much more electricity can be produce than just using solar panels. You might think "why didn't they just do that?", I think it might be the cost.

Not just utilize the renewable resources, which are much cleaner than nonrenewable resources, we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, released into the atmosphere through human activities, otherwise known as carbon footprint. There are a lot of ways to reduce your carbon footprints: use energy-efficient lighting, travel by car only when you really need to, travel less, walk or bike more, take less baths or don't take baths at all and take showers instead... These are some of the solutions for reducing your carbon footprints and use less nonrenewable resources, so they could last longer, giving renewable resources more time to be developed and used on a large scale.

What renewable resources can you get out of waste and plants? Substances for biofuels and bioplastics. Through various processes, substances from plants and waste can be extract and be made into biofuels and bioplastics. For example, sugar can be made into ethanol. Leftover food or plants will be crush into powder and mixed with water and an enzyme to break down the powder. Heat the mixture up, cooled it down to add a second enzyme, which will convert some of the powder to sugar. Add yeast to the mixture and mix them up for 48 hours or so, and sugar turns into ethanol. Filter the water and the remaining byproduct of the powder from ethanol. Literally! Filter them. The water is filtered from the ethanol by a molecular sieve, or just another form of filter. Ethanol can be used as a replacement for gasoline. Another example is biogas. Biogas can be extracted out of waste and plants. The waste and plants are crushed and mix with warm water in an air-proof tank, and several types of bacteria will be introduce to the mixture. The bacteria will release biogas through a process known as "anaerobic digestion", in which the bacteria will digest the waste and plants into biogas and another byproduct. The water helped the bacteria to produce more methane. Methane will then be extracted out of the biogas and use for generating electricity and cooking, while the byproduct, known as digestate, is used as fertilizer.

So you folks can see, renewable resources are capable of replacing nonrenewable resources. If we constantly modified the renewable resources and the processes of making biofuels, bioplastics... and use them on a large scale, the results are cleaner and greener resources that are abundant enough to replace nonrenewable resources.

Alex Rider: Point Blank

Hullo, friends! Did you guys read the book "Point Blank" or also known as "Point Blanc"? It is part of the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz. Although this book is part of a young adult series, I found the book quite interesting.
This book have excellent literature and at times was extraordinarily very suspenseful. Although what the antagonists intended to do were a little stupid, the book is very interesting. So you guys, please read this book. Here are some of the benefits: better writing, which sometimes means higher LA grade, keeps the reader interested in whatever you write, enabling you to join WritePath when WritePath arrives... So please read this book. But I advise you to read the beginning book of the series first, not like me. Probably you will understand the book better when you read from the beginning of the series to the end.

I have enjoyed "When my name was Keoko", what about you?

Bonjour! I have enjoyed "When my name was Keoko", what about you? Answer my question in your comments.
I love "When my name was Keoko". It shows that in a war, people of occupied lands could be mistreated very badly. Although Tae-yul's account of being a kamikaze pilot was fictional, the remaining parts of the story clearly shows some of the miserable things people can endure in a war. For example, in the story, almost all of the food and all of the metal were taken away from the Koreans' houses and use to feed the Japanese soldiers and make equipments. I also love the book since there was at least a person in the book who loves airplanes, with that person being Tae-yul.
I had like airplanes since 4th Grade. They were fascinating to me. I was glad that there was a person who also loves airplanes, even though that person might be fictional.

Plastic cups and water bottles

Okay, as some of you have already know this, I'm a member of the Plastic cups committee of the Student Council of American International Middle School in HCM City, Vietnam. My school had thought about buying water bottles to sell in the school, but they turned down that decision and instead, continued using plastic cups. I don't know why the school kept on using plastic cups, since on average, producing ONE single plastic cup released 61 kg of greenhouse gases! That's a lot, eh? You know why? This is the process.

Factories melt polystyrene pellets and stretch the polystyrene into sheets of plastic. An oven will heat the sheets until they are soft to be shaped without breaking. Another machine will vacuum and push the sheets into the mold cavities. The molds get cut out of those sheets, which will be remelt and stretch into new sheets of plastic. The cups are stacked and push into a conveyer belt, which will transports the cups to a machine, which will roll the lips of the cups until they are round.

The Student Council created a committee to reduce the usage of plastic cups in the school to use bottles instead. There's also several classes that focused on global warming and reduced the usage of plastic cups.

Let me give u guys some tips about using bottles. Those regular old bottles from the vending machines, like the bottles from the brand Aquafina, or La Vie, have an expiration date on them. That doesn't mean that the drink expire. That means that when the plastic expired, harmful chemicals in the plastic will be released. U don't want to drink the drinks from an expired bottle.

So buy a bottle, or use a plastic cup for more than one day before throwing it away. Those bottle from the vending machines, you don't have to worry about them until a few years later. But I advise you to buy bottles that doesn't expire. You could use those bottles for your whole life!!

Deltora Quest: Valley of the Lost

Hullo again! This book is the sequel to Maze of the Beast. This is the book that tells the adventure of Lief, Barda, and Jasmine heading to the Valley of the Lost, to get the last gem for the Belt of Deltora, the Diamond. When they arrived at the valley, the Guardian said that they must play a game in order to get the Diamond. You have to use your whits in this game.
Please read this book. It have a great word choice, plot, and literature. Remember to read it.

Deltora Quest: Maze of the Beast

Hullo! Did you guys read about this book yet? Some of you didn't, some of you did. Alright, let's get on to the book.
This book is part of the series of books called Deltora Quest. The first book explained that the Shadow Lord, the ruler of Shadowlands, a barren wasteland north of the country of Deltora, conquered Deltora. The book "Maze of the Beast" is about Lief, the son of the closest friend of the last Deltoran king, Barda, a former palace guard, and Jasmine, a wild girl who lived in the Forests of Silence, finding their way to the Maze of the Beast to get the second last gem. Each gem is guarded with a Guardian. The gems give the Belt of Deltora power. When the heir to the belt puts the belt on, enemies of Deltora will be banished from Deltora.
You should read this book. It have a great plot and good word choice and literature. For instance, the main characters have dangerous encounters with pirates and shapeshifters, or Ols, sent from the Shadow Lord.
You might want to read this book immediately, but I advise you to read from the beginning to the end of this series. You might not understand the plot and what the characters are talking about if you don't read from the beginning to the last book of the series.

THE CAT who went to Heaven

It's another blog post on my blog that's a summary of a book. This time, the book is a graphic novel. This graphic novel, THE CAT who went Heaven, is written by Elizabeth Coatsworth, and a very touching book, it is, at least to me. Tears welled up in my eyes at the end of the book. Anyway, this book is about a female cat living with a poor young artist and his housekeeper.

One day, the housekeeper went back from the market carrying a basket that was supposed to contained dinner but instead, containing the white cat she bought from a fisherman in the market. When the cat was brought home, the housekeeper named the cat Good Fortune.

Good Fortune realized that she can't be very helpful for the artist and the housekeeper so she ate as little of their food as possible and each day, she sat in front of the Buddha's image in the artist's house and seemingly prayed for the artist and the housekeeper. One day, a monk from a nearby temple asked the artist to paint a painting detailing Buddha's death. He brought a first payment with him to relieve the artist of his poverty.

Over the next few days, the artist sat there imagining his painting and the animal's who went to heaven. Then he drew the painting. When he finished drawing the last of the animal's who went to heaven, he thought about his cat, who can't go to heaven since cats don't accept Buddha's teaching and therefore can't go to heaven, his heart softens, and he drew a cat.

When Good Fortune saw the painting again, she died out of gratitude for the artist and happiness.

To find out more, please read this book, folks. That's all, folks!