#Nestlé Carnation milk plant in drought-hit California to go'zero-water'Switzerland-based Nestlé announced yesterday that work has begun to transform its Carnation Evaporated milk plant in Modesto, California into a'zero water'facility,
Water extracted from milk to produce Carnation Evaporated milk will be used in operational tasks, such as cleaning and cooling."
"This'zero water'approach, where water from the milk is reused would not be appropriate for a bottling plant,
but other options such as using grey water rather than potable water in cooling towers can also deliver savings,
"a Nestlé spokesperson told Dairyreporter. com. Nestlé is scheduled to complete the project at Modesto in late 2016.
Alongside its'zero water'project at Modesto, Nestlé is ploughing money into technology to reduce the amount of water it uses at its water bottling plants and food and pet care product manufacturing facilties in California.
Nestlé has come under fire for its water bottling operations in California, which is into its fourth year of drought.
The company's Modesto Carnation Evaporated milk plant, for example, sits in an area currently in the midst of an'Extreme Drought',according to the US Drought Monitor."
"the Nestlé spokesperson said.""Our focus and effort has been on scrutinising the operations of all of our plants in California-asking the question,
'""Nestlé has committed to improving the water efficiency of its operations globally for many years now.
Nestlé unveiled its first'zero water'manufacturing site in the"water-stressed"Mexican state of Jalisco in October 2014.
Nestlé was awarded the Corporate Water Stewardship Award at the 2015 Global Water Awards for its efforts in Mexico."
"Once the'zero water'approach was implemented successfully at our factory in Mexico, Nestlé immediately started to look for other sites where we would apply the technology,
"the Nestlé spokesperson said.""Each factory is different-you have to look at whether the approach what works in Mexico will work at a different plant.""
""The decision to go ahead was taken once we were confident that the technology would deliver the necessary savings,"the spokesperson added.
Following recognition at the Global Water Awards, Nestlé revealed plans to install technology at dairy plants in other"water-stressed"areas of South africa, Pakistan, India and China. t
#Robots to rebuild themselves and evolve without human intervention In this framework of a odel-free artificial evolutionresearchers have designed
what they call a other robotthat can manipulate and create cubic modules improving them as they evolve. he adaptation of physical shapes
which allows biological systems to survive in a large variety of environments, said co-author Luzius Brodbeck. hrough evolutionary adaptation some animals changed their morphologies to live on land instead of under water,
and Fumiya Iida from the Department of Engineering, Cambridge university in the UK and Simon Hauser of Biorobotics Laboratory, EPFLCOLE Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.
The locomotion agents are placed automatically in a testing environment and their locomotion behavior is analyzed in the real world.
The key for a meaningful design optimization is to build variations of physical machines through the course of the evolutionary process.
producing real data in a time-intensive process
#Scientists design technology to make PLA production process simpler Polylactic acid (PLA) is already a part of our everyday lives in biodegradable drinking cups
and vegetable wrapping foil but it is considered not yet a full alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics,
because it costs so much to produce. As a result, researchers from the KU Leuven Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis have come up with a way to make the PLA production process more simple and waste-free.
The bioplastic PLA is derived from renewable resources, including the sugar in maize and sugarcane. Fermentation turns the sugar into lactic acid
which in turn is a building block for polylactic acid. According to co-author Professor Bert Sels of hape-selective zeolite catalysis for bioplastics productionthe production process for PLA is expensive because of the intermediary steps."
"First, lactic acid is fed into a reactor and converted into a type of pre-plastic under high temperature and in a vacuum,
"he said.""This is an expensive process. The pre-plastic-a low-quality plastic-is broken then down into building blocks for PLA. n other words,
you are first producing an inferior plastic before you end up with a high-quality plastic. And even though PLA is considered a green plastic,
the various intermediary steps in the production process still require metals and produce waste.""The KU Leuven researchers developed a new technique by applying a petrochemical concept to biomass."
"We speed up and guide the chemical process in the reactor with a zeolite as a catalyst,
added Co-author and postdoctoral researcher Michiel Dusselier. eolites are porous minerals. By selecting a specific type on the basis of its pore shape,
we were able to convert lactic acid directly into the building blocks for PLA without making the larger by-products that do not fit into the zeolite pores. ur new method has compared several advantages to the traditional technique:
we produce more PLA with less waste and without using metals. In addition, the production process is cheaper,
because we can skip a step.""Professor Sels is confident the technology will soon take hold."
"The KU Leuven patent on our discovery was sold recently to a chemical company that intends to apply the production process on an industrial scale,
he said. LA will never fully replace petroleum-based plastics. For one thing, some objects, such as toilet drain pipes, are meant not to be biodegradable.
And it is not our intention to promote disposable plastic. ut products made of PLA can now become cheaper and greener.
Our method is a great example of how the chemical industry and biotechnology can join forces.""Professor Sels, is of KU Leuven Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis),
and Dr Dusselier, KU Leuven Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis) and California Institute of technology i
#New half-fat soft cheese solution Arla Foods Ingredients has developed a whey protein solution that enables dairies to produce low-fat soft ripened cheeses that taste as good as the full-fat versions.
Arla Foods Ingredients has developed a whey protein solution that enables dairies to produce low-fat soft ripened cheeses that taste as good as the full-fat versions.
Nutrilac Softcheese makes it possible to reduce fat in soft ripened cheese by 50 percent with no loss of creaminess.
It is supplied as a white powder that is simply added to the cheese milk prior to the pasteurisation stage.
Overall it adds no extra cost to the manufacturing process because it increases the final yield in the region of 10 percent to 20 percent.
This means it more than pays for itself in the form of greater output. Claus Andersen, category manager at Arla Foods Ingredients, says,
f all the major dairy categories, cheese is among the least developed when it comes to sales of reduced fat products.
The reason for this is mainly technical, in the sense that it very difficult to produce low-fat cheeses that make the grade in terms of taste and texture.
Taking some of the fat out of the cheese has a major impact on quality, principally because it makes the product matrix too hard.
which is undesirable in a category where the only ingredients listed are usually milk, salt, rennet and culture.
and so is the potential for increased sales in this underdeveloped sub-category of the dairy market,
#Investment in robotics could avoid mistakes There an old saying that you can make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
However, people in the New zealand food processing industry know that mistakes on the production line can be costly.
Millions of dollars is spent every year trying to prevent or fix problems related to contamination, labelling, injury, sanitation and wasted raw ingredients.
Increasing automation in the workplace can significantly help reduce many of these issues, with the newest generation of technologies such as lightweight robots capable of improving processes for food manufacturers.
A good example is the reduction in contamination through reduced handling of raw materials. Microbial contamination is the leading cause of food product recall
The payments to supermarkets and penalties from regulators for product recalls often run over $100, 000,
Another pricey mistake for many food producers are labelling mistakes. Between 2002 and 2011,33 per cent of all food recalls in ANZ were due to errors in labelling,
The fast moving nature of the NZ food industry means labelling mistakes are an ever present danger.
Like any good automated worker, theye great at repetitive tasks and mean jobs can be redone quickly.
Staff can then be focused more on quality control such as ensuring correct labelling rather than getting caught up in the arduous task of applying the labelling.
The freeing up of employees from repetitive tasks can also help reduce costs related to worker accident and injury.
This is a significant problem for all food manufacturers. In the United states as many as 65 percent of all food factory workers had experienced injury
while working on the job. Costs related to worker injury are considerable. In addition to injury pay, they can also have a direct impact on insurance premiums, lost labour and production interruption as well as the distress of a valued team member.
Lightweight robots now have many built-in features to ensure they can work safely side-by-side with factory workers.
In addition to repetitive tasks, the collaborative nature of these robots mean theye also able to reduce heavy lifting often associated with food production.
Most robots have highly configurable safety modes that will instantly respond to a wide range of triggers.
This means that around 80 per cent of these devices are deployed without safety guarding (after risk assessment.
Universal Robots works with one of Europe biggest egg companies to help pack more than 15
Mistakes in food processing are a real concern for many New zealand companies. However the introduction of these new technologies,
And Bluetooth Good news for blind people wanting to travel on the London Tube. While at the moment they still have to rely on station staff to assist them on to their train,
a new smartphone app created by the Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB) Youth Forum
and digital product studio ustwo could help them in the future navigate the city independently. The app, called Wayfindr, uses Bluetooth and beacon technology to trace the user location in the subway
and give him audible directions. A prototype has been recently trialled at Pimlico station where sixteen beacons have been installed.
it uses bone conduction headphones that rest on the blind person cheeks, giving him turn-by-turn directions on where to go
each time a beacon signal is picked up by the smartphone. At the same time, the headphones do not prevent wearers from hearing the sounds around them,
allowing them to gather more information about the surrounding environment. Although the tests have been very promising,
as Kevin, one the first users said, there is still a long road ahead to Wayfindr being rolled out to the masses,
and more testing needs to be done to ensure perfect coverage. London underground is huge and a very large number of beacons should be deployed.
#Drought, Climate change and California's Multibillion-Dollar Problem Two weeks before California Governor Jerry brown announcement on Wednesday that residents and businesses in the Golden state which is withering amid one of its worst droughts in modern history
Brown described Mcconnell actions to protect coal interests as risking he health and well-being of America.
and the governor stopped short of attributing California woes to human-driven climate change a point of ongoing scientific debate.
what California is currently experiencing will only get worse with tens of billions of dollars hanging in the balance
if global greenhouse gas emissions aren curtailed soon and adequate adaptation measures aren put in place. Short of such measures, the study produced by the Risky Business Project,
former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson and hedge-fund manager and environmental advocate Tom Steyer suggests that California will likely face ultiple and significant economic risks from climate change, over the 21st century.
the Risky Business analysis suggests. ithout significant adaptation by farmers, several regions will likely see yield losses for heat-sensitive commodity crops like cotton and corn, with potentially high economic costs,
the authors noted. or example, the Inland South region will likely take an economic hit of up to $38 million per year due to cotton yield declines by the end of the century.
could cost the state billions of additional dollars in property losses and infrastructure damage. This could include between $8
we are already seeing the devastating toll that climate change is taking on our economy and way of life.
stating that ecord-setting high temperature that accompanied this recent drought was made likely more extreme due to human-induced global warming.
#Crowdfunding's Continued Maturity Is Empowering Entrepreneurs Like Never Before One of the core ideas in my latest book Bold is that today, for the first time in history,
These techs include things like 3d printing, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, infinite computing, networks, sensors, nanotechnology, and virtual realitynd is essentially a list of the most disruptive technologies ever invented.
because of the development of user friendly interfaces (a topic covered in this earlier blog) for these accelerating technologies,
This means that these massively disruptive arenas are opening their doors for entrepreneurial development, no Phd required.
Essentially, even though exponential technologies put the power of the gods (especially if wee talking AI or synthetic biology) into the hands of mere mortals,
mere mortals still have to solve all the standard business challenges that come with entrepreneurshipaising money being foremost among them.
For starters, there are more than 700 different crowdfunding sites online, providing platform-level support for whatever kind of campaign you might have in mind.
This year, experts are predicting the total size of the crowdfunding market will come in somewhere between $5 billion and $15 billion.
having already raised $10. 3 million dollars back in 2012 for the initial iteration of the watch.
it also helped him build up a core supporter base, essentially a community of like-minded individuals who shared his passion for cutting edge smart watches.
Experts are predicting that by 2025, crowdfunding raises will top $100 billionearly double the size of today venture market.
But the really big deal is that this is the very first time non-accredited investors can invest.
and leaves today entrepreneurs far more empowered than ever before n
#Stanford Researchers Created A Smartphone Battery That Charges In Only One Minute Last year, emarketer reported that the global smartphone audience passed 1. 75 billion people.
As smartphones become ubiquitous, the demand for longer-lasting batteries will continue to increase. Fortunately, researchers at Stanford university are building an aluminum-ion battery prototype that speeds up the charging times.
And the aluminum-ion battery could eventually replace many of the lithium-ion and alkaline batteries used in many smartphones today. e have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries,
which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames, said Stanford university chemistry professor Hongjie Dai, the lead researcher of the project,
in an article by the Stanford Report. ur new battery won catch fire, even if you drill through it.
An aluminum-ion battery generally consists of two electrodes, one negatively charged anode made of aluminum and a positively charged cathode.
Professor Dai said that his team accidentally discovered that a simple solution is using graphite.
This is why the Stanford researchers placed the aluminum anode, a graphite cathode and an ionic liquid electrolyte inside of a polymer-coated pouch.
The electrolyte is essentially a salt that is liquid at room temperature so it is safe, according to Stanford graduate student and co-lead author Ming Gong.
Researchers have been interested in developing a commercially viable aluminum-ion battery for decades, but efforts have been largely unsuccessful.
What makes aluminum appealing is the low flammability, low cost and high-charge storage capacity. A major challenge with developing aluminum batteries is finding materials that produce sufficient voltage after repeated recharging cycles.
The ionic liquid electrolyte products used in Stanford aluminum battery pack are also slightly expensive because there is not enough demand for it.
Lithium-ion batteries are also potentially a fire hazard. This is why United airlines and Delta air lines banned bulk lithium battery shipments on passenger planes.
When Stanford drilled through its aluminum battery pouch it worked for a while longer without catching fire
which makes it much safer than lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries also takes hours to charge,
but the aluminum-ion prototype at Stanford takes only one minute. The aluminum batteries developed at Stanford university are more durable than other batteries.
For example, aluminum batteries developed at other laboratories died after just 100 charge-discharge cycles. The aluminum battery developed at Stanford was able to withstand more than 7, 500 cycles without any capacity loss.
Lithium-ion batteries generally last about 1, 000 cycles. The aluminum battery is also flexible so it can be used in electronic devices that can fold and bend.
Aluminum batteries could be used for storing renewable energy on electrical grids. Electrical grids need batteries with a long cycle life to store
and release energy. Aluminum-ion technology is an environmentally friendly alternative to disposable alkaline batteries too.
The rechargeable aluminum battery created by Stanford researchers generates about two volts of electricity, the highest achieved with aluminum.
Before Stanford aluminum-ion battery is mass produced, the research team will have to improve the cathode material to increase the voltage and energy density.
The voltage of the aluminum battery made by the Stanford researchers is about half the average smartphone lithium battery.
The findings in the research will be published in a paper titled n ultrafast rechargeable aluminum-ion batteryfor the April 6th advance online edition of Nature. com. The other co-lead authors of the study
are Mengchang Lin (visiting scientist from Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute), Bingan Lu (visiting scientist from Hunan University) and Yingpeng Wu (postdoctoral scholar.
And the other authors are Di-Yan Wang (Stanford), Mingyun Guan (Stanford), Michael Angell (Stanford), Changxin Chen (Stanford), Jiang Yang (Stanford) and Bing-Joe
Hwang (National Taiwan Normal University. Here is a video about the development of aluminum-ion battery at Stanfor a
#That Self-driving car In Your Future Might Make You Sick Remember back when virtual reality was being touted as The next Big Thing the first time around?
Videogame maker Sega developed a mass-market head-tracking VR system and showed it to reporters and industry representatives with great fanfare at the 1993 winter Consumer electronics Show.
It performed as advertised, carried an affordable $200 price tag and was set to launch the following year.
Unfortunately, among other issues, testers reportedly developed headaches and motion sickness using the headset and the system was shelved quietly.
A report just issued by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, suggests a similar problem could befall those riding in autonomous-driving cars.
According to the study authors Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle that because the three main factors that trigger motion sickness specifically, a conflict between vestibular (balance) and visual inputs, an inability to anticipate the direction of motion
and a lack of control over the direction of motion tend to be elevated in self-driving vehicles.
The report suggests between six and 10 percent of Americans riding in autonomous vehicles would be expected to always,
or at least usually, suffer some degree of motion sickness. What more, the frequency and severity suffered can be expected to vary depending on
what an occupant is doing at the time instead of driving. Those reading watching movies or television,
texting and working while on autopilot should suffer the most motion sickness, while those who steadfastly keep their eyes on the road are likely to endure the least measure of discomfort.
Authors Sivak and Schoettle suggest automakers can design self-driving cars specifically to help reduce the inherent proclivity for car sickness,
including having large transparent windows to maximize an occupant visual field and orienting seats and displays so that riders are facing forward.
Mercedes-benz recently showed a prototype driverless car that featured deeply tinted windows and rear-facing front seats,
which would apparently be a no-no in this regard. Alternately, riders prone to the malady could always take anti-nausea medications,
though this is not a particularly practical solution for various reasons. Beyond that, riders could take a nap,
or at the least keep their eyes closed while the vehicle is in motion, which is said to help minimize motion sickness.
Whichever automaker becomes the first to market a fully autonomous vehicle might take heed to place one important item on the standard equipment list a barf bag
#Want More Wind And Solar energy? Invest A lot More In The Grid Want to increase the use of green energy
and reduce the level of harmful emissions? Invest heavily in the grid to both modernize
and expand it, which will accomplish such aims while also building the US economy. That the view of energy and utility experts assembled by Public utilities Fortnightly at its energy, money and power conference last week in WASHINGTON DC.
A smarter and more extensive grid that is able to distribute greener power is expensive. But the benefits of creating a modern infrastructure are huge. his vision is also about job creation
and economic benefits, says Massoud Amin, chairman of the IEEE Smart grid and a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota.
For every $1 invested in the nation network as much as $6 is returned, not to mention the 47,000 new jobs since 2012.
Just ask Centerpoint Energy Inc. and DTE ENERGY Co, . which have invested hundreds of millions of dollars (with some federal help) to improve performance over their wires.
Those who run electricity systems can now apply algorithms to tell operators which units to run
and where to avoid congestion on the lines, all of which favors wind and solar energy that is variable in nature.
EPB technicians connect high-voltage electric wires on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, in Chattanooga, Tenn. to the S&c Intellirupter Pulsecloser, a smart switch that will help EPB reduce power outage durations by 40 percent.
EPB technicians connect high-voltage electric wires on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, in Chattanooga, Tenn. to the S&c Intellirupter Pulsecloser, a smart switch that will help EPB reduce power outage durations by 40 percent.
Christopher Berkey/AP Images for S&c Electric company) Today, the bulk power system as it is known is comprised of 10,000 power plants, 170,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and nearly 6 million miles of low-voltage distribution lines.
It also has more than 15,000 substations. The pressure to increase the use of renewables will only intensify,
in part because of EPA proposed Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
As such, the proposal will require more centrally-generated wind and solar energy that need access to the transmission lines.
Professor Amin says that if wind energy is to swell by 40 percent during this time,
high-voltage, long distance transmission will need to enlarge by 9 percent. To that end, the PJM Interconnection that manages the transmission grid over 13-states in the Mid-atlantic
and Midwest regions says that it has approved hundreds of upgrades and additions that will entail $24 billion of new capital in the coming years.
Specifically, 10 of its 13 states have renewable portfolio standards that will require more green energy.
With that, it sees 19,700 megawatts of wind going up before 2020 that will also demand investments in energy storage that can harness the power
and then inject it later on to the grid. xpansion is happening, says Terry Boston, chief executive of PJM. he planning process is broken not.
But the siting process is time consuming. t won get much easier to site transmission,
adds Philip Moeller, commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). ou can just snap your fingers.
Congress eeds to restore FERC backstop authority, which it was given in 2005 as a way to facilitate much-need transmission projects
if the states refused to act. But the courts later clarified the law to say that FERC cannot override the states
if they decline to permit a project. The American Wind energy Association says that up to 60,000 megawatts of new wind energy development is planned possible
if transmission expansions actually occur. In Texas, for example, it says that wind is generated in rural sections
and transported to population centers, allowing the transmission operator known as ERCOT to nearly double its use of wind energy.
There, nearly $15 billion has been invested to generate about 19,500 megawatts of wind energy. Meantime, it says that transmission operators in the Midwest
and the Southwest are enacting similar policies. The Mid-continent Independent System Operator is integrating 14,000 megawatts of new wind
while the Southwest Power Pool is doing the same with 3, 000 new megawatts there.
But what about solar energy? The Obama administration Clean Power Plan could also boost that industry,
says Julia Hamm, chief executive of the Solar Electric power Association. The recent past has seen such mega-deals as the 392-megawatt concentrated solar plant called Ivanpah,
which is joint venture among NRG ENERGY, Google and Brightsource energy. That project takes 173,000 mirrors and focuses the sunlight to the plant solar receiver steam generator,
when then produces electricity. However, it costly and out-of-favor, given that it is much easier and much less expensive to put rooftop solar panels on homes
and businesses not to mention the headaches of trying to get new transmission built to carry the power to where it would be consumed.
That why Hamm says that the trend now is to build smaller utility-scale projects that may total 30 megawatts.
Some of the biggest names in the solar industry are headed this way, she adds, pointing to First Solar Inc
. and Sunpower Corp. hey can do it on the distribution side, not on the transmission side,
she says, who adds that ommunity solaris also becoming a viable option: It permits consumers to buy into a larger project that it is taking place in a jurisdiction,
which can also avoid high-voltage interfaces as well as the cross-subsidization battles now occurring between rooftop solar customers and their electric utilities.
The existing grid is becoming better and smarter, allowing for more efficient and cleaner transportation of energy.
But network expansion will also be necessary, not just to accommodate a growing economy but also to satisfy pending clean air rules.
Roadblocks persist. But it is an effort and an investment that will pay off both environmentally and economically o
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