Agronautas

Soluciones tradicionales para conservar los alimentos sin utilizar frigoríficos y sí el diseño!

Through the research into the current situation of food preservation, I’ve learned that we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator. We don’t observe the food any more and we don’t understand how to treat it.

Therefore my design looks at re-introducing and re-evaluating traditional oral knowledge of food, which is closer to nature. Furthermore, it aims to bring back the connection between different levels of living beings, we as human beings and food ingredients as other living beings.

About the Presentation

This webinar will offer an interdisciplinary perspective on solar innovation in the United States by examining over 100 case studies. It will use these research findings to describe how self-organizing groups, or "tribes," have become a driving force in transforming the solar innovation industry nationally and globally, and also focus on their potential to transform the value network.

The webinar will highlight various characteristics of successful tribes. Factors such as dynamics leading to formation, patterns of growth, evolution, and, in some cases, demise will be examined as well. The presentation will also describe the place and relationship of the ideal entity within existing and future solar innovation clusters.

The current status of the United States' competitive advantage will be discussed by comparing emerging and established regional solar innovation capabilities. A framework will be offered to provide government and industry decision-makers with an approach that can be implemented immediately to build a global competitive advantage.

This research was funded by the US Department of Energy.

In the Air is a visualization project which aims to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents of Madrid´s air (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc), to see how they perform, react and interact with the rest of the city.

The visualization tool is a web-based dynamic model which builds up the space the components generate, where through data crossing behavior patterns emerge. The results of these data feed a physical prototype of what we have called a “diffuse façade”, a massive indicator of the air´s components through a changing cloud, blurring architecture with the atmosphere it has invaded and mediating the activity of the participants it envelops.

The bio-digester kitchen island is the central hub in the Microbial Home system. It consists of a methane digester which converts bathroom waste solids and vegetable trimmings into methane gas that is used to power a series of functions in the home.

The bio-digester hub is designed as a repositionable kitchen island, including a chopping surface with vegetable waste grinder, a gas cooking range, a glass tank that shows energy reserves and glass elements showing pressure, volume and readiness of compost sludge. Materials used in the design are copper, cast iron, glass and bamboo.

‘Bio-gas’ is produced by developing a culture of suitable bacteria living on organic waste material from the home. The gas the bacteria generate is collected and burnt. This arrangement is called a methane digester and it has been used in various configurations for centuries.

The gas from the methane digester in the Microbial Home is fed to a cooking range and gas mantle lights. Water pipes are preheated by the digester and channeled to other components in the Microbial Home system. The digester needs a constant supply of waste material and water. The dehydrated sludge residue from the digester can be safely removed and used as compost.

via Martin de re:farm

Eliodomestico is a solar household still for the developing countries. Eliodomestico is an open project, free to the people who need it. It intends to bring drinking water from salt water. 

MIT researchers say that soon all we’ll need to harvest our vast solar resource is grass and stabilizing powder.

While Masdar and Suntech and other solar energy projects are laboring under expensive, high-tech materials in order to improve their energy-absorbing capability, MIT researchers in the United States are taking a different approach. They realized that nothing in nature absorbs energy as well as plants, so they have developed a solar technology that combines a small amount of grass (or other agricultural waste), a stabilizing powder made of zinc oxide and titanium oxide, and a glass or metal substrate which mimics the photosynthesis process. Eventually their technology will be so simple that anybody will be able to make their own solar panels for next to nothing.

Con poco más de 5 dolares, mucho material reciclado y 3 horas de trabajo podemos construir nuestro propio calentador solar de agua. Todavía esta en fase de mejora pero promete mucho. Ahora mismo nos ofrece la posibilidad de calentar pequeñas cantidades de agua a una temperatura decentemente caliente.

A vertical hidroponic garden for growing food on your windows. 

If you've got tools, space, a little extra time, and a knack for building things, constructing your own windowfarm gives you additional control to customize the system for your own setup. You will need to register on the community site and accept community terms of service before accessing the plans.

Typical prices for bulk purchase of fuels at domestic or small commercial scale, February 2012

N.B. These prices are intended for guidance only and represent the typical cost per unit of fuel energy for comparison. This is not the same as cost per unit of delivered heat which will depend on the efficiency of the boiler or stove, and may also include other charges such as service and maintenance for heat supply contracts.

All prices are prone to significant variation with geographical region, tariff choice, order quantities, overall contract size and duration, time of year, delivery distance and time, etc. Woodfuels in particular are available at prices both significantly above and below those quoted, and bulk prices will be subject to a minimum delivery size of perhaps 3-5 tonnes. Wood pellets bought in bags may be significantly more expensive than those bought in bulk.