Basil Crop Hits The Roof At Scunthorpe Vertical Farm With Artificial Sun
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
It is a fascinating article about how basil is farmed vertically in Scunthorpe.
- Much of the crop goes to UK supermarkets.
- The grower has now teamed with Ocado to build the largest vertical farm in the world.
- The grower is also growing rosemary, chard and spinach. Although the latter looked a bit sad.
- He has also experimented with turnips and carrots and hopes to move on to soft fruits and cut flowers.
Surely, the only way is Up!
Is the farmer feeding the crops carbon dioxide captured from the massive Keadby gas-fired power-stations in the area?
That way we can generate our electricity with added CO2 and eat it.
I know of a tomato grower, who uses a gas-powered combined heat and power boiler to heat his greenhouses, where the CO2 is fed to the tomatoes and any electricity he doesn’t need is sold to local consumers.
If we can eat all the CO2, why not go fracking for the gas? The only losers would be the Qataris and Putin.
Panasonic Launches 5 kW Type Pure Hydrogen Fuel Cell Generator
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from Panasonic.
This is the first paragraph.
Panasonic Corporation today announced that it has developed a pure hydrogen fuel cell generator, which generates power through chemical reaction with high-purity hydrogen and oxygen in the air. The generator will be launched on October 1, 2021 for commercial use in Japan.
Features include.
- 5 kW basic unit scalable as needed.
- A hot water unit can be added to use the waste heat.
- Ability to run during a power outage.
- Remote operation.
I can envisage a log of uses for a useful generator like this and I will be interested to see how equipment like this is used in the future.
But there will be many generators in all sizes from many different manufacturers that will be released in the next few years to fulfil a lot of different applications.
We will also see lots of innovative ways to distribute hydrogen to various agricultural, industrial and office locations.
Railway Engineers Build Beaver Pass On Highland Line
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Railway engineers have built what they believe is Scotland’s first ever ‘beaver pass’, to allow the animals to go under the Highland mainline.
Let’s hope the remedial action works, as otherwise, there’ll be increasing train delays caused by beavers, as their numbers and dams proliferate.
The Scottish NFU is also against the reintroduction of beavers, as this article on the Scottish Farmer, which is entitled Don’t Protect The Beaver illustrates.
I can see trouble ahead!
Thermal Energy Storage The Key To Reducing Agricultural Food Pollution
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on EurekAlert.
These two paragraphs, introduce the article and give the aim of the project.
University of South Australia thermal energy researcher Professor Frank Bruno has been awarded almost $1 million by the Federal Government to find a solution to agricultural pollution in Australia and India.
Prof Bruno, South Australian Energy Chair at UniSA’s Future Industries Institute, will lead a collaborative project with India’s biggest private university, LPU, to develop a renewable energy-driven food processing and drying system which alleviates both pollution and landfill issues in both countries.
The big problem in India is air pollution, a lot of which is caused by farmers burning rice husks. By collecting solar energy, which will be stored as heat and used to dry crops, there is hope that this pollution can be reduced.
The whole article is very much a must-read.
Conclusion
This very much sounds like a good way to cut pollution in areas with lots of solar energy.
Memories Of Althorpe
On The way to Cleethorpes, I passed through Althorpe station.
This Google Map shows the area.
Note.
- The River Trent flowing South to North.
- Keadby power station at the top of the map.
- Althorpe station close to the bridge over the river.
- The village of Althorpe is at the South of the map by the river.
C and myself had friends, who farmed much of the land in the curve of river, South of the railway.
These are a few tales, some might enjoy.
Althorpe And Princess Diana’s Grave
I was once told, that regularly tourists would appear looking for the last resting place of Princess Diana.
Sat-navs may be a wonderful gadget for some, but they do lead those with a certain lack of common sense on wild goose chases.
C And The Tug-Boats
C once spent a night in their farmhouse, which was by the River Trent.
She didn’t sleep well, as tug-boats pulling barges were constantly going past and sounding their sirens. The river was actually above the house, due to the embankments to stop flooding.
Princess Anne And The Centrefold
Our friends’ daughter was a very good rider in eventing and used to supplement her variable income in the sport with modelling. At one point, I used her for some promotional shots for one of my companies.
Some years ago, she was competing at an event in Yorkshire. Coincidentally, this was just after she had appeared as the centrefold in a well-known men’s magazine.
The event was a bit of a nightmare for her, as paparazzi were following her with open copies of the magazine.
At one point, it all got a bit much, so she decided to sneak back to the calm of her horsebox, by a circuitous route.
As she walked back, she encountered Princess Anne, who was also competing and using the same route to avoid the paparazzi.
They talked about the pressures of the paparazzi, who were being a nuisance, with the Princess saying, she approved of my friends’ daughter’s modelling and hoped it continued, as it had taken the pressure off herself.
Flixborough
My friends’ farm was not far from Flixborough, which is infamous for the Flixborough Disaster in 1974, when a chemical plant exploded and killed 28 people and seriously injured a further 36.
My friends also lost several thousand pigs because of the explosion.
Wikipedia says this about the cause of the explosion.
The disaster involved (and may well have been caused by) a hasty modification. There was no on-site senior manager with mechanical engineering expertise (virtually all the plant management had chemical engineering qualifications); mechanical engineering issues with the modification were overlooked by the managers who approved it, nor was the severity of the potential consequences of its failure appreciated.
At the time, I had just left ICI and I was still in contact with my former colleagues.
One told me, that he had met a Senior ICI Engineer, who had been involved with the enquiry into the disaster.
The plant had been a copy of a Dutch plant, that had been built to metric units, which were converted to Imperial to build the Flixborough plant.
As ICI had used metric units since the mid-1950s, there was considerable alarm in the mind of the Senior Engineer, that when the hasty modification was made, someone got mixed up.
Would the Flixborough disaster have happened, if the plant had been built as a copy of the Dutch plant using metric units?
Hydrogen Powered Tractors Could Be The Green Answer In That Industry
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.
I agree with the title and the article is worth a read.
For some time, I’ve felt that hydrogen would be ideal to power a tractor and other agricultural machinery.
- Now that companies like ITM Power have developed efficient electrolysers, the accessibility of the fuel is a lot easier.
- Many farmers would have their own electrolyser.
- Diesel is always getting nicked, but stealing hydrogen would probably be more difficult.
- Hydrogen could also power the farmer’s cars.
Energy use on the farm could be very different.
Fruit And Veg Self-Sufficiency Ahead Thanks To Heat From Sewage Farms
This headline caught my eye on an article in today’s Times.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Britain will become far more self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce under plans to tap heat from sewage farms and pipe it to giant greenhouses.
The idea of using waste heat to grow fruit and vegetables is not new.
The technique is used at Drax power station and at various Scottish distilleries.
Low Carbon Farming just intend to do it with heat from sewage works.
- They have identified 41 sites in the UK.
- The greenhouses will be larger than the O2.
- The first two sites are in East Anglia and are being built near two of Anglian Water’s sewage works.
- Fully developed, they could make the UK self-sufficient in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and for most of the year.
- It would be a £2.67 billion investment, that would create 8,000 jobs.
Intriguingly, if they need more heat, they’ll use a fossil-fuel combined heat and power unit. The carbon dioxide produced will be fed directly to the fruit and veg, as it makes them grow faster.
Another Source Of Heat
In Exciting Renewable Energy Project for Spennymoor, I wrote about a Durham University project to use the waste heat in old coal mines to heat housing.
Could this heat be used to grow fruit and veg?
Hydrogen Islands
I found this concept on the ITM Power web site.
This was the sub-title.
Islands tend to have abundant renewable resources yet they rely heavily upon importing fossil fuels, often at relatively high cost.
And this was the body of the page.
The integration of renewables into an island’s power grid soon creates substantial balancing and curtailment problems. These can be overcome by deploying controllable rapid response electrolysers to produce green hydrogen for the island’s transport, heat and power sectors. Projects such as BigHit are demonstrating how this may be achieved.
It would create a zero-carbon island for an Internet tycoon or a Bond villain.
I’m certain that the concept would work for somewhere like a farm or even a small village, which is effectively a landlocked island, with perhaps wind turbines or solar panels.
Balloons On The Line Blamed For £1m Worth Of Train Delays
The title of this post, is the same as this article in The Times
This is the first two paragraphs.
Families have been told to stop bringing helium-filled balloons into railway stations after they were blamed for delays that cost the network £1 million a year.
In the latest version of “leaves on the line”, Network Rail said there were 619 “balloon-related incidents” across Britain in the past 12 months.
Liverstock farmers don’t like them either, as they fall into fields and get eaten.
I don’t like banning things, but surely some regulation and sensible rules are needed.
The Anonymous Widower 