Silent Oil Spills

Biosynthetic Technologies (@BiosyntheticOil) tweeted a video about silent oil spills last week that caught my attention. When it comes to oil spills, our minds are familiar with major crises that involve oil heavyweights like BP's Deepwater Horizon or Exxon's Valdez. These situations are ones where we point and play the blame game. We know who is responsible and we expect them to take ownership. That is why silent oil spills pertaining to motor oil struck a cord because everyone is at fault. A silent oil spill can occur from various mediums that use petroleum based oil. For example, driving vehicles that leak motor oil or by improperly disposing it will generate a 'silent' oil waste stream that enters our waterways, and eventually our ocean. Biosynthetic Technologies' video puts lubricating motor oil at the center of attention bringing awareness to how we are polluting the earth without even knowing it.

View the video by clicking here

But why is petroleum based motor oil so bad?

The main component in petroleum based motor oil is long saturated, carbon chains, in chemistry we call these alkanes or hydrocarbons. As an organic chemist, the carbon-carbon single bond motif is fundamental, but they are challenging to make or break. This is one of many reasons why petroleum based products (plastic bags, plastic anything) are robust and helpful, but also pollute the environment. Combusting hydrocarbons is how we normally grab energy for their bonds. Their complete decomposition leads to basic building blocks of CO2 (a GHG that contributes to global warming), H2O and energy. 

A 'greener' alternative is using motor oil made from renewable resources. Plant based oils have a better capacity of degrading in the environment because nature has already trained microbes to readily digest them. Even though oil is plant based, oil is oil and combusting it is going to lead to CO2, H2O, and energy. On the upside, since plants take up CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow, when we use them for energy we are essentially re-releasing or recycling CO2.

Where can you purchase renewable, biodegradable motor oil?  

• Green Earth Technology has a biobased line called G-oil. Click here to find their products near you. 
• There is also BioSyn-Xtra made by Renewable Lubricants. They have several products available here. 
• And lastly Lubrigreen, Biosynthetic Technologies' brand is not available in stores yet, but they can be contacted for a sample of their oil here.

References: 

1.Understanding Biobased/Biodegradable and the Industry’s Standardized Tests and Definitions. Renewable Lubricants Inc. link

2. Energy of Combustion, Charles E. Ophardt, 2003, Virtual Chembook. Elmhurst College. link

3. Bio-based oils, Good for equipment and the environment by the Seattle Public Utilities. link

4. Aluyor, et al. Scientific Research and Essay Vol.4 (6), pp. 543-548, June, 2009. link

5. Biosynthetic Technologies, Environmental and Social Benefits. link

Flower Power! Chicago Flower and Garden Show

Last Saturday was the beginning of the 9 day Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier. My husband and I went to check it out this past Sunday.  I was absolutely stunned at all of the beautiful flowers! I love flowers. I love them all so much that I can't say that I have a favorite one. Here are some pictures that I took of the place. 

This is the at the entrance. The featured artists here are Emmy Star Brown and Jeffery Breslow. 

The Art of Floral was one of my favorite exhibits. At this exhibit artists took a picture or a classic piece of art and using it as inspiration they made these floral arrangements.

Around the corner was an exhibit called Footwear: Women's Stories, another good one.  All of the items in this collection were of shoes and were made by the Women's Journeys in Fiber. At each shoe was the artist's reasoning behind their piece of work. This one below was made of autumn leaves. 

Then we stumbled across over 50 varieties of tulips in this exhibit called Canvas of Tulips. They smelled so sweet and were absolutely beautiful. According to the program, this exhibit was made up of more than 7000 tulips and were hand planted!! Amazing!

The next few pictures are from vendors, mainly from Marinaro's. They had these gorgeous centerpieces and floral arrangements and sold the most beautiful roses!! I bought a dozen yellow roses from them. 

I die! Look at these colors!

I purchased a batch of these hydrangeas, except mine were blue. The worker told me to water these every other day and to flip the plant around after watering to drain any excess water. Also, it would be a good idea to repot the plant after the flowers have fallen out and only the foliage is left. When repotting, you'd only want to put the flowers in a pot that is about an inch larger than the one it is in now - this prevents the plant from going into shock and dying. A few more pics from the vendors below.

        

A real buttercream cake!

Blue, pink and mustard colored roses

Here is another exhibit called Tablescapes: An Art-Full Table. The tables on display were designed by Chicago's top florists, retailers, designers, and clubs. They were so beautiful, maybe not the most functional table, but its art!

There were other garden exhibits which I didn't mention. There were ones where you could feed koi, others where you can hold insects like a tarantula or cockroach [no pics of these, couldn't get near them for fear I may actually die]. Great place to bring kids. But I have to say, next year I am going to sit in on the talks and demos that they offered. We were only able to sit in the tail end of one talk given by a gardener from the Peterson Garden Project. She discussed how to grow corn in a mound of soil with companion veggies such as squash and beans. I hope one day I'll be able to have a garden of my own!

Post Your Ad then Grab a Drink - The Billboard Water Fountain

The billboard water fountain is one of the coolest, most innovative things I've ever seen. Before I came across this article written by Matt Peckham, I had no idea that Lima, Peru is the second largest desert city in the world -- Cairo being first. It is also Peru's largest city and is a coastal desert situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. Lima sees only about half an inch of rain every year, but because it's so close to the ocean it's very humid averaging around 87% humidity all year round. 

Rapid city growth, polluted well water, and lack of rain has left the citizens of Lima without a clean, continuous source of potable water. That's when the University of Engineering and Technology of Peru (UTEC) decided they needed to recruit more engineering students to help them tackle this problem and many more like it. UTEC teamed up with advertising agency Mayo Draftfcb Lima to create this billboard. 

The billboard works by using generators powered by electricity to take in the air. The water in the humidity is condensed out and then pushed through a reverse osmosis system. Five generators fill up one tank which stores about 20 liters of water. 

The billboard fountain has brought the much needed exposure to the university, evident in the 28% increase in the number of applicants for 2013. And best of all, it produced thousands of liters of water for the city's 1.2 million citizens! Amazing, I love it!

This is the official UTEC/MayoDraftfcb video:
       


References:
1) Matt Peckham, http://techland.time.com/2013/03/05/finally-a-billboard-that-creates-drinkable-water-out-of-thin-air/
2) http://www.lima.climatemps.com/
3) http://www.limaeasy.com/lima-info/important-facts-and-figures-about-lima
4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=35yeVwigQcc