AirScape Engineer's Blog

As a manufacturer of environmentally friendly products, it is always our goal to find new ways to be even more green in our business practices. In January 2009 we decided to implement a foam packaging recycling program to help reduce our environmental impact. 

In order to ensure that our fans reach customers throughout the country without damage, they require robust polyethylene foam packaging. Polyethylene is a highly elastic and strong plastic that can withstand multiple impacts, making it ideal for shipping heavy objects such as whole house fans. Unfortunately, both the production and disposal of polyethylene, like all plastics, causes serious damage to the environment. In many parts of the country polyethylene foam is difficult if not impossible to recycle, so most of it ends up in a landfill.

The only way to reduce the hazards of plastic is to reduce the production of new plastic products. This is done by both decreasing overall demand and increasing the recycling of plastic. Our program allows us to reduce our need for the production of new polyethylene and also reduce the total amount of plastic being thrown away. We reuse the foam as many times as we can and then we recycle it, ensuring that the foam returned to us does not end up in a landfill.

It is immensely satisfying to us that we have had great customer response to this program. Almost 1 year  into the program and we have an average return rate of 42%, and the numbers are constantly increasing! My personal goal is to achieve a 50% return rate by next Spring, and with the return rates always increasing, I believe we can easily achieve this goal.

We owe a big thank you to all of our customers who have supported this program. We would also like to send out a hearty thanks to UPS, who has kindly begun waiving label printing fees and also begun offering us a discount on our return packages. With the help of UPS, our foam recycling program has been made more financially viable for us to continue in the future.

Our government program to encourage home buying is coming to a close.  Was it as good idea ? Certainly, it was for real estate agents! At least with the “cash for clunkers” program, the country as a whole (possibly) benefited by encouraging production of new, efficient cars and the retirement of low MPG cars.

Why didn’t we do the same thing for houses ?  OK, not the same thing, but how about this idea (in case we’re crazy enough to exend it):  Pay out the $8,000 directly to buyers of newly built homes.  For buyers of used houses, put the cash towards sealing, and insulating, and generally making the old house efficient.  Either way, contractors and their employees are working.

I will name this complicated economic concept “Have something left after the party’s over” , with the other very, very complicated concept (especially not  understood by bankers) “Spread the wealth”.

Energy Use vs. Percent Part Load

Most everything we build is designed for the worst case scenario, be it power output, strength, whatever.  The only problem with this is that 90% of the time we are running a lower speed. Let me give you some examples.

Your car engine has enough power to accelerate a fully loaded vehicle uphill, in the summer heat, with a headwind, and a tailgater behind you. Great, but most of the time your car is taking one person down the freeway at a reasonable speed.  Unfortunately, it’s very hard to design that motor to perform efficiently at high output power and low output power. The older ones among us remember some valiant attempts to achieve this goal, like turning off engine cyclinders.  The hybrid guys just simply turn the gasoline engine off when not needed.

Of course, in the world of whole house fans, we use electric motors to power our fans.  Typical AC (alternating current) fractional horsepower motors also suffer from the same problem. We specify and purchase them based on full load performance, but the part load (or low speed) efficiencies are not good at all. This is because a lot of electrical energy ends up being turned into heat while powering the internal electromagnets.

The reason we care about this, is because the ideal whole house fan will run at full load early in the evening to quickly cool the air in the house.  At this point, we care more about getting comfortable than cooling the structure – so big CFM is the answer.  However as the evening progresses, it’s not necessary for comfort to exhaust as much air. Also, the house probably will not cool down any faster just because we blow more air. An example of this is cooling hard boiled eggs under running cold water. If you turn up the tap all the way, do the eggs cool down faster ?

The solution is to use an electronically commutated motor (ECM). This type of motor is basically a permanent magnet motor with a small computer on top (was that technical enough?).  The bottom line is good efficiency at full speed, and extraordinary efficiency at part load. Take a look at our new 2.5eWHF as an example.

The chart at the top of the page shows the annual electrical consumption of several different WHF’s.  As you can see, the more that you run in low speed, the better the ECM looks.

The concept of sustainable living, or sustainability has wide appeal. It’s hard to argue with the idea that if you think of natural resources and energy as a bank account,  we should not be overdrawn.

If you do it right, and it’s a tall order, you could model the “real” costs of resource extraction.  Our simplistic economic models increase the Gross Domestic Product when a tree is cut down, or oil is burnt.  Basic accounting practices would at least require us to decrease the amount in our natural resource account.

Let’s table that thought. Onto the rant du jour.  Our local food co-op has the following announcement:

——————————local Co-op announcement——————————————–

FRIDAY also means PORT ORFORD Hook and Line Caught Fish are here.Port Orford fisherman also dropped off some sea water! We’re going to make our own “Port Orford Sea Salt” for Eat Local Week!

—————————————–\\——————————————————————

Isn’t that great?  Well, of course not! Otherwise this would not be a rant.

How do you make your own salt?  Evaporate the water.  Great. With what energy?  Electricity as it turns out.

Let’s do some calculations …

Salt Evaporation Using Solar Energy

Bottom line. You made your own salt. If you had purchased standard packaged salt, it would most likely have been harvested using solar energy, and energy efficient vacuum evaporation process (see http://www.cargill.com/static/sb/tour.htm).

Perhaps this adventure falls into the self-contained, but not sustainable category.