The Cocoa Disaster 2013 Emergency Mango Clean-up Cake

Don't worry fans, I am back to feed your voracious appetite for technomogy. Yes, I took a little break from Technomogy, and in that time have been accepted to UofMs Information school to study HCI! My goal is to create technologies that deliver Environmental Education to the masses in crazy, innovative, robot-overlord ways. Until I have the means, I'll have to stick with blogging about technomogies.

While I prefer progressive over reactionary technologies (fixing vs. making less bad), a certain aquatic sky diving robot caught my eye for this post.

Almost, but not quite aquatic enough.

SCIENCE: We all know oil dependence makes us ;( . But ;( turns to D:< #@&^$*% when we spill that oil all over the ocean. And if it makes us sad, marine animals must have serious depression issues. To many of these animals, oil spills look like a hot chocolate bath (unconfirmed), so they do like any sane person would do, and dive right in. The oil ends up disrupting the structure of bird and mammal fur/feathers, making them unable to insulate themselves properly. Any eggs that come in contact, fish, reptilian, or avian won't be able to develop properly. And of course it's poisonous, causing blindness and death -> these conditions are inconvenient. Other problems, such as air pollution, and disruption of tourism have also made the US collectively peeved.

Surf's throw-Up

Cleaning up these spills comes with a range of problems. Burning oil off the top of the water has it's obvious air pollution issues and leaves us with a distastefully high number of deeply ironic metaphors. Using dispersants (chemicals that break down the oil), ends up leaving chemicals that are still potentially harmful. Deploying booms (giant floaties) and other methods that work to contain and collect the oil don't work when the water isn't calm.

That leads us to bioremediation! Using microorganisms to break down the oil is a smart solution that avoids many of the problems of other cleanup devices. And what's the coolest/smartest way we can do this? Damn straight it's skydiving robots that yell at animals.

Cute as a baby kitten

These sea drones, currently just a conceptual design by Hsu Sean at Yanko Design, would be deployed from the air over an oil spill event. Bio-sensors allow the drones to locate spill areas. They then open up their majestic wings like a young Kate Winslet, filtering the oil from the water so it can be sent to the nomnoming bacteria. By taking most of the manpower needed for these cleanups out of the picture, these sea roombas can be easily collected once the spill is gone! And I promise these drones won't spy on good patriotic American fish.

At this point you may be having flashbacks to the wastewater treatment cakesaster I made in a previous technomogy post! Fear not, my game has been upped. Here it is: The Cocoa Disaster 2013 Emergency Mango Clean-up Cake!

Fishicus mango

The Mango Plating of the clean-up drone has been sent to a white-cake ocean covered in a rough smothering of buttercream vanilla waves.

While we see a remediation drone, the fishes see a grumpy old man keeping them off his dirty aqualawn.

Its sensors have already proved their usefulness! We can see only a small amount of the cocoa spill remains. The cocoa spill consists of a cocoa syrup that was allowed to crystalize , adding a small bit of crunch. Delicious but not fitting for the ocean! Good thing we can see the green bacteria tea flavored buttercream breaking down the cocoa.

And don't get scared but it seems the fin of a shark can be seen swimming away from the annoying yelling of the drone, the same sound keeping the fish from getting too close.


Until next time,

Mushroomeringues

In middle school when I had the good fortune to take “Intro to: Not Being a Butt to Your Environment, Man”, we all learned how awful polystyrene, what Styrofoam is made of, is. The environment’s boogeyman manifest, this stuff takes hundreds of years to degrade if chucked out the window, and far, faaar longer when put in a landfill.

SCIENCE TIME. The reason we don’t see polystyrene degrade quickly is because it is immune to photolysis. In my terms this means light/radiation balls do not naturally bump polystyrene matter balls into simpler stuff, and thus biological things have to go to town for polystyrene to degrade (academia, you need me).

I AM STYRON MAN

The Mid Atlantic garbage past is a 10/10 on the nasty meter.
Then again, SPACE ART!

Polystyrene also floats in water, and is toxic when marine life chooses to eat the stuff. When you burn extruded polystyrene (think foam boards and similar materials), you give off some gases that are over 1000 times worse than carbon monoxide for our atmosphere. Fact: the atmosphere ranks in the top 5 things making us not dead.

So how do we move away from polystyrene? Save the world? I came here for food pics, give me now? That’s right, MUSHROOMS!

Ecovative design, a sustainable materials company, figured out a way to use mycelium to grow packaging materials. Mycelium is the eaty part of the mushroom and is made up of hyphae, little threads, that grow throughout a substrate and secrete chemicals to break down and consume what’s in the substrate. Ecovative Designs makes molds, fills it with grain husk waste, let’s the mycelium run rampant, and then bakes it. BOOM packaging.

Ecovative Design wine cases are cool...
But mushroom wine bags would be classier

Tastriations

I decided not to go the hyphae route since making little threads wouldn’t have been terribly interesting. These Meringue based mushrooms have a cocoa profile, and the heads are filled with chocolate. It’s as simply delicious as that.

YOU'RE NEXT

Respect the Fungi.

Solar Powered Cake

This month in Technomogy, I found a new development in what is probably the most well known sustainable energy tech, solar.

But panels? So yester… today.  With the recent over production of solar panels, they are more affordable than ever before, but when I get energy from the sun, I don’t want to be restricted to some lame old panel.

Telling you why solar energy is a good idea seems kind of patronizing. So here we go: The sun is a ball of fun that emits energy consistently and always so get on that. Good job me!

Bending not a problem for Mr. Solar Powered Paper

Enter, MIT. In a recent effort to “make cool shit”, they decided to find a way to print solar cells on whatever they felt like (paper, in this case.)

SKIP THIS NEXT SECTION IF YOU HATE LEARNING:

These photovoltaic arrays function in a fairly simple way, just like a normal solar panel. Photons (light) hit the material, causing the material to eject electrons, and because of the way the cells are made (with a positive and negative side) the electrons ejected form an electrical current aka electricity.

If you missed that physics lecture, and care, NASA gives a great explanation here. Cool fact, solar energy technology was developed because of the space program. Too bad that’s gone! ;(

They can take away our spaceships, but they
can't take away our TechNomogies! 

This ice cream cake was a boss.  Making it in 80 degrees weather was not boss, but at least it wasn’t 100 degrees with storms! (today is awful). I used a papery white Vanilla Bean ice cream to match the blueberry cells that I hand printed onto the top of the cake.

Keeping things light and fluffy (and still good straight out of a freezer), I used angel food cake as the base. Then things got interesting. Going for a crazy unique texture I decided to mix home whipped cream with melted white chocolate. Right off the bat this stuff was WEIRD, with lots of white chocolate chunks in the mix. After freezing for a while, it decided to cooperate and became the melt in your face white-chocolaty goodness that I needed to balance the cake out.

Took this in the 5 seconds I had before the cake melted into a puddle of delicious.

Bringing this stuff in to WMEAC on a hot day really powered up the interns (HAHA, oh man I am so jocular.) The problem with this technology is that (for now) it is only 1% efficient vs the 35% efficiency of your average solar panel. However, this hasn’t stopped me from dreaming big: 

Solar powered cat of the future!

SmartCake Technomogy

This smartweek I used my smartinternet to look up a smartarticle about smartgrid smarttechnology for a smarthome or smartoffice and used my smartface to think up a smartcakethatlookslikeoneofthetechnologiesthatlookedcoolinthearticle. STOP THAT.

So the idea behind smart[insert whatever] is the automation of (often) simple but highly useful tasks that are influenced by information gathered from a “smart” device. So when people talk about the “grid” they are talking about the existing network/infrastructure that delivers energy to you. Concatenate smart to grid (uh oh, someone has been programming at work!!) and you get a “smartgrid”, where the devices of suppliers (energy plants) and consumers (houses) get chatty with each other in order to use energy as efficiently as possible.

I foreshadow so good.

By improving knowledge about when, where, and how much energy is being used, the suppliers can create better infrastructure. Business plans can also be altered that effect electricity pricing at different parts of the day based off of demand. On the consumer end, devices be creepin’ on you and all your energy. This info along with pricing/demand is used to regulate your electricity usage, called “demand response”.

I give you, the CAKELET!

The real guy.

The device I decided to cakify is called “The Modlet” by ThinkEco. This cute little dude helps to reduce the amount of power your appliances draw when they are plugged in but not in use (I’m lookin at you cell phone charger). The Cakelet is frosted with a cool whip vanilla frosting. The plugs are made of chocolate, and the button on the top was made by putting way to much effort to lay down lemon and lime zest.

The Cakelet in off mode, being all energy efficient with my phone.

Tasted awesome while eating it.
Stopped tasting while I wasn't eating it.
Cakelet.

Yea I plugged my iphone into the cake, best idea I’ve had for this blog! The inside of the Cakelet is made of a conductively vanilla lemon cake with a layer of electric lemon curd filling.

The Modlet goes under the BAMF category of smart outlets, by wirelessly communicating with other Modlets and a usb connected to your computer, you get a readout of how much energy your appliances are wasting. With this info you can schedule times for the Modlet to cut off power. The company claims to cut your energy bill down by 10%, paying for the cost of the device within a year.

;D

The only problem is when devices like TiVo decide they need 15 minutes to boot up. Hopefully as the grid gets smart these dumbvices that constantly require power will develop a better off mode.

I could go on and on about the “smart grid” and how sexy it is for creating sustainability on many so many levels. But alas, I must heed the call of the oven. Fear not, I’ll definitely revisit the grid in a future technomogy post.

Algae Biofuel Cake

Like anybody, I have quite a few friends that always have algae on the mind. Euglenophyta this, Dinoflagellata that, we’ve all been there. What might surprise you is that your algae loving friends have it right, these little guys are way more efficient for producing energy than any other biofuel currently around (some say up to 30 times!). And did I mention how cute they are?:

Diatoms may not be the most loyal pets, but you'll save on bills!

NASA recently started a project for an algae biofuel system called OMEGA, which is badass for Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae system. With so much news around algae I decided it was a good time to create an Obviously Made by the Experimentally Glorious Adam (OMEGA) cake.

Visual perfection was far, oh so very far,  from being attained for this project, but the thing tasted fantastic. I present, a shoreline wastewater plant connected to an algae reactor!

Uhhh okay??

So I won’t be entering this for art prize, but I will spend the rest of this post trying to convince you that it has any representational value.

Let’s use our imaginations… hard… and imagine we are on a vista peering out over vast green toothpick forests leading to the wavy white-cake-dyed-blue ocean. And what is this! A beautiful wastewater treatment plant marked with a discrete W is front and center. A white chocolate buttercream frosting covers this essential facility like a light spring snow (oh god I hope not). Pendulously extending from the facility are the photobioreactors of the OMEGA system!

Before we dive into the ocean, let’s take a look at how much awesome goes into this technology.

Promoting a sustainable Pokeculture.

The algae look at wastewater as a tasty treat and only need sunlight to start converting it. What really sticks out is that this is actually a cleaning technology, not just a clean one. By helping to break down the nutrients that come out of the treatment plant, the system is helping keep these harmful chemicals from the ocean.

The OMEGA system doesn’t just protect the ocean, the algae is able to fix carbon from atmospheric CO2 (put it into organic compounds) and then release oxygen back into the atmosphere. This could be very beneficial in reducing the effects of global warming. And what do we get out of it? Energy. Not bad.

I'm sure that now you're even more curious about what is lurking in the brackish depths of this vanilla cake ocean?

Ah! an upwelling. 

Keeping harmful nutrients out of the ocean should help to alleviate marine dead zones. These oxygen-deprived zones have become a big problem recently, some as large as the west side of the Lower Peninsula! In my experience, having oxygen is a big plus, and I’m all about keeping some O2 for the fishes. As you can tell by the freshly made strawberry filling-phytoplankton, this cake supports a rich aquaculture.

The OMEGA system may have some problems, such as the plastics needed to contain the algae, but it’s a technology to keep your eye on.

Well I hope that this post was a bit entertaining and a bit informative. Suggestions for the blog are always welcome!

Rain Barrel Cupcakes

When getting this blog ready, I realized that I’m a habitual completely-unrelated-things  combiner. Japanese and Environmental Science? Who wouldn’t double major in this! Kanye, Blink 182, and Tay Tay all in a row in a mix? Now we’re jamming. Extremely attractive 23 year old man, driving a soccer-mom ready Mini Van? Yea you get it.

Thus was born the idea for Sustainable TechNomogy, using my love of baking to help raise awareness about awesome new sustainable technologies, by, well, baking them! I plan on updating bi or tri Monthly, and welcome any suggestions for technologies or making the blog better.

Now let’s bake to the future!

Rain Barrel Cupcakes

Looking delicious. And there's even a cupcake on top!

For those of you that don’t know, I’ve been doing my intern magic over at the West Michigan Environmental Action Council (or WMEAC, pronounced we-me-yak) since December. WMEAC concentrates a lot of its power towards alleviating the storm water runoff issue in West Michigan. Water from urban areas isn’t reabsorbed into the ground, but instead picks up many pollutants on its way to Lake Michigan. Personally, I love the word “brackish”, but would love to see the Lake with the best beaches in the world as clean as possible.

For my first sustainable technomogy I decided to make rain barrels, a technology close to the hearts of every WMEAC staffer and intern.

Beautiful isn’t it! The edible version of the food grade barrel is made out of angel food cake covered in vanilla buttercream frosting. While a plastic barrel is crunchy and bad for your teeth, this homemade buttercream was smooth and... bad for your teeth. I drew on lines using a few crushed blackberries I had sitting around to give the barrels a top and bottom.

     A rain barrel can hold up to 500lb of water when full! While I would have had a lot of fun pumping 500 lb of the blueberry cream filling into these bad boys, physics was not on my side… this time. Made out of blueberry yogurt and cool whip mixed together, this light filling represents a sort of apology, an apology for how bad the buttercream frosting is for your body (NO REGRETS).

     What makes rain barrels so cool is that you are using water that would normally be lost to water your lawn, saving you water piped in from elsewhere while being nice to our rivers lakes and streams. A galvanized steel blueberry is placed at the bottom of a rainbarrel that can attach to a hose. The barrel uses the pressure of all the water above the blueberry in order to allow you to water your plants/garden/lawn!

As a finishing touch I put in a drain spout, (just in case you have a particularly rainy day and water needs to flow out of the barrel), along with a gutter system, to pipe in all that delicious Dihydrogen Monoxide (hurr hurr hurr). In real life rain barrels will only run you around 20$, in cupcake life, they are priceless.

Another intern, Karie, going food-waste
neutral on a cupcake.

And that’s that! Hopefully you enjoyed that post. Feel free to leave comments, questions, suggestions, or pictures of pandas doing really cute stuff (mostly the last please).

On a serious note, while rain barrels definitely help alleviate stormwater runoff, raising awareness and making sure your representatives are aware that you value Michigan’s water resources is the most important thing you can do to keep our water clean!

Check out https://wmeac.org/water/rain-barrel-workshops/ for more info on rain barrels or to sign up for a workshop.

-Adam