TransMaterial has a post on a building coating which can remove pollution from the air - Reynobond with EcoClean.

Reducing air pollution by way of photocatalysis is not limited to concrete. Alcoa Architectural Products has recently partnered with Toto to develop a titanium dioxide coating for their exterior-grade aluminum panels. According to Alcoa, the hydrophobic coating is the world’s first coil-coated, smog-reducing aluminum architectural panel.

In the presence of sunlight, Reynobond with EcoClean causes organic particulate matter near its surface to break down, and this material is washed away later by rain. 10,000 square feet of EcoClean surface has a similar cleansing effect as 80 trees, and can counteract the pollution produced by four cars per day.

The Climate Spectator has an update on events in the geothermal energy industry in Australia - Geothermal hot spots.

Geodynamics has completed the first stage of its crucial fracture stimulation at the Jolokia well in the Cooper Basin, but it hasn’t been able to decide yet whether the results are good news or bad. The Jolokia wells are important to ascertain the extent of the hot dry rock resource in the Cooper Basin – a successful result would indicate that up to 6500MW of emissions-free, baseload energy capacity could be brought to the grid over the next 10 to 15 years.

However, the two fracture tests conducted at 4400m and 4700m – the deepest ever in Australia – indicated different geological behaviour to its Habanero well, with the fractures in the super-heated granite at a steeper angle and needing higher pressure to create a flow. On the plus side, the flow rate increased three-fold during the testing.

“Nature is what nature is,” said Geodynamics CEO Jack Hamilton. “Now we’ve got to take the results away and analyse what that actually means.” The most likely conclusion is that further stimulations will be required before the company can conclude that it can stick a commercial heat exchanger at the location and generate energy. “We are not there yet,” Hamilton admitted.

Meanwhile, the company’s giant rig is moving to the so-called Innamincka “shallows”, where its partner in the “deeps”, Origin Energy, will conduct drilling in the hope of identifying a commercial resource in the nearby hot sedimentary aquifers, which are only 2000-3000m deep and less hot, but also less technically challenging. The partners believe that, if drilling is successful, this resource is likely to be brought to commercial operation sooner than the deeps. Geodynamics will resume drilling at the Habanero 4 well next year, with the hope of installing a 1MW pilot plant to power the village of Innamincka installed in early 2012.

Greener pastures

Greenearth Energy has struck an agreement with aluminium giant Alcoa that could be pivotal for the development of its Geelong geothermal project. The memorandum of intent announced on Monday, and negotiated over several years, will allow Greenearth to site its production wells and generating plant on or near Alcoa’s coal mining leases, plug into Alcoa infrastructure to gain connection to the grid, and secure an off-take agreement.

Greenearth managing director Mark Miller described the MOI as a “tremendous outcome” for the company and could help it overcome significant hurdles, not least of these being financing for the proof of concept, and demonstration phases, when it will build a 12MW energy plant. “This is not a financial deal but it should make financing easier down the track,” Miller said.

Miller said he viewed the MOI with Alcoa as a further endorsement of the potential of Greenearth’s project to deliver zero emissions, base load renewable energy to the state. It hopes drilling can go ahead in the second half of 2011, with production possible in late 2012. Alcoa says it has cut emissions from its Victoria operations by 60 per cent over the last two decades and its agreement with Greenearth is part of its “big picture” response to climate change.

The New York Times has an article on Alcoa's interest in making reflective solar troughs for the solar thermal power industry - Aluminium Maker Eyes Solar Industry. Perhaps Alcoa Australia should have looked harder at some form of CSP (perhaps combined with gas or geothermal energy) for their Australian operations.

Alcoa, the aluminum giant, is testing a new type of solar technology that the company said it believed will lower the cost of renewable energy.

The company has replaced the glass in parabolic troughs with reflective aluminum and integrated the mirror into a single structure.

Parabolic troughs focus sunlight on liquid-filled receivers suspended over the mirrors to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. Parabolic trough technology has been in modern use in solar power plants since the early 1980s, but Alcoa executives said they saw an opportunity to refine the technology and get a foothold in the rapidly expanding renewable energy market.

“If you go out and look behind large parabolic troughs, you’ll find an elaborate truss structure,” said Rick Winter, a technology executive with Alcoa. “From our understanding of aerospace structures, we said if we can modify the wing box design used in aircraft and integrate a parabolic reflector, it would give us a light and stiff structure that would fundamentally affect the cost equation.” ...

Current solar troughs use glass mirrors that are formed in the shape of a parabola and then attached to a support structure made of aluminum or steel. The executives said they estimate that the all-aluminum Alcoa parabolic trough, which is being tested at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, will cut the price of a solar field by 20 percent due to lower installation costs.

Aluminum manufacturing, however, is the nation’s most energy-intensive industry, according to the Energy Department. Mr. Kerns said Alcoa had not performed a life-cycle analysis of the total energy costs and benefits of deploying such parabolic troughs, but noted that the company planned to use recycled materials to make the solar collectors.

“We can take the energy intensity out, as much of the structural elements have the potential to use recycled aluminum,” Mr. Kerns said.

Alcoa will face competition from start-ups like SkyFuel, which has developed a lighter-weight parabolic trough that uses a reflective film instead of glass mirrors.

The Alcoa executives said the company planned to have its solar trough in commercial production within two to three years.

Bloomberg reports that Alcoa's alumina refinery expansion remains stalled because of an inability to obtain cheap long term gas supplies (as a result of LNG exports forcing local prices towards global levels) - Alcoa Gets Energy Chill From Australia’s $130 Billion Gas Boom (via the FT). The Varanus Island incident a couple of years probably hasn't helped matters either. Alcoa has managed to obtain long term supply contracts for its refinery in Victoria - but using brown coal fired power - the dirtiest power source of all...

Australia is attracting more than $130 billion of investment in some of the world’s richest natural gas fields to supply buyers in Japan and China. Domestic customers, including Alcoa Inc., will have to wait.

Alcoa’s stalled alumina refinery expansion in Western Australia “will not be back on the agenda until we can secure long-term competitive gas supply,” Michaela Southby, a Perth- based spokeswoman for the biggest U.S. aluminum producer, said in an e-mailed response to questions. The project may cost $4 billion, according to a 2008 estimate by ABN Amro Holding NV.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to deploy a production vessel larger than an aircraft carrier off the coast of Western Australia to feed the liquefied natural gas boom that may see annual exports hit almost A$40 billion ($37 billion) by mid- decade. The state’s gas shortage will last to at least 2020, hindering mine projects, according to the DomGas Alliance.

“You have all this energy and gas but most of it’s exported,” said Peter Arden, a Melbourne-based mining analyst at Ord Minnett Ltd., a JPMorgan Chase & Co. affiliate. “It’s going to be a really big cost input for the whole of Western Australia, especially the miners who rely on it for power.” ...

New York-based Alcoa suspended a plan to double capacity at the Wagerup refinery more than a year ago because of the financial crisis and gas supply constraints. Gas prices in the state, the source of half Australia’s commodity exports, rose almost fourfold in the past decade and may keep rising until supply becomes available, said consultant ACIL Tasman Pty.

“The prices that are being asked will certainly preclude the development of a lot of future projects,” Tony Petersen, chairman of DomGas, a user’s group that includes Newmont Mining Corp. and Fortescue Metals Group Ltd., said in an interview.

More than 1,000 mine sites operate in Western Australia, which generates 70 percent of the nation’s exports to China, the biggest buyer of raw materials. The nation is the largest shipper of iron ore, alumina, lead, zinc and coal. It ranked sixth among LNG exporters in 2008.