Posts Tagged ‘construction’
How the Greenest Skyscraper Complex Ever Is Rising Out of the Rubble of the World Trade Center
a gallery showing the World Trade Center complex under construction.
LIVE AT LEEDS
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification is an internationally-recognized third-party verification system developed by the to confirm that a building—or community, for that matter—was designed and constructed with the aim of improving energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions, indoor environmental quality, and intelligent resource management.
For the new WTC complex to qualify for the LEED Gold Certification—the second highest attainable below Platinum status—it must meet , among which include achieving a Net Zero CO2 footprint for all base building electricity consumption and reduction of the complex's energy consumption to 20 percent below New York State's energy code requirements.
"The building [in this case, 1 World Trade Center] is designed to achieve a gold level certification. Which, for a project of its size, would be a first of its kind, Eduardo Del Valle, Director of Design Management at 1 World Trade Center, told us. "Now, there are some other projects in New York City that have achieved a Platinum certification, which is the highest—but not on this scale."
ENERGY CONSERVATION AND PRODUCTION
One means of achieving these goals is "Daylighting"—which thankfully involves Bruce Willis nor Cybill Shepherd. Instead, as Del Valle points out, "if enough daylight is coming into the window it automatically dims the interior lights. It's all about reducing energy consumption. Every space within 15 feet of the facade will be equipped with dimming devices."
This practice not only benefits the WTC complex's energy consumption, but the occupants of the towers as well, and reducing the rate of minor illnesses, as well as and increase the activity of natural killer cells simply by improving the quality of light. Because exposure to UVB light in order to synthesize Vitamin D, the dimming of artificial lights and use of ultra-clear glass to allow more natural light in.
When the sun isn't shining, the WTC complex employs hydrogen fuel cells to provide approximately 1.2 megawatts of power and steam turbines which, according to DelValle, "take the wasted steam that happens during steam generation and converts that into electricity."
BREATHING EASIER
During construction, the complex is requiring its contractors to use only ultra-low sulfur diesel fuels—a "" that reduces nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions and is considered one of the cleanest (comparatively speaking) fuels available. This implementation is so effective that New York City and State now require that non-road construction equipment used on public construction projects by public agencies use ULSD. In addition, all construction vehicles are equipped with extra particulate filters to further reduce their impact. Finally, the materials used in the complex cannot include any Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC)—a variety of chemicals that leach from building materials in gaseous form with both short- and long-term health effects.
After construction is complete, Del Valle states that, to further improve indoor air quality, they're going to watch it like a cybernetic hawk:
"CO2 monitors control ventilation and make the building healthier and improve indoor air quality. If the CO2 sensor sends a signal to the air handler software, telling it you need more fresh air in a certain space because there's more CO2 than there should be, it automatically increases the fresh air mix coming into that space. We have over 3,000 points of monitoring."
In addition, the WTC will improve the air of the greater Manhattan Financial District by reducing the amount of vehicular traffic in the area by providing and extensive facilities for bicycle commuters.
HARVESTING THE RAIN
It rains in New York City, on average, —second only to Miami. Rather than simply let this precipitation run off the buildings and into storm drains, the WTC will collect and store that rain water for later use in its new high-efficiency evaporative cooling towers and for irrigating greenery within the 16-acre complex. (Since it hasn't been treated, the harvested rainwater cannot be used as a potable source.)
HARVESTING THE HUDSON
New York, as with most areas of the country outside of the confines of Northern California, requires significant air-conditioning service throughout the year. The occupants of the new WTC complex will stay frosty in even the muggiest of Autumnal weather thanks to the new and highly efficient 12,500-ton (CCP) that uses water from the Hudson River to cool the WTC Transportation Hub, National September 11 Memorial and Museum, retail space and other non-commercial areas.
FULL SIZE
Located in the far Southwest corner of the complex—roughly as the previous plant—the CCP employs water extracted through the River Water Pump Station (RWPS), on the other side of the West Side Highway, to chill (and heat, during the Winter) water for distribution to the rest of the complex.
It will circulate 30,000 gallons of river water every minute. That's enough to fill , and cool the same amount as approximately .
"It uses the Hudson as a way of both dissipating heat and preheating water," Del Valle explained. "Because water below a certain depth is a pretty constant temperature (about 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit), so what happens is, during the winter it takes less energy to heat and circulate it, and conversely, in the summer it takes less to cool it."
RECYCLING, REDUCING, REUSING
The new World Trade Center is already 75 percent old. Everything from the gypsum boards to the ceiling tiles contains a minimum of 75 percent post-industrial recycled content. This reduces the environmental footprint, not only on-site, but reduces the stress on the natural resources and energy needed to produce them.
At the same time, the WTC construction project recycles an incredible 80 percent of the waste generated at the site. According to Del Valle, "We've exceeded our original target by about 20 percent. The contractors have been really good, we've been watching and documenting how the material is recycled and sent back to the plants. It's really a cycle that's feeding on itself."
Monster Machines is all about the most exceptional machines in the world, from massive gadgets of destruction to tiny machines of precision, and everything in between.
A civilization can distinguish itself by how well it responds to disaster, and 10 years later, 9/11 is as much a story about recovery and rebuilding as it a story of terrible loss and tragedy. As a nation, our political and economic response has been imperfect—possibly even dead wrong—but we're focusing on the mechanical marvels that have helped us bounce back.
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After 14 Years of Drilling, the World’s Longest Tunnel Breaks Through the Swiss Alps Today
The Gotthard Base Tunnel, a 35-mile hole in the Swiss Alps, has completed drilling
Drilling of the tunnel began way back in 1996 (remember those heady days--the drillers might have been humming along to Joan Osborne's breakthrough, "One of Us"), and has encountered its fair share of difficulties in the succeeding decade and a half. From the Sedrun (a layer of soft rock near the middle) to a near-disaster during the test phase that unleashed a torrent of water and sand, the drilling has not been particularly easy. One of the main drills was even trapped by falling sand, held incapable of drilling for a whopping six months at one point.
The tunnel was drilled from the middle out--an 800-meter tunnel was drilled vertically into the middle of the prospective track, and then two drills did their work in opposite directions. Well, really, that's only half of the total work: The tunnel is actually two single-track, parallel tunnels, connected by smaller spurs every thousand feet or so. The east-most tunnel finally broke through the last few meters of rock today, completing the drilling phase and officially making the Gotthard the world's longest tunnel. (The western tunnel will be completed around April of 2011.)
When completed, probably in 2016 or 2017 (the project is actually ahead of schedule at the moment), the Gotthard will connect southern Germany to northern Italy. And this groundbreaking (literally!) effort is only the first of three similarly massive tunnel projects: The others will connect Lyon, France to Turin, Italy, and Austria to Italy, provided they can make it unscathed through the European Union's budget cuts.
The tunnel was made for both convenience and environmental reasons. Though the Gotthard will only cut about an hour off the trip, compared to the above-ground routes, it allows freight shipping in much higher quantities to be shipped safely. Trains and heavy trucks do significant ecological damage to the Alps, both in erosion and in destruction of plant and animal habitats, and the tunnel should help mitigate that. And, of course, passenger trains will relieve some of the traffic congestion on the mountain roads.
The drilling of the tunnel itself has actually yielded some encouraging green possibilities as well--massive amounts of rock (enough to fill 13 Empire State Buildings) were removed from the mountains, and are being used to restore lakes that were previously dredged for gravel. Some of the warm water which runs through the Alps (and which was previously difficult to obtain) will be diverted for sustainable fish farms.
Sensor Networks in Buildings Could Use AC Ducts as Huge, Building-Wide Antennas
Turning HVAC into RFID
Wiring large building for fire safety systems, climate control mechanisms, and other public safety monitoring schemes consumes a lot of wire -- imagine how much feet of copper connects every room, corridor, stairwell and broom closet in a building like the Empire State. So researchers figured out a far more simplified scheme for creating wireless sensor networks within buildings -- why not use the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) ducts that are already connecting the entire building as a that relays data via radio frequency identification (RFID)?
The scheme is rather simple but it could amount to huge cost savings for builders, as it saves the materials and time needed to physically connect sensors within a structure. Take the climate control system for instance. In order to function properly, temperature sensors have to be wired throughout the building to tell the central heating and cooling unit when and where to pipe conditioned air.
But the researchers -- all of whom are current or former students of Dr. Dean Stancil, formerly of Carnegie Mellon and now at NC State -- figured out that an array of RFID-enabled temperature sensors spread throughout a building could beam climate information back to the central unit using the HVAC ducts as a big building-wide antenna.
The researchers demonstrated their technology working across sections of HVAC ductwork about 100 feet long, and they are unsure how much further an RFID tag can be away from the central unit and still send and receive signals. But in concept, the system works for anything you can create a sensor for, eliminating all the wiring from fire alarms systems, security systems, air conditioning infrastructure and even public health and safety sensor schemes that monitor for threats like carbon monoxide. From a materials standpoint, that cuts down on a lot of wiring. From a construction standpoint, that's working smarter rather than harder.
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Tiny Titanium Origami Highlights New Method Of Micro-Construction
The researchers start by printing out a flat sheet of titanium hydride. Normally, this material is too rigid to fold, but the printing process imbues the "ink" with a number of solvents that soften it up enough for manipulation. In the case of the crane, it took 15 steps to go from a flat sheet to a finished bird.
This material is malleable enough to fold, but strong enough to retain its shape once the folding process is complete. Additionally, titanium hydride can be treated after folding to become pure metallic titanium. That way, a potential medical device could be folded into the desired shape, and then transformed into a substance that the body wouldn't reject.
The scientists have just begun to explore the implications of this technique, so it might be a while before a doctor actually uses a stent or implant created by folding titanium hydride. However, Japanese legend holds that if someone folds 1,000 origami cranes, a real crane will grant their wish. So all the researchers need to do is fabricate 999 more of these, and just wish for a practical application for this technology to arrive within a year. Easy!