GREEN ISSUES
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Asset Managed Parts help our environment by saving energy and natural resources.
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12 September 2008. HMS Intrepid to be recycled in Liverpool. The former Royal Navy assault ship HMS Intrepid is to be recycled in the UK, MOD announced. Leavesley International was selected last year as preferred bidder
for the task of recycling Intrepid following an open competition with
strict requirements regarding environmentally friendly dismantling.
The company now has the required planning permission and environmental licences in place to enable it to proceed with the work at its facility on Merseyside.
11 Sep 08. Goodrich Corporation has received a contract from Universal Technology Corporation to evaluate the effects of using alternate fuels in Goodrich fuel measurement and management systems on U.S. Air Force aircraft. The contract is in support of the U.S. Air Force Alternative Fuels Certification Office’s effort to certify all Air Force aircraft for suitability of operation on synthetic fuels and blends. Work is being performed by Goodrich’s Sensors and Integrated Systems team in Vergennes, Vt. The initial contract, which runs through November 2008, covers analytical research and testing of the entire fuel system design for F-15 Eagle and F-22 Raptor fighters. Follow-on work is expected to include more than a dozen other aircraft models as diverse as the F-35 Lightning II fighter, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor. Goodrich engineers will evaluate the impact on the fuel measuring and other aircraft systems of not only coal-based synthetic kerosene, but also plant/animal oils and other fuels, either alone or blended with traditional JP8 jet fuel. As synthetic fuels and blends differ from JP8 in both the density and amount of energy produced per unit weight/volume, the evaluation is necessary to assure accuracy in flying range, limits of operation, durability and compatibility for each aircraft system. These tests will be instrumental in determining what, if any, modifications need to be made to the fuel management system to assure that the system performs within specified limits.
12 Sep 08. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has unveiled an “aggressive” program to demonstrate economical and environmentally friendly conversion of coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels. DARPA has issued a broad agency announcement (BAA) soliciting research proposals and plans to award 12-month contracts totaling $4.56m to demonstrate the feasibility of alternative coal to liquid (CTL) technologies. Already investigating biofuels, the agency says its CTL program is intended to demonstrate processes that could meet Defense Department demand for JP-8 jet fuel from U.S. coal reserves at a cost-competitive price compared with petroleum-based fuels. DARPA says existing direct and indirect coal liquefaction processes are “extremely expensive to implement, consume large amounts of water and produce unacceptable amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants.” Indeed, several lawmakers have noted the potential greenhouse gas consequences and in recent years and demurred on coal lobbyists’ initial efforts at pushing friendly legislation. The indirect method of producing CTL fuels is to first gasify the coal then convert it to hydrocarbon fuel using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Each kilogram of coal converted uses a kilogram of water and produces 1.3 kg of CO2 and 0.27 kg of oil, says DARPA. Using existing technologies, DARPA says, a 100,000 barrel per day (bpd.) CTL plant will cost $6 billion to build, four-times that of a similar-capacity crude oil refinery, while the end-user fuel cost is expected to exceed $4.50/gal. DARPA’s goals for its CTL program equate to a capital cost of less than $1.5bn for a 100,000bpd plant with zero CO2 emissions, less than $3/gal for JP-8 jet fuel, and less than 0.5 kg. of water consumed for ev