New York city mayor Bill de Blasio wants to ban glass high-rise buildings. The large facades could produce electricity. The “energy glass” of the Swiss Professor Michael Grätzel.
A high-rise with glass façade in New York
The US Democrats have a Large. With her “Green New Deal” would you like to offer ecological responses to climate change and economic challenges. The bonds of the “New Deal” of the 1930s are wanted at the time, the US responded to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with large economic programs on the world economic crisis.
Simple glass buildings cause greenhouse gas
In the fight against greenhouse gas emissions of New York has taken mayor Bill de Blasio, also a member of the Democrats – the Claim of “Green New Deal”. He wants to ban the construction of new high-rises with glass facades. He wanted to bring in a bill, the mayor said at the launch of his Initiative on Easter Monday. Exclusively manufactured from glass, facades are “inefficient”, because through you a lot of energy escaping.
The Science Tower in Graz was equipped with power glass
The glass building in the US metropolis is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, said De Blasio. If a company wants to build a large skyscraper, it could use a lot of glass, but it must take all measures to reduce emissions. “But are themselves monuments, to that of our earth, threaten harm, and our future – will not be allowed in New York City any longer,” said the Democrat. His planned law, see in addition to already existing glass prior to retrofit buildings in order to meet the stricter guidelines for carbon emissions.
With raspberries produce electricity
The glass facades are not per se harmful to the environment. You could even produce electricity, says the Swiss Professor Michael Grätzel. Namely, when you are equipped with dye solar cells.
Professor Michael Grätzel shows his dye-sensitized solar cell
The native of Sachse Grätzel is not Unknown in the photovoltaic scene – for years, the Professor of chemistry for the Nobel prize is traded. The invention and development of the so-called organic dye cell have made him so well known that the new solar were named cells even after him. The “grätzel cell”, or dye-sensitized solar cell that mimics photosynthesis, so the plant’s conversion of sunlight into sugar and energy.
What has invented, nature already about 3.5 billion years, could help to alleviate the world’s impending energy crisis. Like the Professor of chemistry, students will demonstrate the functioning of its solar cells. Will need the juice of a raspberry, a dash of iodine and a teaspoon of toothpaste. This mixture is distributed between two tin-oxide coated glass plates, and the small fan that is connected to the test arrangement rotates.
The energy glass also supports the thermal insulation
Already in 1988, Grätzel has filed its dye solar cell Patent. The laboratory phase has left its invention, been a long time in industrial applications, the grätzel produces cell effectively and stable electricity. In Austria, the Science Tower in Graz was equipped on an area of 1000 square meters. In Germany, the window fronts of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck, electricity, and also the glass slats of the Swiss tech Convention center in Lausanne, Switzerland to produce in Darmstadt generate even when the sky is overcast electrical energy.
The exterior façade of the Swiss tech Convention center, produces electricity with the dye cell
Neighborhood energy glass achieves an Efficiency of up to 14 percent. “But then the transparency, the transparency,” explains the Professor of chemistry of the German wave. And that, he says, not like architects. Therefore, the efficiency of the window fronts in the already completed buildings at around five percent.
Modern silicon solar cells, from which most photovoltaic plants are made of, can partially convert to more than 20 percent of the incident energy into electricity. This Neighborhood dye-sensitized solar cells have another advantage: The solar energy can also be from the rear captured, which improves the efficiency significantly. At the same time, energy glass, thermal insulation, because it reflects infrared light. This effect, says Grätzel, active the whole year energy saving: In the summer the heat remains outside, in the Winter, you will be thrown back into the room.
Singapore makes New York the power to save
A window in front of 300 times 50 meters, the equivalent of a New York high-rise, could produce per year about one Million kilowatt-hours of electricity, calculates the neighborhood. This corresponds roughly to the domestic energy consumption of slightly more than 150 New Yorkers.
It could, however, be significantly more. As for the mayor of New York, the Professor of Lausanne still has a tip for the summer months: When the Americans set their air conditioners to 25 degrees, as Singapore just had the power – would be its power consumption rapidly. “And at 25 degrees you can still work wonderfully when you take off the Jacket,” says Grätzel.
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How the nature – the secret of the Grätzel cell
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