Technology that could be useful and suitable for Somalia

[Waaberi]

I'am interested in technology and how it application could tremendous change the situation for our people back in somalia. I don't know much about engineering, IT or Medical technology, if that an interest of your please contribute. I am interest in agriculture, Earth sciences and archeology so those are the field from which i am going to be drawing on, mostly agriculture because of the tremendous need.

Egypt is a very thirsty country yet managing the waters of the Nile with dames, barrages and canals it has tamed nature. this country was plagued with droughts, flood and famines yet today the Nile provide electricity to power the industries in Egypt, to irrigate it crops and provide water for one of the largest metropolis in the world Cairo. yes mega-project like the aswan high dam have their disadvantages:pollution, coast salinity and erosion and water borne diseases but in my defense egypt is 100 million+ and growing, somalis are only 25 million a fraction of egypt population. this would change the perception of somalia as a starving nation by lessing the impact that drought have on the nation.

[Waaberi]

Sea Water Green House
A seawater greenhouse is a greenhouse structure that enables the growth of crops in arid regions, using seawater and solar energy. The technique involves pumping seawater (or allowing it to gravitate if below sea level) to an arid location and then subjecting it to two processes: first, it is used to humidify and cool the air, and second, it is evaporated by solar heating and distilled to produce fresh water. Finally, the remaining humidified air is expelled from the greenhouse and used to improve growing conditions for outdoor plants.

this technology has been tested in Spain, UAE, Oman and it being used in Australia in the commercial production of Vegetable. This technology i think was made for somalia especially along the Gubaan coast and along the indian ocean from Ras Casayr to Hobyo the potential is limitless.

[Xusein]

Cool ideas. Somalia is a virgin land, lots of potential in so much things that it saddens me that we've taken advantage of less than 1% of that. The Jubba valley if taken to it's potential could not only feed the entire population but make it possible to export.

[Waaberi]

Solid Rain

Amazing Solid Rain Hydrates Crops by Turning Water into Gel
Sergio Jesus Rico, an engineer from Mexico's National Polytechnic Institute (Instituto Politecnico Nacional), has been nominated for a prestigious 2012 world water prize for his invention of solid rain. It hydrates crops by turning water into gel with potassium polyacrylate, a chemical that can then attach directly to plant roots and water them.

Rico and his team tested the chemical on a cornfield in Colombia and found it yielded about 10 metric tons per 10,000 sq. meters compared to about 600 kilograms per 10,000 sq. meters with conventional watering methods.

That means in places like Mexico, food can be grown in the desert, despite droughts. Water easily evaporates from the soil, and water from the surface often doesn't make it down into the soil for roots to drink. With solid rain, a block of gellified water is buried underground and re-uptakes water when it rains. Each kilogram of solid rain can hold liters of water. It can be used with any kind of plant and lasts for eight to 10 years in the ground.

Start the slideshow to see solid rain in action. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-0wreEmry4"[/URL]

[Waaberi]

World 1st 24/7 Solar Power Plant runs even at night.

The problem with renewable energy is the lack of continuous supply, solar power when it sunny, wind power when it windy and wave power when the seas are not to turbulent.

A Spanish company GemaSolar has come up with a new innovated approach to solar energy.

The Gemasolar solar power plant in Spain built by Terresol Energy has proven itself of being the first solar plant that runs 24 hours a day with the unique ability to keep producing electricity through the entire night.

The plant is capable or producing just shy of 20 Megawatts of electricity per hour or 110 GWh/year which is enough to power 25,000 households.

It uses an array of 2,650 heliostats mirrors with a total reflective surface of about 300,000 square meters to concentrate sunlight on a solar collector which is heated up to 500 degrees to boil water and produce steam.

Normally solar plants using cooling functions that release excess heat into the atmosphere to maintain stable operating temperatures/

The Germosolar using a mass of salt as a heat sink to collect the heat and store the thermal energy.

Once the salt is heated it turns into a molten salt which can store the suns thermal energy for up to 15 hours to keep the plant running overnight or during periods of cloudiness.

The plant has been operation since last April has maintain operation during 75% which gives it rated power efficiency that guarantees electrical production for 6,500 hours a year, which is up to 3 times more than other means of alternative energy production.

Normal solar stations only produce electricity about 1,000 to 2,000 hours per year.

[Waaberi]

Greening the Desert

90% of Jordan is a desert, but the Jordan valley was renowned for centuries as one of the most lush and productive lands. The years of overgrazing have left it arid with high salinity levels. A new initiative looks at how simple permacultures principles are bring the desert back to live.

from this Desert to Paradise in the span of years, not decades




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYk21PLKGgg

[Waaberi]

Tidal Current Power Plants

Tidal flows represent a largely untapped source of clean energy. But with an energy density 800 times that of wind, water offers a highly-efficient and reliable source of power.
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The wind blows softly over the rich green hills that dot the countryside around the small coastal town of Strangford in County Down, Northern Ireland. Just a few steps away is the natural port of Strangford Lough — a deep-blue harbor that today fully lives up to its Celtic name Cuan, which means “the calm bay.” Nevertheless, large dark waves sometimes rip through the harbor. It’s therefore no coincidence that Strangford was called “the powerful fjord” by the Vikings who once settled there. The bay is 30 kilometers long and its total area of 150 square kilometers makes it the largest in the Irish Sea. It not only contains picturesque fishing boots but also a black and red steel tower that protrudes out of the water just off the coastline. This tower is part of SeaGen — the world’s first commercial tidal current power plant. The facility, which began operating in 2008, produces 1.2 megawatts (MW) of electricity solely from the power of the tides. That’s enough to supply a town of 1,500 households.
Tidal flows represent a largely untapped source of clean energy. This underutilization is due to the fact that the technology has remained in the development phase up until now, and installing it offshore is very expensive. Nevertheless, its potential is huge. Tidal current power plants can be built anywhere where the ebb and flood of the tides generate strong currents. The list of places offering ideal conditions includes Scotland, France, Canada, and East Asia.
Strangford Lough’s natural harbor is an attractive location for various reasons. First and foremost, it is relatively shallow. This has made it possible to anchor the power plant at a depth of around 30 meters, explains Kai Oliver Kölmel, who is responsible for Ocean Power at the Siemens Renewables Division. “Shallow water makes it easier to anchor a facility into the seabed,” he says. “In addition, the ebb and flow of the tides is stronger in shallow waters. For instance, the flow rate in the so-called Strangford Narrow gets as high as four meters of water per second; SeaGen needs a flow of at least one meter per second to generate electricity.”
Underwater Electricity Factory. The Strangford Lough plant is operated by Marine Current Turbines, a British company in which Siemens acquired a ten percent interest in 2010. The facility is similar to a wind turbine, the only difference being that it is driven by water instead of air. Each of its two drive trains weighs 27 tons and is equipped with a rotor measuring 16 meters in diameter.
The rotor blades can be turned through 180 degrees, which means they can produce electricity for up to 20 hours a day regardless of whether the tide is coming in or going out. The tower to which the two propeller turbines are attached via a cross-member has a diameter of three meters. Depending on the tide, the tower can protrude as much as 20 meters above the sea. The rotors can’t be seen above the water— and it’s even possible to take a small boat directly past the turbine because the rotors are located at least three meters below the surface. “Maintenance is easy,” says Kölmel, “because the facility can be easily accessed and the cross-members to which the turbines are attached can be raised out of the water using a hydraulic lifting system.”
Although extensive installation costs make an investment in tidal current power plants around twice as high as that for offshore wind power facilities, the resulting electricity offers several benefits. For example, the energy density of water is 800 times higher than that of wind, which makes generating electricity with water much more efficient. A 1.2 MW tidal plant like the one at Strangford Lough can produce as much electricity in a year as a 2.5 MW offshore wind turbine. The electricity yield from tidal facilities is also more precisely calculable, which enhances planning security. After all, tidal currents are determined by the moon and the Earth’s gravitation, so they’re not dependent on the weather and can be predicted years in advance.
The International Energy Agency estimates the global output potential of tidal power plants to be as high as 800 terawatt-hours per year — enough to supply 250 million households with electricity. Marine Current Turbines continues to invest in tidal technologies. Among other things, the company plans to start building a tidal turbine park near the Isle of Skye in northeastern Scotland in 2013. When it’s completed, the facility will supply up to 4,000 households with electricity from the sea.

[Waaberi]

Aquaculture providing the food of the future.

Somalis are no long overwhelmingly nomadic, with more and more somalis moving to urban centers and their demand for protein increasing somalia will have to turn to fish to met this demand. Somalia has the largest coast with the best fisheries in Africa yet after 20+ year of civil war and no one to guard our coast: opportunistic multi-national have plundered somalia marine stock with deep water trawler that seep the sea clean. in somalia, some area have seen their marine stock decline by more than 50%, creating the backlash that is somali piracy. Somalia's fisheries will require decade to recover from the avarice of Multi-National pirates but somalis need fish protein so the solution is that we invest in Aquaculture for the foreseeable future until fish stocks return to sustainable level to be exploit commercially.









Aquaculture is more than the cultivation of Fish, you can culture aquatic plants:Algae/seaweed, crustaceans:Shrimp/Crab,mollusks:oyster.

[T3ST]

subscribed to the thread.

[Waaberi]

Pearl Farming

before WW1, nature pearl from UAE, Bahrain and Qatar dominated the market but they lose out to Japan which develop a artificial technique to produce pearl with the right shine and consistence all the time. this technique then was exported to China Australia and Pacific Rim countries. every few african countries compete in this market there are some start up in South Africa and Namibia, NGO start pearl farming in Zanzibar to alleviate poverty in that country so pearl farming and Aquaculture are still in it embryonic stage in Africa and Somalia which is close to the birth place of the pearling industry the Khaleeji states and has the longest coast in Africa could dominate the pearl culturing in Africa.

[Waaberi]

Global Cooling Technology: Deep Ocean Water Agriculture

Agriculture employing Deep Ocean Water (DOW) can help increase growth rates by cooling garden soil below the dew point, at the Natural Energy Lab where DOW is pumped ashore.
A closed pipe system buried beneath the soil is designed to regulate and circulate the cold water, chilling the soil to 45oF, well below the dew point, so moisture drawn from the atmosphere moistens the cool garden, much like condensation gathers on a glass of iced tea.

[Waaberi]

While browsing youtube i come upon this link:Technology in Agriculture Presentation - Wales: i immediately through of Somalia. this company found a way to match England livestock sector with today modern computerized world. it develop a system that let farmers Tag and ID their flocks on an individual basis. the animals are weighed and software match the weigh of the animal to their ID so the farmer can decide what animal to cull, which to bred and which to sell this has tremendously application in somalia.

[Waaberi]

Bora Bora Deep Sea Water Air Conditioning

Starting with an idea from actor Marlon Brando, deep ocean water is pumped ashore to provide cold source for air conditioning system serving luxury resort on Bora Bora. No chillers or mechanical air conditioners are needed to cool the resort, saving 90% of the electricity that would have been required for conventional cooling systems. No CFCs are needed, just a simple pumping system to move the seawater through a closed loop heat exchanger.

[Waaberi]

Eritrea - Greening Eritrea

By Andrew Cawthorne

HIRGIGO, Eritrea, May 21 (Reuters) - Fisherman Ali Osman grins as he hauls a large, yellow-and-silver emperor fish out of the shallow Red Sea waters off Eritrea.

A minute later, his friend pulls out a baby shark, sweating in the heat as he chucks it on the rocks.

Other fish flop on the sea's flat surface as four young fishermen wade through the high tide to take back an impressive haul to their village, Hirgigo.

"If it wasn't for the mangroves, there wouldn't be so many fish," Ali says, pointing at a thick tree-line marking the border of desert and sea.

The forest of newly planted mangrove trees has given fish, crabs and oysters vital shelter to feed and breed in an area where there were previously only arid mud flats.

Marine life, and their human hunters, are not the only beneficiaries of an eco-project in this Horn of Africa village that has won global awards as a model for reducing poverty and feeding the hungry.

Led by U.S. scientist and humanitarian Gordon Sato, the project has transformed the landscape in an area where there is not enough fresh water to support conventional agriculture.

Leaves from the trees -- there are around a million mangroves in a six km (four mile) swathe from Hirgigo -- provide fodder for livestock. That means villagers no longer have to trek into distant highlands to feed their sheep and goats.

In a further benefit of the decade-old "Manzanar" project's low-tech, self-sustaining cycle, ground fishmeal and dried mangrove seeds are also fed to protein-hungry animals.

"I was given three sheep, now I have 15. I was a poor man, now I am rich," said Salih Mohamud, a 60-year-old father of four, contentedly watching his animals eat.

SATO'S SCHEME

Now 80, Sato first came to Eritrea in the 1980s, when war and hunger were devastating its people.

Wondering how agriculture could be stimulated on the barren coastline, Sato noted that mangroves would grow in thin bands along some sections of the shore.

He and his team established that the mangroves were growing in areas where rain water was washing into the sea. The rain was providing nitrogen, phosphorous and iron -- elements lacking in sea water.

By burying the seeds with a piece of iron and a punctured bag of fertiliser rich in nitrogen and phosphorous, the mangroves flourished. Desertification was reversed, and the life of the community was transformed.

"With simple experiments we are able to produce food and money for poor people where it did not seem possible. We can convert barren mud flats into mangrove forests and use these to provide the bulk of food for livestock," Sato said.

"In a few short years, poverty should be eradicated in this village," he told a newspaper.

The project was named Manzanar after the California desert internment camp where Sato and his family spent World War Two with thousands of other Japanese Americans. Then a young teenager, Sato created his own garden in the dusty earth.

"RAINFORESTS" OF THE SEA

The Eritrean project has attracted attention abroad, picking up several development awards. Its proponents believe it can be a model for other poor nations with similar coastal geography -- such as Mauritania, Somalia, Peru or Haiti.

"This is a low-tech solution to hunger and poverty. In these times of food price rises and global warming, it is just what the world needs," Manzanar project manager Ammanuel Yemane, of Eritrea's Fisheries Ministry, said at the site.

"Ours is a small and little-known country, but we have a unique project here that can serve as a model to the world."

The majority of workers on the project, planting trees and collecting the leaves, are women, who draw a monthly salary of 600 nakfa ($40), for the first time in their lives.

Hirgigo was chosen due to its extreme poverty, exacerbated by two devastating attacks by the Ethiopian army. In one of the world's hottest areas, rain seldom falls, temperatures pass 40 degrees Celsius, and the humidity drains visitors.

Its coastline, once stripped bare to provide leaves for camels and firewood, now has a profusion of vegetation and is teeming with sea-life: no wonder mangrove plantations are known as the "rainforests" of the sea.

[The Rt. Hon.]

I'm quite surprised to have only come across this project now. Why, why, why, is this not happening along most of OUR coast, on a larger scale. We lack visionaries.

[juzme123]

interesting stuff. most of these initiatives ive come across and I also thought how they could be applied. interesting to read about.

[Xusein]

Originally Posted by The Rt. Hon.

I'm quite surprised to have only come across this project now. Why, why, why, is this not happening along most of OUR coast, on a larger scale. We lack visionaries.

Geeljire mentality.

[Tom & Jerrii]

Cloud seeding



Drought-hit Kenya turns to cloud seeding for rain

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:19 GMT
Source: Alertnet // Gitonga Njeru

By Gitonga Njeru

NAIROBI (AlertNet) - Kenyan scientists plan to use a technique known as cloud seeding to produce more rain from November, in an attempt to ease East Africa’s worst drought in several decades.

Most parts of the country usually experience a period of long rains from September until early December. But Kenya’s Meteorological Department forecasts that the coming season’s rainfall will be patchy and below normal, and the drought could last until March.

Kenya has experienced frequent droughts since 2005, but weather analysts say this year’s dry spell is the worst of them, and some have linked the trend to climate change.

With around 3.2 million Kenyans already in need of food and other humanitarian aid, the government has decided to try to increase precipitation through weather modification methods.

“We have a serious drought which has affected our food production. Food prices have gone up due to scarcity caused by the prevailing drought. There is great need for rain since most of the country depends on rain-fed agriculture,” said Peter Ambenje, the meteorological department’s deputy director.

“We have many unexploited clouds in the sky that need to be utilised. I believe cloud seeding is very vital at this desperate time,” he added.

The meteorological department, a government agency, has a division that specialises in cloud harvesting and seeding, and a number of Kenyan scientists have experience in these techniques.

The environment ministry has already disbursed $11 million for the three-month project, according to Ambenje.

CHEMICAL RAIN MAKING

In cloud seeding, chemical substances - mainly dry ice or silver iodide - are dispersed into the air by planes, ground generators or rockets, where they act as a focus for condensation that encourages the formation of precipitation.

Nairobi is organising an international conference to explore solutions to food insecurity, where cloud seeding will be on the agenda.

And the government has launched several initiatives to boost Kenya’s forest cover to 10 percent, from just 1.8 percent now. Forests produce organic compounds called terpenes during warmer weather, which act as a natural catalyst for cloud seeding.

Scientists from the Aquiess Global Rain Project - an Australian firm that uses electromagnetic waves to influence the path of clouds - have offered to help Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia produce more rain.

Ambeje said Kenya has not yet agreed to work with the company as it employs a different technology to the cloud seeding project.

Aquiess operations director David Miles said in Nairobi recently that cloud path modification has successfully brought rain to drought-hit parts of the United States, Australia and Qatar.

“You have to know that 70 percent of the world’s rain falls into the oceans and we have to divert some of these rains to drought-affected regions of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

ECONOMIC THREAT

Economic analysts warn that the drought is putting sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest non-oil-producing economy in jeopardy. Predicted economic growth of more than 4.5 percent is under threat as the drought has pushed up food prices and the unemployment rate.

Inflation is estimated to be at its highest level in seven months, jumping from 5 percent in the first quarter to over 15.5 percent more recently.

“With a Kenyan middle class of more than 45 percent (of the population), the drought has affected their purchasing power,” said Wanyama Simiyu, a Nairobi-based economist. “They now only spend their money on necessary commodities such as food, rent and electricity. Purchases of non-essential goods and services such as electronics, smart phones, cars, and entertainment have been on a decline.”

Many Kenyans blame the government. In February, politicians were warned by scientists and weather experts that a serious drought would hit the country and action should be taken to curb its impact, but they are widely perceived to have ignored the advice.

Last year, under normal rainfall conditions, the country’s farmers produced enough food to feed the population, and there were reports of wastage, Simiyu said.

“Food stocks were squandered and now everyone is complaining,” he added.

Kenya has spent several million dollars treating climate-related illness such as malnutrition, dehydration and diarrheal diseases, and has increased funds for public hospitals around the country.

The hope is that the cloud seeding initiative will help people return to their normal lives, improving food security and livelihoods.

All in all this could be used instead of waiting for the unpredicatble rain it could probally make somalia a green zone instead of desert it is growing into.

[Tom & Jerrii]

Would cloud seeding ease the drought?
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine


HOW CLOUD SEEDING WORKS

1. Fire silver iodide into cloud using flares on planes or from ground
2. Water droplets attach to these particles, falling as snow which melts into rain
3. This boosts updrafts, which pulls moist air into clouds
With lawns going brown and cars left unwashed, can we make it rain by firing chemicals into the clouds, a technique reportedly used during the 1976 drought?

It has only taken a few weeks of drought panic for the blue-sky thinkers to come up with seemingly outlandish plans such as towing icebergs up the Thames.

But while one such idea - cloud seeding, also known as weather modification - sounds like the stuff of science fiction, it dates from the 1940s. Particles are dropped or fired into clouds in an effort to change levels of precipitation.

Its best known use is in Moscow, where legend goes that it never rains on Red Square on May Day. It's a practice that still goes on today.

"It wasn't raining in Moscow [this May Day]," a spokeswoman for the mayor says. "We have a 'making the weather' department."

Water disputes

In China it's credited with boosting rainfall in drought-stricken areas, although there are allegations of "rain theft" levelled at provinces that use it too zealously.


It's used to boost snowfall
It's used to boost snowfall in the mountains above Californian hydroelectric dams, at Colorado ski resorts, to stop fog at airports and to prevent hail damage in cities.

Don Griffiths, president of North American Weather Consultants, says the first step is to take a cloud with upper layers below freezing. Next fire silver iodine (or salt or dry ice) into the cloud. This can be done either by dropping flares from a plane - these may be attached under the wings - or fired from the ground.

Water droplets attach to the particles forming snowflakes. Once these are heavy enough, they fall as first snow then melt into rain at lower altitudes.

"The trick is getting those seeding materials in the right place at the right time," says Mr Griffiths.

Experiments show that rainfall can be boosted by at least a quarter in specific areas over a whole season, he says. As for whether the UK could benefit, that depends on the type of clouds in the affected areas.

Ongoing controversy

Many meteorologists agree that cloud seeding brings more rain, but the issue of whether it can be increased in any predictable way remains controversial.



There is no technology that can create rain when there was no potential for it to begin with
Keith Seitter
American Meteorological Society
The US National Academy of Sciences has called for more research, driven by a world in which two billion suffer water shortages. But, it warns in a recent report, "scientists are still unable to confirm that these induced changes result in verifiable, repeatable changes in rainfall, hail fall, and snowfall on the ground."

And Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, also adds a note of caution.

"There is no technology that can create rain when there was no potential for it to begin with. Cloud seeding appears to be able to get a little bit more than you would have got otherwise. The conditions are going to have to be just right for cloud seeding to have a measurable impact."

For there are annual variations in rainfall, variations even scientists cannot explain.

Wrong sort of clouds

Stephen Dorling, senior lecturer in meteorology at the University of East Anglia, says it's difficult to imagine finding a reliable way to boost rainfall.


Reservoirs are running dry
"The difficulty is doing it in a controlled way. The process of rain formation is reasonably well understood, but as far as a computer programme that can model it, each cloud has an incredible amount of science going on inside it. We simply wouldn't have the computer to handle it."

He's also worried that cloud seeding could provoke legal disputes between nations, if rain was increased in one area but reduced in another.

But Mr Griffiths dismisses suggestions that cloud seeding could harm other areas.

"There is a huge amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. It is like an ocean but you think of it as a small lake. Only 10% of the water vapour ever reaches the ground as rainfall or snowfall."

Whether or not southern England has the right sort of clouds, the authorities regard talk of cloud seeding - and iceberg towing - as a distraction.

"Banning non-essential use is the priority," says an Environment Agency spokeswoman. "We do not currently need to even consider extreme measures."

[Tom & Jerrii]

Rain water conservation and Rainwater harvesting call it what you like this is something somalia needs


Rainwater harvesting is the accumulation and deposition of rainwater for reuse before it reaches the aquifer. Uses include water for garden, water for livestock, water for irrigation, etc. In many places the water collected is just redirected to a deep pit with percolation. The harvested water can be used for drinking water as well if the storage is a tank that can be accessed and cleaned when needed.

Why Conserve Rain Water

Rain water is a resource that is often overlooked when planning green initiatives. Not only does the collection of rain water provide a free water supply, it also helps keep surplus water from garden and patio areas. If rain water is not collected it drains into the waste water system, whereas by collecting the rain water it can be used at a later time. One of the benefits of using collected rain water is that it can be used with a hose pipe at any time regardless of hose pipe bans or restrictions in many areas.

The amount of rain water that can be collected and stored varies depending on conditions and each area and country will have differing amounts and patterns of rain fall.