Australian Eden creating a Hydrogen Paradise?
Australian hydrogen hopeful Eden Energy says it is making significant progress towards becoming a leading player in the Indian alternative fuels market. The Perth-based company yesterday said that the stage had been set for securing a role in the huge emerging Indian alternative fuels market – primarily through its Hythane product, a hydrogen-enriched blend of natural gas. Hydrogen and Hythane Technologies were initially developed as a part of the NASA space program.
The Indian Government's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy recently announced the target of having all natural gas-powered vehicles, estimated at 1 million or 20 per cent of the entire Indian vehicle fleet, running on a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas by 2020.
Eden said it had been actively promoting and marketing Hythane in India for the past two years, concluding agreements with Ashok Leyland, a major engine manufacturer, Gujarat State Petroleum, a large state-owned gas producer, distributor and retailer, and Larsen & Toubro, the largest engineering group in India.
Eden further said the first Ashok Leyland natural gas bus engine conversion to Hythane, being undertaken in Colorado in the United States, was nearing completion. There had been encouraging results with Ultra-low and Eden added that further work on this and at least one other natural gas bus engine was planned. Once completed, the engines would be returned to India for official certification and use in the Hythane bus demonstration project planned for the second quarter of 2008.
Eden said it would produce the necessary hydrogen using the HyRadix range of hydrogen reformers, manufactured in India by HyRadix, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eden.
(From www.petroleumnews.net and www.EnvironmmentalManagementNews.net )
School reduces the flushes
Using water free urinals and water management system Pittwater High School in Mona Vale has seen huge savings in water usage in the past year due to the introduction of water free urinals and a water management system. The Uridan water free urinals and WaterGuard leak detection and water management system, supplied by Watersave Australia, have helped the school save up to 300L of water every day since introduced in 2006.
School principal Ross Cusworth has been very pleased with the results. "The key benefit of using the WaterGuard system is the ability to better manage water usage through the control options. Water can be turned off when the school is empty, daily water limits can be set and unusual water use is highlighted on the WaterGuard website. All of this information is invaluable when managing school resources. Also, our Mathematics Department is currently using the data from the WaterGuard website as part of the Year 7 extension class curriculum," said Mr Cusworth.
The water management system allows the monitoring of water consumption by time and volume 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Data is stored and may be accessed at any time. Analysis of the data can indicate problems and where and when water is being wasted.
As well as the WaterGuard and water free urinals, the Department of Education and Training had a rainwater tank installed at Pittwater High as part of the toilet refurbishment. The water collected is used to flush the toilets. Old taps were replaced with time limited versions and the combined impact of all of these water saving initiatives is a huge reduction in overall water usage, even with an increase in the number of students attending the school in the last year.
(From www.sustainabilitymatters.net.au)
I&I wonders whether these approaches might have applicability in many other organisations?
Money, Money, Money …
AusIndustry provides a number of grant opportunities for small and medium sized businesses. Two of these are the Global Opportunities Program and Commercial Ready Plus:
Global Opportunities Program: Funding from less than $100,000 to
$2 million is available under the pilot round of the Global Opportunities Program, which is targeted at Australian firms, particularly small and medium sized enterprises in the manufacturing and services sectors. Firms prepared to work collaboratively may be able to link into global supply chains and bid for work on international projects with value in excess of $500 million.
Commercial Ready Plus: Grants from $50,000 to $250,000 are on offer from AusIndustry's Commercial Ready Plus program to small and medium sized businesses and companies controlled by universities and public sector research organisations for projects up to 18 months’ duration which develop new products, processes or services, including research and development, proof-of-concept, and early-stage commercialisation.
IP – Unravelling the Myths??
According to Tal Williams of the NSW Business Chamber:
• Most people in businesses believe that if you pay another party to develop marketing or promotional material, computer software or programs, designs and logos, then the business will own these intellectual property rights. If you believe that, you would be 100 per cent wrong.
• Most businesses believe they own the rights to their trading name, in fact, most businesses only have a licence to use their trading name for a limited period.
• The majority of businesses are also unaware that an individual who creates a finished product that contains intellectual property rights, now have certain “moral rights” that are enforceable at law in relation to the finished product.
Tal will be running a seminar on 6 November to examine:
• How to secure ownership of the intellectual property that your business has paid for.
• How to protect against a third party claiming rights over your intellectual property
• What are “moral rights”
• What are the different ways that you can register and protect your intellectual property.
• What is required to ensure that your business can sell its intellectual property, should it wish to.
The seminar will run from 8.30am to 10.30am on 6 November at Western Sydney Business Centre, NSW DSRD Level 2, 470 Church Street (Cnr Harold St).
For further information, contact Mangala Srinivasan Ph: 8843 1116; Email: mangala.srinivasan@business.nsw.gov.au
Telephone lines cut, Computers stolen …
An early warning was sounded at the recent i3net members meeting regarding the real impact on businesses if their IT systems fail.
Michael Bilboe of Partner IT highlighted “Business continuity is a business issue, not a technical issue. Unfortunately business in general believes a tape backup solution or offsite storage is Disaster Recovery. In the event of an IT or Telephony disruption, a backup tape or files sitting on an internet server will not answer the telephones or receive those undelivered emails for the business.”
Michael further explained with a few examples over the last couple years of business that have had significant operational impact due to disasters. These included:
A financial services organisation that relied extensively upon internet and telephony connectivity had week-long outage of telephone lines that was caused by a build construction further down the road. This outage required the entire business process to change to minimise impact to its customers. Though there was no impact to their data or IT network, the backup solution would not have assisted in this disaster. In this case, Partner IT assisted the continued operations of this business to meet service level agreements with their customers.
Another business was shocked on a Monday morning to find that all computer equipment within the business was gone. Servers, computers, network, backup tapes and PABX all had been stolen. The only IT item remaining was the backup that was taken the previous Thursday. The initial problem was that the backup tape was from an old system and no longer could be sourced as new. Fortunately a compatible tape drive was located, and in a few days the customer was able to start restoring their data. The extended delay was further impacted because the company had to source IT equipment whilst the insurance company was still assessing the claim. The impact to the business was over a week of downtime.
The i3net was formed several years ago in response to a need to promote awareness of the high-technology innovation base within the Illawarra. (More from www.i3net.com.au )
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