Lifeboat Foundation

The food retail, foodservice and industrial cooling industries are in the midst of a momentous transition in refrigeration system architectures. Regulations are driving the need to implement sustainable systems with options growing exponentially. Emerson’s natural refrigerant expert, Andre Patenaude, provides advice on the best alternatives to future proof your system.

To get to what many call the “end game” of achieving compliance and meeting corporate sustainability objectives, more businesses are looking at systems based on natural refrigerants to help them achieve these goals.

The term “natural refrigerant” refers to substances that naturally occur in the environment. Unlike the synthetic refrigerants that have commonly been used in refrigeration applications — including hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — ammonia (NH3 or refrigerant name R-717), propane (refrigerant name R-290) and carbon dioxide (CO₂ or refrigerant name R-744) are three naturally occurring refrigerants that pose very little threat to the environment.

Continue reading “Choosing a New System Architecture” »

You’ve never seen a farm like this.

There 7.68 billion acres of arable land. if everyone did this and lived one one tenth of an acre then that’s room for 76 billion people just on the arable land where there is actually 36 billion acres of land on the planet.

If farming were turned into vertical farming building with ten floors a piece at 1/10th and acre per level that’s 760 billion. At 100 floors that’d be 7.6 trillion. I would need to review an Isaac Arthur video about the maximum occupancy of the planet, there may be heat problems with trillions of people on the planet.

Continue reading “Learn How This Family Grows 6,000 Lbs Of Food on Just 1/10th Acre – Urban Homestead” »

The speed with which microbes in a simplified ecosystem absorb the nanomaterials is raising concerns about the effect on organisms higher in the food chain.

The fast food franchise is leveraging a special device to help customers choose their meal by age, mood, and gender.

Austria’s Ams has released a pair of tiny spectral sensors for on-the-go analysis of foods or pharmaceuticals.

Attention all seaweed farmers! US DoE and DARPA wants you.

Did you know that the amount of commercially produced seaweed almost hit the mark of 25 million metric tons last year? China and Indonesia dominate the global seaweed-to-food market, and now the Department of Energy has been casting a hungry eye on the potential for the US to get in on the action, with a particular focus on converting seaweed to biofuel and other high value products.

Of course, there is a problem. Growing seaweed — aka macroalgae — for food is one thing. The algae-to-energy cycle is quite another thing entirely. That’s why the Energy Department has called upon its cutting edge funding division, ARPA-E, to put out a call for the super macroalgae farmer of the future.

Continue reading “Energy Dept. Seeks A Few Good (Really, Really Good) Seaweed Farmers” »

Engineered meat is taking on a new flavour as an entrepreneur aims to help people make animal-free meat at home, like brewing beer, by sharing cell cultures.

For the vampire lovers out there. Very scary situation.

The bats should only consume bird blood, but as humans have started to move into the forests of northeastern Brazil, they’ve turned to new sources of food.