As U.S. subsidies for ethanol continue to disappear, retrofit installations to produce butanol—touted as a superior fuel with superior financial incentives—are catching on at plants, says butanol technology provider Butamax, the joint venture between BP and DuPont Chemical.
As construction nears completion at the 6-MW Pioneer Grove Wind Farm in Cedar County, Iowa, Acciona Windpower has completed fabrication of the first section of a 100-meter-high concrete tower, the first of its kind for the company in North America.
Ports and inland waterways need an additional $6 billion to deepen harbors and overhaul river locks through 2020, says a new American Society of Civil Engineers report.
India has an ambitious goal to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure over the next five years, but the country's high interest rates, growing public debt and ongoing policy issues threaten to put the brakes on foreign investments.
In July, an eight-pound steelhead swimming up the Elwha River generated more excitement than 15,000 yards of concrete ripped out of a dam that had impounded the watercourse within Washington state's Olympic National Park since its construction 99 years ago.
Engineers and sustainability experts are testing some high-tech approaches to bring improved water and air quality to millions of people in remote parts of Africa and, eventually, elsewhere in the developing world.
Photo Courtesy of Turner Construction Co. All three shifts of Turner workers at Madison Square Garden paused for on-site talk. Related Links: Frank Gilbreth's Bricklaying Ergonomics Harvard Business Review: Lean Service Machine To drive home the importance of lean construction practices in project delivery as well as jobsite safety, Turner Construction Co. paused its 45,000-person staff and subcontractor workforce in North America for 30-minute to one-hour tutorials, delivered company-wide on Sept. 4 to all shifts. This year's "safety stand-down" is the eighth annual post-Labor Day event the contractor has held to push the message of job safety."This was a chance
Related Links: National September 11 Memorial & Museum After a prolonged fight, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey have settled financial and other differences regarding the subgrade museum at the World Trade Center. The dispute halted museum construction last December, cast a shadow on the two entities leading the project and delayed the scheduled Sept. 11, 2012, opening by about a year.The seven-level museum and some port-authority projects share infrastructure at the 16-acre site in Lower Manhattan (ENR 8/16/11 p. 34). The authority, which owns the land, had
Related Links: HP Labs Architectural Record HP Labs, the research arm of computer technology giant Hewlett-Packard,is giving back to the environment. The lab has set a goal to develop a method for designing and operating a data center that would consume no net energy from the public utility grid over the lifetime of the facility."This would take into account the building's embedded energy and operational energy," says Cullen Bash, director of ecosustainable systems for HP Labs, Palo Alto, Calif.For the project to be a success, the data center would have to have a two-year payback period for the up-front investment
Though the tone is unusually civil, critics are sharpening their knives in Louisiana as recovery starts in flooded areas outside the circle of defenses that protected New Orleans from Hurricane Isaac's storm surge on Aug. 26-29.
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