A Swedish man, Mats Nilsson, was listening to his grandfather when he was telling stories. His grandfather told him how he was drinking cider at work in a shipyard as a welder. They often spilled a little on their clothes and it dried. When they then started working again, the dried cider protected their clothes from flames or sparks.

Now he has made a 100% biological safe fire protection called Apyrum. Main ingredients are vinegar (CH3COOH) and citric acid (C6H8O7). There are two drawbacks: one is that the material you want to protect has to be porous. Like curtains, fabrics, upholstery, furniture foam and paper. The other drawback is that if you wash your curtains, you have to protect them again as Apyrum dissolve in water. However, consider the dangerous chemicals in other types of fire protection, I would go for it.

I saw a program on Norwegian TV (link below),  last autumn where this was demonstrated, and I got completely fascinated. It was very impressive. However, it took me some time to find back to where I had seen this demonstration and write about it in my blog. You can see a video of this program on the page above. Børge Jomaas, borge,jomaas at nrk.no is the journalist that made that part of the program.

Please use the links below if you would like to get more information. All the information is in Swedish.

Helge Karlsen in Sandnes, Norway has made an antenna that is 15x15mm (0.6inch). The antenna can work in a distance of up to 7-8km (4.3 to 4.9miles).

He used 12 years to develop this antenna and to find the right material to use. They have now tested the antenna in tunnels and under water and it is working well. The Norwegian helicopter rescue service, the Danish rescue service and Royal Navy are all among the users of this antenna.

What I find impressive about this story is his endurance and faith in what he is doing. Most people that have great ideas would have stopped a long time ago. Some of lack of money, interest or time. A person like Helge Karlsen is among those that really bring our future into being.

What is it that makes some people so curious, disciplined and strong that they just do anything to achieve their goal? I don’t think there is one single answer to that question. For some it might be an inner drive to make something beautiful that will make a difference in peoples lives. For others it might be that they have had a hard time growing up, and they really don’t want their children to experience what they were going through.

On the other hand you could say that there is also a lot of reasons people stop themselves. You are born into a poor family, don’t get education, don’t have the money to do research, are stopped by your family situation, your boss, your attitudes, etc. The question is if this should be looked upon as real obstacles or excuses for not living your dream. The next question would then be why not live your dream?

The Apple MacIntosh was supposedly built in a garage in the beginning and is now all over the world. They had a dream to make a simple, but functional computer that everyone could use. They succeeded.

This blog post is based on a TV-program in NRK, Norway.

Looking at the waves at a beach in Spain Fred Olsen got an idea on how to produce electric power from the sea.

Fred Olsen is a man with visions for the future and he is becoming more and more concerned about Mother Earths health. Based on this concern he has started to look into how we can continue to live on this planet responsibly. One of his ways of doing this is to look into different renewable energy sources.

Fred Olsen started searching for a way of using the power of waves since that was a new area. His search started 7-8 years ago. After a lot of testing he put it to rest as he could not find a good solution that was working.

Then he went to Spain and put some barrels out on the sea to see how they would work. He got an idea and worked together with an engineer, Hans Øigarden, to make it come alive.

Now “Buldra” (eng: rumble), a prototype at a scale of 1:3, is on its way to produce electricity. It is basically a platform made of plastic that is half way submerged in the sea.

The full scale platform can produce 2.5MW. The goal is to get down to a price of 3.5 cent/kwh. At that price the electricity production can compete with a lot of other sources.

For countries with a long coast that can become a new way of income. The danger as I see it is that we suddenly will have all these platforms off the coast like a floating belt where noone can come in or out. The nice side of it is that it open up a lot of new possibilities. What about a home on the sea where you have your own electricity made?

The source of this post is an article in http://www.tu.no, Teknisk Ukeblad  written by Anders J. Steensen.