INFRASTRUCTURE

Module 3
 Content
• Futuristic systems (ex, Hyper Loop);
• Energy generation (Hydro, Solar (Photovoltaic,
Solar Chimney), Wind, Wave, Tidal, Geothermal,
Thermal energy);
• Water provisioning;
• Telecommunication needs (towers, above-ground
and underground cabling);
• Innovations and methodologies for ensuring
Sustainability;
 Road and railway Infrastructure
It consists of the installation of fixed assets including
surface roads and railways and terminals such as
bus stops, trucking terminals, railways stations.
Operations of vehicles along these transport
systems make the travel time to reduce and
generation of employment in the sector which in
aggregate influence the aggregate demand for
goods and services that ultimately leads to increase
in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and overall
development.
 FUNCTIONS OF TRANSPORT
• Transport contributes in Growth of industries whose
product requires quick marketing.
• Transport helps in increase in the demand for goods.
• Transport creates Time and place utility
• Transport helps in stabilization of price
• Transport ensures even flow of commodities into the
hands of the consumers through out the period of
consumption.
• Transport identifies competition, which in turn,
reduces pries.
Modes of Transport
 Hyper Loop Futuristic systems
Hyper loop is a proposed mode of passenger and freight transportation, first used to
describe an open-source design released by a joint team from Tesla and Space X.
Hyperloop is a sealed tube or system of tubes through which a pod may travel free of
air resistance or friction conveying people or objects at high speed while being very
efficient, thereby drastically reducing travel times over medium-range distances.
Elon Musk's version of the concept, first publicly mentioned in 2012, incorporates
reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by
linear induction motors and axial compressors.
The Hyperloop Genesis paper conceived of a hyper loop system that would propel
passengers along the 350-mile (560 km) route at a speed of 760 mph (1,200 km/h),
allowing for a travel time of 35 minutes, which is considerably faster than current rail
or air travel times. although transportation analysts had doubts that the system could
be constructed on that budget; some analysts claimed that the Hyperloop would be
several billion dollars over budget, taking into consideration construction,
development, and operation costs.
The Hyper loop concept has been explicitly "open-sourced" by Musk and SpaceX, and
others have been encouraged to take the ideas and further develop them. To that end,
a few companies have been formed, and several interdisciplinary student-led teams
are working to advance the technology. SpaceX built an approximately 1-mile-long
(1.6 km) subscale track for its pod design competition at its headquarters in
Hawthorne, California.
Hyper Loop
 Autonomous Cars
Recent developments in Cloud
computing and emerging
technologies like AI, IoT and
LiDAR have turned
autonomous cars from a vision
to a present reality, as so many
companies have announced
their plans of launching
autonomous cars and trial runs
of these cars are already going
on in different cities of the
world.

Companies like Waymo and Tesla are the forefront of the autonomous revolution.
Recently, Drive.ai, a Silicon Valley-based startup building self-driving car software,
announced that it will offer free rides to passengers in Frisco, Texas. Autonomous cars will
overwhelm the existing automobile industry and undertake will be its biggest and most
breathtaking transformation since its inception in the beginning of the 20th century
Futuristic Subways
Tesla and its founder Elon Musk have a well-
deserved reputation for being technological
mavericks. Yet another plan of Musk is
creating a localized, futuristic subway system.
Construction of new subway systems is going
at a slower pace in the USA. But the futuristic
loop is already being tried in Los Angeles.
Tesla has finished building its first stretch of a
tunnel in the city that will transport people in
their own cars or pedestrian “pods” at
speeds up to 150 mph. The system will allow
people to avoid traffic and commute swiftly.
However, the downside is the risk associated
with congestion and gridlock at the entrance
of the tunnel as more and more people will
take up to these pods as a superfast means
of transportation.
 Flying Taxis
Flying taxis may seem straight
out of a science fiction novel
or a fantasy of the human
mind, but flying taxi project is
as realistic as it gets. Big
companies such as Uber,
Boeing, and Airbus have
started developing this
technology. Silicon Valley
startups are also showing
enthusiasm about flying taxis.
Uber plans to fly these taxis
by 2023 and for this endeavor
it has also partnered with
NASA
As per the agreement between the two, Uber will share its plans for implementing an urban
aviation rideshare network. NASA will use the latest in airspace management computer
modeling and simulation to assess the impacts of small aircraft – from delivery drones to
passenger aircraft with vertical take-off and landing capability – in crowded environments.
Hydro Energy Generation
Hydro-electric power, using the
potential energy of rivers, now
supplies 17.5% of the world's
electricity (99% in Norway, 57%
in Canada, 55% in Switzerland,
40% in Sweden, 7% in USA).
Apart from a few countries with
an abundance of it, hydro
capacity is normally applied to
peak-load demand, because it is
so readily stopped and started.
There are two process –a) using
storage water and b) using river
water. As per production of
electricity hydro power classified
as large hydro > 30 MW
Small hydro – 100 KW – 30 MW
Micro Hydro < 100 KW
 Photovoltaics Energy Generation
Solar photovoltaic energy or PV solar
energy directly converts sunlight into
electricity, using a technology based on
the photovoltaic effect. When radiation
from the sun hits one of the faces of a
photoelectric cell (many of which make
up a solar panel), it produces an electric
voltage differential between both faces
that makes the electrons flow between
one to the other, generating an electric
current.
There are three types of solar panels:
Summary of the benefits of photovoltaic
photovoltaic, generators of electricity to
energy:
be supplied to homes; thermal, installed
•Renewable
on houses to receive the sun directly;
•Inexhaustible
and thermodynamic, which operate in
•Non-polluting
varying weather conditions, i.e. at night,
•Scalable, from home systems up to large
when it’s raining or cloudy.
plants
•Appropriate for rural or remote areas
•Contributes to sustainable development
•Promotes local employment
Solar Chimney Energy Generation
The solar updraft tower
(SUT) is a design concept for
a renewable-energy power
plant for generating
electricity from low
temperature solar heat.
Sunshine heats the air
beneath a very wide
greenhouse-like roofed
collector structure
surrounding the central base
of a very tall chimney tower.
The resulting convection
causes a hot air updraft in
the tower by the chimney
effect. This airflow drives
wind turbines, placed in the
chimney updraft or around
the chimney base, to
produce electricity.
 Wind energy generation

Wind power generation means getting the electrical energy by converting wind energy into
rotating energy of the blades and converting that rotating energy into electrical energy by the
generator. Wind energy increases with the cube of the wind speed, therefore WTGs should be
installed in the higher wind speed area.
Wave energy generation
Wave energy or wave power is essentially power
drawn from waves. When wind blows across the
sea surface, it transfers the energy to the waves.
They are powerful source of energy. The energy
output is measured by wave speed, wave height,
wavelength and water density. The more strong
the waves, the more capable it is to produce
power. The captured energy can then be used for
electricity generation, powering plants or pumping
of water. It is not easy to harness power from
wave generator plants and this is the reason that
they are very few wave generator plants around
the world.
 Tidal energy generation

Tidal power or tidal energy is the form of hydropower that converts the energy obtained from
tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity.
Although not yet widely used, tidal energy has potential for future electricity generation. Tides
are more predictable than the wind and the sun. Among sources of renewable energy, tidal
energy has traditionally suffered from relatively high cost and limited availability of sites with
sufficiently high tidal ranges or flow velocities, thus constricting its total availability.
 Geothermal energy generation
At a geothermal power plant, wells are
drilled 1 or 2 miles deep into the Earth
to pump steam or hot water to the
surface. You're most likely to find one
of these power plants in an area that
has a lot of hot springs, geysers, or
volcanic activity, because these are
places where the Earth is particularly
hot just below the surface.

1.Hot water is pumped from deep underground through a well under high pressure.
2.When the water reaches the surface, the pressure is dropped, which causes the water to
turn into steam.
3.The steam spins a turbine, which is connected to a generator that produces electricity.
4.The steam cools off in a cooling tower and condenses back to water.
5.The cooled water is pumped back into the Earth to begin the process again.
 Thermal energy generation
Tharmal power generation is a power generation method that takes advantage of the
expansive power of steam. Heat produced by burning fuel such as heavy oil, LNG (liquefied
natural gas), or coal creates high-temperature, high-pressure steam. This steam is used to turn
a steam turbine impeller, causing a generator attached to the turbine to move and generate
power. With steam power generation, thermal energy is used in a relatively low-temperature
range (600°C or below). The thermal efficiency* of steam power generation is in the 41.6% to
45.2% range.
 Water provisioning
Good water quality is a prerequisite for several ecosystem services. Clean water is needed
especially for human consumption (drinking water), but the quality of water matters also in
household, irrigation and process use. Furthermore, good water quality is important for fish
and crayfish populations and makes recreation in and along watercourses more desirable.
Water is acquired both from ground and surface sources. The functioning of terrestrial
ecosystems plays a key role in securing clean water. Therefore clean water acts as a bridging
ecosystem service between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Telecommunication needs of towers
A Telecommunications tower is a first touch point for
service and information (signals, calls, data for
browsing, etc.)for getting a Mobile service.

It sends and receives information to and from cell

phones.

The Rectangular slab you see near the top in the picture
is an antenna, there can be multiple such antennae to
receive and send information at different angles ( also
called sectors on Telecom jargon).
Underground cable for telecommunication
need
Undergrounding is the
replacement of overhead cables
providing electrical power or
telecommunications, with
underground cables. It
demonstrates the higher
technology in developed
countries for fire prevention and
to make the power lines less
susceptible to outages during
high wind thunderstorms or
heavy snow or ice storms. An
added benefit of
undergrounding is the aesthetic
quality of the landscape without
the powerlines. Undergrounding
can increase the initial costs of
electric power transmission and
distribution but may decrease
operational costs over the
lifetime of the cables.
Overhead cable for telecommunication
need Overhead power lines, a
structure based network is used
to transmit electrical energy from
one point to another.
It consists of adequate size of
conductors , commonly three
conductor in 66 KV , 33 KV or 11
KV lines or four conductor in 11
KV lines or 5 conductor in LT
lines ( 5thconductor for street
lighting) for three phase lines
and two conductors for single
phase lines etc suspended by
towers or poles and generally
comprising of the items-such as
Poles, Conductors, Cross arms,
pin insulators, Stay Wires, Stay
Rod , Stay Anchor, Guy Insulator,
earthing materials, Guard wire,
Barbed wire and Danger plate
etc.
 Innovations and methodologies for
ensuring Sustainability
1.The Smog Free Project: Jewellery Made From Air Pollution : Daan Roosegaarde is the
mastermind behind the world's first smog vacuum cleaner. The Smog Free Tower measures
almost 23 feet high (7 meters) and sucks in polluted air, cleaning it through a process of
ionization before releasing it again. By buying and wearing a Smog Free Ring, you're
contributing over 10,700 square feet (1000 square meters) of clean air.
2. Zéphyr Solar: Bringing Electricity to Disaster Zones
Zéphyr is a photovoltaic balloon and eco-friendly generator created by Karen Assaraf, Julie
Dautel, and Cédric Tomissi. The balloon only requires water in order to inflate and can capture
solar energy from as high as 165 feet (50 meters) in the air. The balloon is connected by a
cable to a base, where the energy is stored. Its creators hope that it will bring power to areas
struck by natural disasters.
3.The Green Building Initiative: Building Homes and Reducing Emissions: The Green Building
Initiative (GBI) is an international effort towards creating sustainable, resource-efficient
buildings. They offer a certification program for commercial buildings who adhere to their
environmentally-friendly vision. Their goal is to establish a standard of best practices for
green buildings globally, as well as providing third-party assessment tools for sustainability
requirements.
4. B-Droid: Buzzing Toward a Brighter Future
B-Droid is just one of a few efforts to create robotic bees that can pollinate crops as effectively
as their organic counterparts. B-Droid's mission is to help boost the natural bee population, by
giving low-nutritional and high-labor pollination tasks to robotic bees.
5. Groasis Waterbox: Bringing Life to the Desert
The Groasis Water box was created by Dutch flower exporter, Pieter Hoff. The Groasis is a
planting device that makes growing crops in the desert possible, and resource-efficient. It
consists of an "intelligent bucket" made from recycled paper, which can germinate seeds,
incubate saplings, and water plants. It requires 90% less water than traditional growing methods
and can be used in some of the most extreme climates on Earth.
6.Supermarket Herb Gardens: Less Waste, Better Taste
Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn introduced in-store herb gardens in 2017, to combat
waste and give customers the freshest possible produce. The initiative was developed in
collaboration with design agency, studiomfd. The herbs are grown to maturity off-site, before
being transported to stores. Customers can then cut as many sprigs of the herbs as they need,
without buying pre-packaged sprigs. It's a simple and effective way to cut down on plastic
packaging.
7. AirCarbon: A Sustainable Plastic For the Future
AirCarbon was developed by Newlight Technologies, and has already won many awards for its
innovative sustainability. It's made from carbon emissions that would otherwise be released into
the air, and can have a multitude of uses.

https://interestingengineering.com/21-sustainability-innovations-and-initiatives-that-might-
just-change-the-world