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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

White Mountains Snowshoe

The snow is now all slush, the river watchers are predicting the earliest breakup ever, and the first behbeh reindeer was born. We decided to see what the snow was like the White Mountains last weekend.

Dogs always lead the way!


Starbuckeroo luuuuuuuurrrrrves snnnnnooooowwww and smears her face all over in it.


Autumn sez, "I don't know what she is doing!"


Snuggle break!


Pretty Autumn girl:


A pair of wolves on the ridgeline!


Linden schniffs with her schnozz:


Pretty red wolf:


Linden with a tiny black wolf walking out from her ear:


The mountains were crisp and beautiful in the distance:


When we got to the top of Wickersham Dome, we found a huge group of people and dogs. They asked us to take their photo, and I was amazed at how nicely their dogs posed. You'll also notice that Autumn and Starbuck posed with them. :)


And then they returned the favor and took a photo of us:


We like tha moon!


Roo sez, "Another fine day in retirement!"

AHHHHHHH!!!!!

Behbehreindeer!





She is already up and about and nursing!


Photo credits: Eric Engman

How fuzzy is she?

She looks very fuzzy!

Fuzzy wuzzy!

ngggggg

mmmmmnnnnllllllgggggnnnnn.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Love is...

... hovering over your partner with a broom while she pees in the yard because a moose is frightening her.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

couchal photos

7 years ago this month, I adopted Linden. One week later, I called her former musher. "Um... are you sure this dog is an adult? She looks and acts like a puppy!" Said she, "Yup! That's Linden!"





The prior fall, Autumn was my first dog. I asked about another since I thought she might be lonely. Here she is saying, "Thank for your this rawhide. I don't want it right now, but I don't want my sisters to steal it, so I'll just hold on to it while I nap."


Starbuckeroo looooooves cuddling on the couch with DL. Me... I am not her preference! I think I overwhelm her with squeezes and hugs and more squeezes. Poor Roo!


Me and Roo, and Roo and me; no matter how they tossed the dice, it had to be…

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Cofiring biomass

One of my work projects is testing cofiring of small amounts of wood chips with coal in coal-fired power plants. The idea is that it's a way to reduce pollutants discharged to the atmosphere without requiring significant overhaul of an existing coal-fired power plant. Additional benefits include creating a market for Alaskan scrap wood that would otherwise be disposed of, and reducing carbon footprint.

Since this has been a rather publicized project, I'm taking the unusual step of revealing real names here.

I am working with a forester colleague, Dave Nicholls, who lives in Sitka. He, of course, is interested in finding markets for Alaskan wood products. We also have on board my very first grad student, one Zack Wright. He is a 4th-generation Alaskan and super bright, motivated, practical, and grounded. The three of us have been test firing small amounts of biomass at our local power plant in Fairbanks, where the power plant people have been extremely enthusiastic and accommodating. Not only did they give us access and support to do our testing in their plant, but they made sure to schedule it when their top-notch operations guy was on shift. That guy was amazing--he sat in his control room and stared at SCADA screens, pushing and pulling knobs and levers all through the burning to make sure that power output was constant. 5-15% aspen wood chips were added to a single burner's combustion stream. Among the parameters monitored were efficiency, firing rates, excess oxygen, NOx emissions, CO emissions, and smokestack opacity.

Here are the wood chips for the test burn. This pile here is 40 tons:


A bucket of coal! I am weighing samples to get bulk density. This photo was taken by my colleague Amanda Byrd.


And a bucket of pure biomass:


Here is a mixture of approximately 5% biomass by mass. This photo is another of Amanda's.


We had monitoring equipment on the roof. This photo also by Amanda. This is the power plant manager, Dave Fish, and Chad Schumacher of Superior Pellet Fuels, a local pellet and densified wood product manufacturer. Chad sold us the wood chips for testing at a greatly reduced cost. He has giant piles of scrap wood that he'd love to find a market for! I think Chad is a man a bit ahead of his time, always investing in products that Alaskans don't realize they need yet. I just hope they catch up to him so his business stays viable, as he deserves and we need!



One difficulty with biomass is the higher water content, especially when the wood is freshly cut and not given time to "season". Just to give you perspective, typically recommended drying times for logs to heat homes are 2 years in the Outside world, and at least one summer in Fairbanks (things dry fast here in summer since it is quite dry, and it remains warm at night). These chips could in theory dry very quickly, since they are tiny and allow a lot of air access. However, air doesn't flow very well to the interior of chip piles. Also, anything one does to artificially dry an energy product (such as heating) requires energy input, which of course somewhat negates the energy production of the biomass. It's quite a challenge when energy is so expensive!

So is it just me, or can you visually SEE how wet these chips are?




Coal mined in Interior Alaska is also unusually high in moisture (up to 30%, where in Pennsylvania it would be under 10%), so it does help reduce the contrast and mitigate that particular challenge of cofiring, although of course moisture during a combustion process will always eat up precious energy!

In other news, the girls are really cute when they snuggle on the couch:


And in other other news, I was visiting with our machinist today, and he showed me photos of himself as a young undergraduate art student, making the cross for the parish hall at St. Matthews Church! This must have been the mid 70's. Wow, how beautiful it was then! Those walls and that cross are all painted a drab brown now.



Friday, March 13, 2015

Brrrrr!!!



HAPPY SPRING, Y'ALL.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

I guess it's spring-ish?

On Sunday, M came over to ski, and then we went to the Nenana Tripod Festival. The (four-legged?!?) tripod is put out onto the river ice, and tickets are sold to people who would like to guess the minute that the ice goes out each spring. It's Alaska's only legal lottery, and the jackpot is usually on the order of $300,000. Usually there are about 6 winners. Hmmm, $50,000, then the IRS takes a cut, and you have... not even enough to pay the balance of my mortgage! But I wouldn't complain if I won. :) It was windy on the river that day, so we didn't stick around for the full tripod raising. However, I have photos from past years here and here for your viewing pleasure.

Again, we caught the limbo contest:


St. Mark's Episcopal:


A gray, overcast day:


Only 3 lonely workers were out cutting the channel in the ice and assembling the tripod.






The ice is so clear!


The snow on the river was windblown:


When we got home, M's dog, Naya, had been waiting peacefully with my girls. For some reason, even though they hardly know each other, we could tell immediately that leaving them unattended would be no problem:


I always thought that Autumn was a very mellow, rather passive dog, but now that I've gotten to know so many others, I see that she actually has an edge to her that is unique among dogs who are as sweet on the surface as she is. Linden has it too, but Starbuck... not so much!

Look! It's the Amazing Boneless Dog!

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Snow! Snow! Snow!

On Saturday morning, we woke up to several inches of fresh snow!


However, it was warm and wet and sticky, making skiing difficult. Nevertheless, we had fun. Check out Starbuckerooooooooooo!!!


And Autumn smiling:


Roo loooooooooves snow:








"I hear something!!"


My favorite landmark:


Booger is all back to normal, bouncing around!


DL being fuzzy:


The leaders conferring under a favorite tree:


Until Booger joins them. "Hey! Whatcha talking about? What? Cheeze? Bacon? Fuzzy? I'm fuzzy! Cheeze? Whooo? Rrrrrr?"


Every moment is a new adventure for Booger!


It was so warm that the snow spontaneously made a little snowball around Autumn's tags:


"Talk to da paw!"