Page 6 - Green Builder Magazine June 2015 Issue

FIELD REPORT

4

News About Sustainability Issues and Green Products

Pros Shop Online, Study Shows
According to a new study, about 40 percent of pros use the Internet to research,
pre-order and purchase at least some of their homebuilding products each month.

IBY CHRISTINA B. FARNSWORTH other pros, with only about half of them making web purchases.
NDIANAPOLIS-BASED FARNSWORTH GROUP (no The survey found two main drivers for online purchasing:
relation to this writer) recently studied building
professionals’ online shopping habits. The research price and selection options. Those surveyed felt that they
firm surveyed 507 full-time pros: 160 remodelers, 150 could often find the same product for a lower price if they
homebuilders, 112 architects and 85 subcontractors. shopped online; they also felt they often had far more options
there. Farnsworth pointed out that Home Depot has perhaps

“We wanted to know, if we compare online shopping to a 100 plumbing fixtures in a typical store, yet 1,000 are available

brick and mortar store, how many are actually walking through online. It’s becoming very easy and comfortable to sit with

the store, versus ordering online and picking up product at the a client and shop online.

retail location,” explains Grant Farnsworth, director of business In one aspect of Internet purchasing, however, pros are not

development & client services. His survey found that 76 percent as enthusiastic as consumers: social media. Pros are not likely
www.greenbuildermedia.com 06.2015

PHOTO CREDIT: TOM CAMPBELL
of home improvement professionals purchased at least some of to click on stores or brands and “like” them, for example. They

their home improvement and/or construction products online show their approval by buying the brand, not by telling their

within the past 12 months and that 40 percent are regular friends and clients about it.

shoppers, purchasing products online at least once per month.

Architects shop for home improvement products online less than Learn more at www.thefarnsworthgroup.com

HYDROGEN FUEL BREAKTHROUGH
Researchers from Virginia Tech have developed a low-cost, high-yield
method for producing hydrogen fuel from biomass.ESEARCHERS FROM VIRGINIA
optimize yield of hydrogen.
Tech have developed a way to Hydrogen is the most abundant element

Rdrastically cut the time and money in the universe. Like gasoline, hydrogen gas

necessary to produce hydrogen is combustible; unlike gasoline, it does not

fuel, using pretreated plant biomass and produce carbon dioxide in the process. But

synthetic metabolic engineering. This entails because hydrogen gas doesn’t occur natu-

the construction of enzymatic pathways rally, it must be isolated from compounds

without cell membranes to carry out such as water. Most processes for doing

biochemical reactions. so—electrolysis, for instance—are expensive

Virginia Tech’s new method utilizes corn and energy-intensive, or only yield small

stover. Comprised of leaves and stalks, corn amounts of hydrogen fuel. By using cheap

stover is the most abundant agricultural residue in the United States. biomass sugars in a high-yield reaction and increasing the volu-

The sugars in stover naturally break down into hydrogen and CO2. metric productivity, the Virginia Tech study has addressed two
Lead researchers Dr. Percival Zhang and Joe Rollin developed an of the biggest challenges to mainstreaming hydrogen fuel. The

enzymatic pathway that speeds up this reaction and recovers 100 results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of

percent of the hydrogen. They first pre-treated the stover to release Sciences (PNAS) in April.

glucose and xylose, the most abundant sugars; they then used a

genetic algorithm to find the concentration of enzymes that would Source: PNAS