Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm Marco say and this week we check out clean exhaust on Mercedes bluetec engine a great approach to wireless internet with some helpful greeting tips from our green tech expert the green show starts now you Mercedes has a special diesel engine and converts emissions into nitrogen and water it's a green technology called bluetec and brian cooley has more Mercedes calls their diesel scrubbing technology bluetec here's how it works you've got a diesel engine here putting up pretty nasty exhaust first stage is they've got what's called an oxidizing catalytic converter very early after the exhaust manifold the next thing that happens is a particulate filter grabs a lot of the actual physical suit we associate with Diesel's trap zip and cooks it off at a very high temperature but you've still got a lot of nitrous oxide coming down in the exhaust stream that's where you do an injection of add blue liquid urea in a vapor form in the exhaust pipe now after the particulate filter you've got this flow of the exhaust and the urea vapor working its way down the exhaust pipe and it gets to another catalyst toward the rear of the vehicle which creates a chemical reaction making it basically nitrogen and water vapor and that's primarily what comes out of the exhaust tip in fact even smells different kind of like a propane vehicle pretty clean stuff again 50-state friendly that's how the blue tech system works i'm brian cooley for the green show there's a new networking device from Hercules called the e plug it provides an internet connection between the two adapters over your home power line and then wirelessly to your computer the e plug 200 has a bandwidth of 200 megabits per second and the e plug 85 will give you 85 megabits per second it uses the latest generation intel on 6400 chipset that claims to reduce energy consumption by fifty percent in standby mode of course if this isn't green enough for you you could just use a 50 foot ethernet cord the e plug 200 duo and e plug 85 duo should be out this month for 150 and a hundred dollars respectively no word yet on a US release date if you obsess over your energy bill or just want to make a few simple changes to save power our green tech expert Martin lamonica has got you covered hi mark and welcome back to my house some people wonder about greening their home the first thing they should think about is your heating & cooling costs what you should do is get an energy audit with someone who can tell you how to weatherize your home that means better insulation and ways to suit up all the cracks up with the cold and hot another thing you can do is to dress your vampire load a good way to get a read on how much electricity different devices use is with a power meter this is a kilowatt and it's telling me that my computer here is using 136 watts of electricity now my laptop uses about 35 so I use that to save some power the kilowatt also told me that my printer uses to rewatch electricity even when it's off so what I've done is put my computers and my printer on the power strip flick it on when I want to use it and flick it off when I'm done so how much electricity is my whole house using that's what this is for it's home energy monitor it basically displays what's going on your meter inside your house tells you how much electricity you used over time and what it costs you utilities are start using these gadgets and web-based programs as part of smart grid trials the big point with greening your home is to start with a plan and then make little changes every day a Mart lamonica would seen it thanks for watching if you're looking for a gadget that combines the outdoors with a little bit of espionage this is for you it's the solar briefcase and power hub that claims to add an extra three to six hours of battery life onto your laptop the briefcase looks very James Bond but it weighs 12 pounds plus the power hub that houses the batteries in power socket adds an extra nine pounds not to mention the additional weight of your laptop and any other electronics you're carrying and while it's labeled as a briefcase you can't actually carry your laptop or anything else inside it's also three hundred and fifty dollars so both your wallet and your muscles should be comparable to that of a double oh and that's it for this week send your feedback into green show at cnet com on Marco saya thanks for watching you