Who is Brazil?

Upon arriving to Brazil I soon realized the visible signs of a developing country. A country in which its cities are regulated only to a certain extent, and in which its people expect things not to work.

Upon exploring more aspects of Brazilian culture we dove into the topics of favelas. One of the interesting things about favelas is the relationship between the community members and the police. The favelas symbolize the relationship between the police and the rest of Brazilian society. It seems that the police is not a beacon of safety and order for the people, it is merely a tool wielded by the wealthy to exert power over those less fortunate. Thus you are left with the saying, “for my loved ones, everything; for my enemies, the law”. Was Brazil a more developed country in which corruption was not as widespread as it currently is, I believe the police would be more reliable and honest to its people. 

Brazil has a long way to go before its country’s corruption is eradicated however the first steps have been taken in the political sphere. With the impeachment of the president comes a backend deal with the leader of PMDB, one of the most corrupt parties in Brazil. Unfortunately one of the biggest roadblocks for a developing country is corruption however it is nearly impossible to get by it. It is not people that hold the power, it is money and you can see how it plays a role within Brazilian society since there is no middle class.

You have the rich, the poor, and nothing in between. As money holds the power, the rich find themselves only getting richer while the poor find themselves being suppressed. Conditions seem to be difficult for anybody who isn’t born rich as they are entered into a public school from the start, which does not bestow a strong education upon its students. Once the child hits a working age, he or she is put to work. Once work is begun, it almost doesn’t add up to continue with education if the money they make is enough for them to survive. However, if the person aspires to get an education then he or she must apply to schools, whether it be a public or private university. The public universities are the strong universities and they are free for its students, however the private university is the weaker university yet each student must pay tuition to go to it. So the students that are had to spend their time working while in high school did not have the opportunity to fully invest themselves into their studies making it all the more difficult for them to pass the tests necessary for acceptance into a public university. They are left going to a private university with the weaker education and high tuition bills, or they are left without a university education.

Thus the population carries on in the country. With consumerism on the rise as the economy develops itself, the education of the people does not rise for opportunities are not created at the same rate as the economic incline.

This is reflected in the voting of the people for the people must vote for somebody or for a political party when the time comes to do so, otherwise they are fined for not voting. Thus it is easier for them to go to the polls and vote for a random name. Most people are busy working hard in order to take care of their loved ones and providing for them, so much so that they do not have the time or inclination to follow the political elections that affect the rest of the people.

One of the thought processes that is incredibly prevalent in Brazil is thinking on a micro-scale instead of a macro-scale. People think about their inner circle of people but not about the well-being of the greater population that they are a part of. Their small-scale thinking could be part of the reason why corruption is so strong within the country. There is not enough people caring to make enough of a difference necessary to get the development of the country to surpass its current roadblock. If the education was stronger and the system of keeping the poor poor and making the rich richer was destroyed, we’d be able to create a community of people within the country that would bring great success to the Brazilian name. However, we are not there yet. Until that day, most people will continue to focus in on their close circles and they will continue to follow their passions, just as the concept of the cordial man exemplifies.

Little by little, people are beginning to notice that their social and political systems aren’t working, as is exemplified by the current impeachment process going on and the strikes happening here and there and everywhere. Yet with the chaos ensuing, it is the larger powers (the organizations with money) that are taking advantage and working their best to profit off of the people’s strife.

I can see Brazil joining the ranks of the developed countries someday sooner than later but this would take a lot of time and there would have to be a lot of change to the country and its culture before this happens.

Soccer & The Cordial Man

In visiting the Curitiba soccer game I saw how the concept of the cordial man was related to soccer culture. The day after we arrived to Curitiba we attended the Coritiba game. We were lead to the family section of the concrete stands. It was calm, quiet, and there were little kids around, which is why I considered it the family section. Nevertheless, people would yell obscene chants at the teams all around the stadium.

When the game began, the choreographed fall of the gigantic t-shirt ingrained itself into my memory for the gracefulness of it struck me as strangers let it drop and then quickly folded it back up as another banner raced up the crowds. From there the giant flags were released and danced across the sky among the crowd. Chants filled the air, mainly coming from one section of the stands, and energy surged through the stadium.

After witnessing the difference between the two sections (the family section and the other section) I wanted nothing more than to go to the other section to see what it would be like to be surrounded by the enthusiasm of the fans. After halftime I made my way over to the other crowd. You could feel the stands shake as the fans jumped around singing. We were warned early however to be careful because the people in these crowds lived and breathed soccer. If provoked they would be merciless and take you down. They may not be welcoming or kind to foreigners because they would deem you unworthy of their enthusiasm for you don't share their magnitude of passion. However, these warnings did not stop me as I went ahead over to the section anyway.

This passion reminds me of the cordial man and its significance in Brazilian culture. The cordial man leads a life following his passions just as these soccer fans do. They know what makes them happy and the rest of the world just falls away as they focus in on what they care about. This experience truly tied together what I learned in class about Brazilian culture and the visible lives of the people of Brazil.

Sao Paulo's Energy Secretary Visit

Today we visited the Secretary of Energy of the state of Sao Paulo. When we arrived we were ushered into a big room in which we met the secretary and co-secretary of energy for the state of Sao Paulo. He warmly welcomed us to their offices and told us about their plans for the presentation. He soon left to attend other more important meetings. Once he left, the co-secretary took over the show. Upon taking over, he discussed everything with us from the state's goals to their actions. The state's goals include energy security, evolutionary chain competitiveness, and reduction of emissions. The actions of the state include the growth of renewable energy. The leaders helped us understand what the current energy situation is in the world, Brazil, and Sao Paulo. Including the face that 81% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels, 14% comes from renewable energy including biomass, hydro, and other, while 4.9% of energy comes from nuclear energy. In Brazil the energy allocation is 57% fossil fuels, 41% renewable energy, and 1.3% nuclear energy. One of the things I had never thought about was the fact that Brazil does not obtain all of the energy that it needs from its own sources. It obtains roughly about 30% of the energy that it consumes from the sources within the country and thus it must obtain the rest of its energy from imports. This is where such areas such as international relations come into play. It helped me realize the interconnectedness qualities of energy and international relations, which I had never deeply considered before this dialogue and before our trip. Although yesterday's class about alternative energy policy did help give a little bit of an introduction to this topic.
One of the subjects we covered were energy incentives. These were government sponsored programs which gave the public incentives to invest in alternative energies for themselves and their businesses. I had known before this dialogue about these sorts of programs existing in the United States, such as the solar panel industry and that if you make more power than you need from solar panels then you can sell the electricity to the grid for a small income. However, the ideas the co-secretary and his associates were stating were much larger scale incentives which made the presentation and the energy department's ideas rather interesting to listen to.
After all of the information was presented to us we were allowed to ask questions. Multiple very interesting and intelligent questions were asked at the end of the meeting and then the secretary left his important meeting just to see us off and to take a picture with us. All-in-all it was an informative trip.

Power Games

Favelas are very interesting to learn about because they are so different from the structured cities that are so prevalent in the United States. Favelas are considered almost separate from the rest of society. They nearly have an air of exoticness. However, these images of Favelas are interestingly enough inaccurate. Favelas are portrayed as communities of poor, unruly, groups of people yet these groups of "unruly" people have established their own "governments". The illegitimate governments of the favelas are the people that have power which tend to be gang leaders. They keep the peace in communities by working with community members such as Lil' Dice did with the store owners. The gang leaders want as little disruption to their community as possible, thus they give the police what they want in order to keep them at bay, just as the cultural reading exemplified, "On a... memorable occasion, my trafficker neighbors simply left two tons of marijuana behind for the police to find, stacked in neat piles in the middle of an alleyway leading to a drug boss's house, on the route police were sure to take the following morning".
The best way that the reading portrays the relationship between the police the gangs, and the other favela community members is the following quote from the reading, "The police periodically attempt to bring order and control the imagined chaos represented by the favela, while traffickers seek to minimize losses of life and property and use the farcical nature of police performance to solidify their role as the de facto government of the favela." Although the traffickers bring the drugs into the favelas and distribute it, thus hurting the community, they also have the power to keep the police in check and because of this they do their best to work with the police to keep the violence at bay. This was visible in the movie, City of God, when the police were being bought off by the traffickers so that the police wouldn't bother them and also so the police would keep the traffickers updated on their movements.
It's most fascinating to see how integral the traffickers are to the favela society both from our reading and from the movie we have watched.

Alternative energy reflection

During the course of our time in Brazil we have visited a number of alternative energy plants and spent numerous hours learning about the state of alternative energy in today's day and age.
In the beginning of this trip I mainly only knew about solar energy and solar panels in particular. I understood their
Inefficiency and limitations but what i didn't yet know is what causes those limitations and all of the different factors that go into maximizing solar panel efficiency, such as the direction they face. I understand that there's so much room to grow with solar panels but we have to find a better material to help capture the electrons- to look into more than just silicon as the material used in the panels.
From our trips, readings, and discussions, I've learned about hydroelectricity. I knew that Brazil had 80% of its economy running on alternative energy with hydroelectricity being its main source but I never knew why. Once we went on our plant visit to Todon I learned of the magnitude of electricity that can be produced (up to 400+ kWh of electricity!) however hydroelectricity is usually set up to only meet the demand of electricity and not to store electricity. so there's still a lot to explore in terms of efficiently capturing and storing the electricity.
Before coming to Brazil I didn't know anything about ethanol and its production. Thus when we visited the plant and read about it I learned about how it's made and just how big the process is to go from corn or sugar cane to ethanol or electricity. I was stunned by the inefficiency of biomass as an electricity source and fuel source. I also never realized just how many steps are necessary to go from an original source such as biomass or sunlight and end up with electricity. With every step of the way, efficiency is lost as energy is lost.
Alternative energy is a vast field with many opportunities in terms of discovering new technology to greater maximize our efficiency in electricity generation. I'm happy to have been able to learn so much from this course and our visits. There are so many more aspects of my gained knowledge of alternative energy that this single blog post cannot capture. I'm very excited to see how alternative energy will play a role in my life and what else we'll learn in the remainder of this trip.

The Cordial Man

Brazilian culture is multifaceted; from the socioeconomic differences to the fundamental principles, we see the culture of Brazil rooted deep in time. One of the most prominent fundamental principles of Brazilian culture is the concept of the Cordial Man. The cordial man is the principle of valuing the simple pleasures in life. It is the principle that puts value in spending time with family rather than rushing from task to task in order to obtain some sort of accomplishment as would be the case in American culture. The concept of the cordial man also leans on following your heart and living your life passionately.

The cordial man is heavily reflected in the character of Dr. Carlos. Although old, Dr. Carlos portrays a well off man who does not look towards merits to fulfill himself. Dr. Carlos lived for the simple pleasures in life as he worked away at his paintings. He did not seek fulfillment from the same things that most people with a rather individualistic mindset would have sought fulfillment from. As a cordial man, Dr. Carlos looked to live his life with passion however he was unable to do so with his wife. His wife held an individualistic mindset which clashed with his principles. She looked towards things like her work and social status to give her life value, leaving her husband behind in the shadows, not giving him any attention. However, once Val's younger daughter entered the picture we see the sparks begin to fly. Val's daughter, Jessica holds a fire within her. She is passionate about completing her education and this passion is visible to Dr. Carlos. He finds her curiosity about the world around her enticing and he finds himself entranced by her. In an attempt to bring back passion into his own life he asks her to marry him even though he already has responsibilities and commitments in his life to account for. 

The cordial man highly contradicts the individualistic mindset that I have vaguely seen dominate Sao Paulo today. Today we see the business men and women crowd the streets during rush hours and lunch hours. We see people all keeping to themselves and not interacting much with one-another. Although this individualistic mindset could be attributed to the fact that Sao Paulo is considered the second largest city in the world after New York City. Learning about the concept of the cordial man juxtaposed with the city life we encounter every day is a rather interesting juxtaposition of culture in the past and the culture of today. Although occasionally we can see this concept of the cordial man prevail in today's Brazilian society as we saw in Dr. Carlos, for the most part it can be questioned whether this cultural principle is still relevant to the culture that the people have shaped in Sao Paulo. 

Tonon: Ethanol Plant

Today we visited an ethanol plant 3 hours away from Sao Paulo named Tonon. This plant produces 300,000 liters of ethanol a day, but it's capacity is a maximum of 450,000 liters of ethanol per day. The plant produces both ethanol and electricity. It produces up to 400 megawatts of electricity per day.

The plant has four parts to it. The first part of the plant that we visited was the extraction area. Then we moved to the evaporation portion. From there we went to the fermentation process area. The plant has 10 fermentation tanks. Yeast is used in the fermentation process to create ethanol. This yeast is used again in another fermentation cycle because after it ferments you get a wine. The wine is separated from the yeast through centrifuge. The substances go to a radiation tower and there the ethanol is separated from the water using different temperatures, also known as the distillation process/part of the plant. Once they separate the water from the ethanol they reuse the water to water the crops because the water is rich in nutrients. They produce 600,000 tons of sugar per day and 1,200 megawatt hours per day. The plant is completely self-sufficient in the sense that it runs off of the energy that it produces.

At the end of the trip, we went to a sugar cane field where they showed us how they harvest the sugar cane using two big trucks/pieces of machinery. One of the machines cuts the sugar cane stalks down while the other truck catches/collects the cut pieces of stalk. We were all given pieces of sugar cane stalk to bite on and have some of. The sugar cane juice was sweet but also tasted the same way that the plant smelled. After having walked around the ethanol plant for a few hours and smelling the potent sugar cane smell everywhere, the stalk tasted disgusting. 

This was definitely a place for chemical engineers since there was a lot of chemical processes going on at this plant which was rather disheartening for me as a chemical engineer because I would not like to work in a place like that. The plant smelled horrible, it was very dirty and the technology looked very outdated that the workers used in the little rooms scattered around the plant. 

HydroElectric Plant Visit

Yesterday we went to a hydroelectric plant which is where they convert potential energy in water into mechanical energy by the spinning of turbines, which spins magnets, which creates a current which is used by people in the form of electricity.

We had a tour guide who brought us around the plant. The plant felt extremely industrialized. Very gray, lots of machinery, and it felt rather old. There was a combination of new and old machinery in the plant we were told. But it all looked the same to the average onlooker like me. The machinery was absolutely huge and you had to wear hard hats/helmets, safety glasses, and ear muffs. Even with ear muffs you could still hear just how loudly the machinery was working. The loud hum of the turbines spinning creating the electricity that will be distributed to the nearby cities. 

Our tour guide informed us that 462 MegaWatts is created by 6 units of turbines. There are electromagnetic inspections in which the workers throw magnetic powder onto the shells and put them through an electromagnetic field, allowing the workers to see if the water has caused enough wear and tear on the shell to break it. These inspections are done up to 2 times a week. The turbines can go through 84,000 hours before getting replaced and when there is something wrong with the shell they replace the whole shell apparatus. They have external and underground turbines and we got to see both. The external turbines spin at 360 rpm producing 230,000 Kilovolts while the underground turbines spin at 450 rpm. The spinning is different between the two in order to maintain the frequency of 60 Hz. The material it's made of is stainless steel. 

The peloton system works with pressure to generate 900 MW and we consume 150 m^3/s. It's the most efficient system. It requires less than it consumes. They provide power to the substation in Santos and São Paulo. They have transmission and distribution companies help them in the cities. The transmission lines at the plant make it be an 88 KW substation. 

In 1982 there was no such thing as pollution patrol but since then there has been a drastic change as it came to attention. There's a residential village nearby that inspects the area for wildlife maintenance. 

In 1932 there was a revolution and thus there were bombs dropped on the plant because the people who dropped the bombs wanted to affect all of the most important points in the city such as the energy creation areas like the hydroelectricity plant. 

I found it interesting to visit the plant but personally, I would not like to work at a place like that. 

I'm very excited to see what other alternative energy plants will be like to visit in the future.

Trip to the Solar Energy Plant

CPFL Energia is the largest non state-owned group of electric energy generation and distribution in Brazil and the third biggest Brazilian electric utility company, after Eletrobras and CEMIG. Until that first presentation, I had not realized just how big the company was and how integral it is for Brazil's power distribution.  

In visiting the plant we entered the control room and the world of electric energy management was unveiled to each of us. We observed the main control rooms, one of which had a long table for transmission and two long tables for distribution. This control room monitors the power supply to the different cities and when one "hub" doesn't work, the control room sends out maintenance crews to fix it quickly. 

The second room we entered explained the different methods that the company used in controlling the power supply monitoring to the cities. They told us about smart-metering which monitors the power and energy quality of the electricity reaching the individual businesses. It also monitors how much energy is used by the individual consumers, allowing the company to know how much to bill the consumer. 

After observing the different control rooms we ventured to the solar power plant about 12km away from the control center. The solar power plant was about 1 hectare which is relatively small for a solar power plant, however I quickly realized that this solar power plant is focused more on the research and development aspect of solar power plants rather than the pure harvesting of solar power. The plant had many different sections of solar panels, each with unique properties that were being observed and monitored. 

The large group of solar panels that rotate were at about 14% efficiency while the large group of panels that were stationary were at about 9% efficiency. Some of the different things that the company was exploring in terms of the solar panels was the efficiency considering what they were made out of, and their efficiency in relation to the directions they faced. They even had a group of panels that were meant to simulate those which would be put on the roofs of houses and other buildings. We learned that most of their panels had a lifetime of about 23 years and they had to be washed every 2 months otherwise the dust would settle on the panels and decrease their efficiency even more. The solar panels also lose about 0.5% of their efficiency each year as the panels slowly degrade. 

One of the things that our plant guides told us is that Brazil does not have many solar panel producers, most of the producers are in China, and thus most plants and people don't know what to do with their panels after they expire. They have to send it back to the producer in order for the panel to be taken apart and either reused, recycled, or thrown away in such a way that our environment does not get damaged too much (because solar panels contain lead which damage environments if not contained). Brazil currently has two producers. 

Our tour guide stated that (if I understood this correctly) one of the ways Brazil's government is attempting to create more incentives for power plants to make more solar farms by offering to buy the solar plants from the power companies. 

In that area, CPFL also buys energy from another company and transforms it into electricity which it then distributes to the nearby cities and areas. The company also sells the solar power that it generates as well. 

At the very end, we got to drive a small little electric car which was an interesting experience. The way it drove reminded me of a prius for it drives very quietly and smoothly. It doesn't accelerate very quickly but it can go up to 75mph. It takes about 1-2 hours to charge the battery and the battery itself looked to be very small in the engine compartment. Since the car was electric it did not contain any engine which saved a lot of space in the car under the hood. 

All-in-all it was a very informative and exciting experience to get to see and learn so much about such a power plant and how it works. I definitely enjoyed that experience and I can't wait to see what the rest of the alternative energy excursions will hold for us. 

World's Energy Consumption

The graph of the world’s total primary energy supply represents the su of production and imports, subtracting exports and storage changes. This figure ignores conversion efficiency, thus the forms of energy with poor conversion efficiency such as coal and gas are overstated unlike efficiently converted sources such as hydroelectricity. 

Based on the graph of the World’ total primary energy supply from 1971 to 2013, there has been an increase in the energy supply of all of the different supplies represented by the graph, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, biofuels, and waste. However, there has been a far greater increase in the supplies of biofuels and waste, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro energy supply. This means that the world is focusing in on moving towards these sources of energy as our main supplies. In the past, oil has been the largest energy supply for the world because the amount of energy supplied of each type of fuel is based on the difference between its highest and lowest values on the y-axis of the graph for that given year. Thus oil had approximately a 2,100 Mtoes which is 2,100*10^6 million tons of oil equivalent. One mtoe is the amount of energy released in burning 1 ton of crude oil. Meanwhile sources such as natural gas had a supply of approximately 500 Mtoes in 1971. In 2013, the supplies of oil and natural gas were at 4,000 Mtoes and 3,000 Mtoes respectively. Thus there was a 1,900 Mtoe increase in oil 2,500 Mtoe increase in natural gas supplies. This verifies the projections that our future energy usage will follow in the same direction as our energy supplies, away from the use of inefficient fuels such as oil and coal and towards the use of natural gas and nuclear energy.

Advanced economies such as the USA and Japan have a large percentage of the world GDP while developing economies such as China and India have very low percentages of the world’s GDP, even though they have larger percentages of the world’s population; 20% and 17% for China and India respectively, while the US and Japan have 4.6% and 2.0% of the world’s population respectively. However, it seems that according to the data in table 1.5, the world energy consumption for these countries is not based on the percent of world GDP that they hold, but rather on the percent of world population that they hold. China’s percent of world population is 20% and India’s was at 17% in 2001 while the rest of the countries listed in the table including the United States and Japan had less than 5% of the world’s population.

The final figure that we are given, figure 1.7, allows us to note that the linear trend line between the energy consumption per capita is directly proportional to the GNP per capita. Although it seems that the USA and Japan are almost outliers in this figure for they have the greatest deviation from the trend line of the figure.

With the trend of a directly proportional world energy consumption and world population, it can be projected that the world energy consumption of China and India will increase exponentially as their percent of the world GDP increases over time.

According to the quiz taken online, my total gas emissions currently are at the following levels: 25 tons of CO2 eq per year while the average per person in the US is 27 tons of eq/ year and the world average is 5.5 tons of CO2 eq/year. According to the quiz taken online, my total projected gas emissions 20 years into the future are at the 21 tons of CO2 eq per year. Although my personal gas emissions are projected to decrease only by a little bit over the next 20 years, it is still over 19.5 and 15.5 tons more than the world average which is rather high in my opinion. It’s still lower than the US average so I believe the fact that my high values are due to the lifestyle that living in the United States entails. I believe that no matter where I live in the united states, my values will be far closer to the US average than the world average.

Pre-departure/Day One (Homework #1)

Your expectations of Brazilian culture

•       I figured the people in Brazil would generally be friendlier than that of Boston. 

•       I expect a lot of people to be out and about in the evening and for the city to feel very alive in the evenings with music playing, people eating outside, etc.

•       Although I know that the city is large, I'm sure there will be countless tourists everywhere.

What preconceived notions you have about Brazil, what it will be like there, what the people will be like 

• ·      Same response as the question above
• I figured the people in Brazil would generally be friendlier than that of Boston. 
• I expect a lot of people to be out and about in the evening and for the city to feel very alive in the evenings with music playing, people eating outside, etc.
• Although I know that the city is large, I'm sure there will be countless tourists everywhere.

How you think it will feel being in another country when you do not know the customs or the language

• ·      I have travelled a fair amount, particularly to countries in which I don’t know the customs or the language. Having seen a fair amount different cultures and customer I don’t think the difference between Brazilian and American customs and cultures will shock me much. I’m sure I will get familiar with it quickly by simply observing the locals around me and talking to the locals as much as I can in order to quickly orient myself with the city that I am staying in with the group for most of the dialogue.

What it will be like to immerse yourself in another culture

• ·      Immersing yourself in another culture is like walking through the door of a whole new world (think Alice in Wonderland). You learn quickly what’s expected of you and what to expect from others. You learn the customs quickly and even some phrases. By the end of the dialogue I’m sure it will feel like the time went by too quickly. Being immersed in another culture is a very exciting and exhilarating experience, while also rather humbling as well for you realize that there are so many unique cultures in the world to learn about and explore.

What you will do to learn about the other culture and experience it

• ·      I shall look up more about Brazilian culture while I’m here but I plan on mainly talking to the locals (tourist information centers and our tour guides) in order to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can. Also getting myself out of my comfort zone should do the trick in terms of fully experiencing the culture in Brazil.