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15-Year-Old Invents Algae-Powered Energy System

Posted by samzenpus on from the muck-machine dept.

Mike writes "Signaling a bright future for sustainable energy, 15-year-old Javier Fernandez-Han has created a remarkable algae-powered energy system that is capable of producing food and fuel, treating waste, containing greenhouse gases, and releasing oxygen. Dubbed the VERSATILE system, the project recently netted him a $20,000 scholarship for winning this year's Invent Your World Challenge."

4 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. He's a 15yo boy... by bhsx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are 5 replies above my threshold. All of them are ripping this apart as fancy. He's a 15-year old kid who took a lot of interesting technologies and thought of a way to chain them together to achieve a net benefit. What did you guys do? You're assholes.

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    put the what in the where?
    1. Re:He's a 15yo boy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm 17 and I don't consider this a huge feat.

      You know those blogs that do nothing but push glossy "concept" renders of future products? Those flexible curved solar powered laptops with a few multitouch screens thrown in for laughs? I am sure I am not alone in that I die a little inside when I see the comments praising them. All I am thinking is "How are you supposed to stick a curved laptop into a backpack?".

      This is like that except on an even greater scale. You throw in a few buzz words, some hokey pokey vaporware and make a nice powerpoint presentation of something neither plausible nor useful.

      My grade 6 science project involved keeping a single fish alive for a few months in a fish tank without any filtration or water changes by growing terrestrial plants in the same water. Sure, I forgot to use the word "bioreactor" and I didn't have any flowcharts but on the other hand I actually made something that worked.

      You say he "Took a lot of interesting technologies and chained them together", but how is this remarkable in any way? There is no innovation here, just a giant mess of ideas, some practical, most not (Using children to power a pump as a long term solution? Really?).

      Just another life lesson: Being practical gets you a plastic medal, spooning bullshit makes you rich. (But I'll be honest, I already knew that)
      The only genius here is that he figured out you can get twenty thousand dollars for this drivel.

    2. Re:He's a 15yo boy... by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mainly because I am more interested in the technology, and really don't care how old the guy is. If it works, that's great! I don't really care if the guy who did it is 5 years old or 60. If it doesn't work......then it's just another non-starter technology that made it to the front page of slashdot.

      Besides, when was the last time you saw a slashdot discussion where everyone wasn't criticizing everyone else? It's kind of our default mode, unfortunately.

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      Qxe4
  2. Re:Yawn... by steveha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All that he has done here is take a bunch of stuff that is known to work, but not economically, and tied it all together with a pretty diagram. Nothing new has happened here

    I think you are being needlessly harsh here.

    His key contribution was to think: "How many things can I chain together so that the waste from one thing feeds something else?" Thus, methane from the digester powers cooking stoves; carbon dioxide from the burned methane feeds algae. I've heard of methane digesters, I've heard of cooking stoves, and I've heard of algae; I haven't heard of an integrated system like this.

    If you RTFA, he relates a story about how the gift of a fresh water system to a poor village had an unfortunate side effect: the extra water the village used caused their sewage system to be overloaded. Their "system" was to put their sewage in buckets and dump out the buckets; they ended up with raw sewage running in their streets. He consciously tried to design a system that has no negative effects. (And that's probably an inspiration for including the flush latrines in his design, latrines that feed the digester and/or the algae.)

    Even if his design turns out to be flawed, the flaws might be fixable or at least the idea might inspire an experienced engineer to design something even better.

    I didn't invent anything this clever when I was 15. How about you?

    steveha

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    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely