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15-Year-Old Invents Algae-Powered Energy System
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."
Pure science informs experimental science informs design engineers informs process engineers informs manufacture.
It's a long chain to go from an abstract idea to a machine that whirrs. Yet it requires the competence, indeed, excellence of many people in many different professions.
This is the first step. We have to be patient.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
FTA: "The algae-powered system hasnâ(TM)t yet been built, however, and skeptics will remain until it is. Even if FernÃndez-Hanâ(TM)s design doesnâ(TM)t pan out as planned, weâ(TM)re thoroughly impressed by his innovative spirit."
A pump powered by children playing? I did a double take when I saw that. Then there was a link to it. I tip my hat to the person who thought of that. Bloody ingenious.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Isn't that basically what Cowboy Neal is?
This kid is obviously the love child of Jon Katz and Natalie Portman.
Seastead this.
"The algae-powered system hasnâ(TM)t yet been built..."
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
One small caveat:
"The algae-powered system hasn't yet been built, however..."
Another minor little detail:
"and the PlayPump, which uses energy derived from children playing to power the system."
I assume the children will volunteer to "play" at this "play pump" which I bet will be much more fascinating than say, Nintendo or beating up on little Timmy, or whatever their regular activities are.
Or is this a device in fact powered by child labor? Perhaps it will go over big in China and Malaysia.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Pure science informs experimental science informs design engineers informs process engineers informs manufactures informs patent lawyers informs researchers with C&D forms
Fixed that for you.
But... the future refused to change.
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.
put the what in the where?
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.
I do that too, just not with diagrams. I'm a programmer.
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
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
No, farming is what commoners do. Warring and collecting tax and rent are noble occupations.
Jeez, you guys have been without a proper monarchy for so long you've forgotten the basics.
I don't therefore I'm not.
What are you talking about? The competition was "Invent Your World Challenge." Kid makes an energy system. Missed the mark entirely: algae power is not a world.
Kid needs to pay more attention next time.
I think in a lot of ways it's brilliant. In others, it's way short, but then again, he's 15. He's more creative than half the $150/hr consultants we hire, that's for sure.
Seriously, though, we (the sewage district I work for) are looking at micro-treatment - treatment at the point of source for sewage. Lots of reasons but google for PECs (Pollutants of Emerging Concern) if you really want to know why. Eventually we see large scale municipal plants going away and micro-plants with instant recycling being the norm.
This kid is just about 20 years ahead of his time. I want stock in his company.
Purity
Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds. - wonkey_monkey
So you don't produce anything of value? I wouldn't be bragging about that.
I do, I just don't write a new operating system for every new project.
Its worse than that, he just copied some Phds work off youtube:
From reading TFA, I'd say the kid did a little more than copy someone's work. A lot of work has been done with algae, so neither one should claim to have invented the idea of extracting fuel from it. What I see is that they invented scalable systems for doing it cheaply.
Of the two, the kid's is theoretically "better" IMO. His vision of intended use in the 3rd world is reason enough. Even if the real cost is more like $2000 instead of $200, it's good. Just get Sally Struthers to cry on TV to raise the money.
Of course, until he or someone actually builds a working model, it's just a neat idea. Certainly not the 2nd coming of Da Vinci or Einstein.
I am my own gestalt.
I want stock in his company.And that will probably be the reason why it will fail if there is a company that does that. The idea was about doing something without waste. The comapny will be there to make money.
Give the idea to the world and let EVERYBODY play with it. Universities in Africa, Asia and the rest can then work out a working model. Please let not one company take away this idea and then patent it into oblivion.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I am a patent attorney [obligatory "you insensitive clod"] before the British and European Patent Offices. Please excuse the slightly off-topic comment, but I'm not sure we're all particularly evil. I see a lot of patent-attorney bashing here on Slashdot. Mostly what we actually do is provide the best possible advice to our clients based on the current state of the law, and argue their case for them in what has evolved to be a very complex legal system. At the same time, we have a fun job which involves dealing with five or so different technologies on our desks on a daily basis, getting up to speed with them quickly and then thinking up detailed and powerful legal and technical arguments to deploy as to why our client's technology might just be worth the grant of a 20-year monopoly, or conversely, why our client's competitor's technology isn't. Most of us have higher technical qualifications, as well as our legal training. In many ways, it's a geek's dream...
Now, the people to whinge about are a) the legislators, and b) the patent offices themselves, who don't always do the best job of examining the patent applications as rigorously as they could. At least the situation is a bit better here in the EU than in the States, though, where as soon as a patent examiner gets any good he goes and qualifies as an attorney...
http://www.dieselmotorfiets.nl/ Here you go, this is the place they make them. And guess what, it's for sale for 17500 euros. Do you have any other Myths you need Busted(TM) ?