TEDxSantaCruz: Jonathan Trent - Fuels and Tools for a Sustainable Future

Jonathan Trent, NASA scientist and adjunct Professor at UCSC, wanted to understand what politicians meant when they said: "We need an Apollo mission for energy" and he began "Global Research into Energy and the Environment at NASA (GREEN)." Leading an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers, he investigated how tools developed for Apollo, and space exploration in general, could be applied to address some of the most pressing problems on "spaceship earth." Inspired by closed life-support systems developed for long-duration space exploration, he invented OMEGA—a system to grow microalgae, produce sustainable biofuels, clean wastewater, sequester carbon, and produce food and fertilizer without competing with agriculture for freshwater or land. The OMEGA project, supported by NASA and the California Energy Commission, is an ecology of technologies in which wastes become resources. An optimistic glimpse at the future and a reminder that we are not passengers on spaceship earth, we are the crew!

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[Menachmcpa]

Professor Trent,
This was very motivating and it causes me to think of where i could get you some investors for your projects. I love it because it deals with a bio alternative for the energy development process. It seems very clean and remarkable, and also very simple in that it deals with the natural harvesting of algae from the sea and converting it to an alternative source of energy.I am proud of you, cuz.

[italouruguayricano]

This is a great project, I wish I could work on it.

[recyclerdonation]

Professor Trent,
This was very motivating i would like to contact you about a research we did it Thank you for your vision and hard work.

[hholover]

were are thy with this how 2 years on? just love it

[purplehazehendrix]

Jonathan Trent's OMEGA project shows why algae is the only answer to the world energy and climate crisis. Algae could produce 100 times the oil yield of soy, and nearly ten times the yield of the best current land based biofuel, palm oil. Algae will put these first generation biofuels out of business, much as the petrol engine replaced the horse as a primary energy source. Algae can reverse the threat of CO2, if we deploy it immediately on planetary scale at sea, based on the OMEGA pilot.

[rinaldoveseliza]

Excellent presentation and on-going research. You must continue to deliver the knowledge to each succeeding generation to preserve their ability to survive and prosper and make waste a renewable resource. We should be able to utilize the hundreds of millions of gallons of treated water dumped daily into the ocean from San Francisco alone. Thank you for your vision and hard work. Let us know how we can help Educate, Motivate, Activate and even Litigate when we have to to move our planet forward.

[WeThePeople]

The problem I have with this is lets say you set this up in a bay, OK awesome fuel for all and oil for other products, one major problem.... What happens to the plants and life that is already in the bay that use the light that is now being blocked by this new project of man? We want to kill of a habitat just to create fuel?

[DrinkinDaJuice]

I have an announcement to make. I have farted hard.
Thank you.