Name: 【TED】Bilal Bomani: Plant fuels that could power a jet (Bilal Bomani: Plant fuels that could power a jet)
Uploaded: 2017-06-01T23:09:06.000Z
Duration: 14 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Translator: Fran Ontanaya Reviewer: Morton Bast

What I'm going to do is, I'm going to explain to you

that was developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center

'cause a lot of us have a different definition of it.

environmentally and socially conscious means.

There's plenty of things that are being called green now.

Which means, are you preserving what you are doing for future use

Is it alternative? Is it different than what is being used today,

Does it come from Earth's natural replenishing resources,

The field of aviation uses more fuel than just about

every other combined. We need to find an alternative.

Also it's a national aeronautics directive.

One of the national aeronautics goals is to develop

using domestic and safe, friendly resources.

we have to also meet the big three metric —

Actually, extreme green for us is all three together;

that's why you see the plus there. I was told to say that.

So it has to be the big three at GRC. That's another metric.

Ninety-seven percent of the world's water is saltwater.

How about we use that? Combine that with number three.

Because crops are already growing on that land

Number two: Don't compete with food crops.

That's already a well established entity, they don't need another entry.

And lastly the most precious resource we have on this Earth

If 97.5 percent of the world's water is saltwater,

2.5 percent is fresh water. Less than a half percent

But 60 percent of the population lives within that one percent.

So, combating my problem was, now I have to be extreme green

and meet the big three. Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to the GreenLab Research Facility.

This is a facility dedicated to the next generation

Most plants don't like salt, but halophytes tolerate salt.

The good thing about our lab is, we've had

So, in the lower you see the GreenLab obviously,

and on the right hand side you'll see algae.

If you are into the business of the next generation

of aviation fuels, algae is a viable option,

One is a closed photobioreactor that you see here,

and what you see on the other side is our species —

we are currently using a species called Scenedesmus dimorphus.

Our job at NASA is to take the experimental and computational

and make a better mixing for the closed photobioreactors.

Now the problems with closed photobioreactors are:

They are quite expensive, they are automated,

and it's very difficult to get them in large scale.

We use open pond systems. Now, around the world

they are growing algae, with this racetrack design

that you see here. Looks like an oval with

but when it gets around the last turn, which I call turn four — it's stagnant.

we use something that happens in nature: waves.

We actually use wave technology on our open pond systems.

We have 95 percent mixing and our lipid content is higher

There is a drawback to algae, however: It's very expensive.

Is there a way to produce algae inexpensively?

We do the same thing we do with halophytes,

In our GreenLab we have six primary ecosystems

that range from freshwater all the way to saltwater.

What we do: We take a potential species, we start at freshwater,

we add a little bit more salt, when the second tank here

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TED】Bilal Bomani: Plant fuels that could power a jet (Bilal Bomani: Plant fuels that could power a jet)

significant

concept

present

content