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."

Re:"Play pump"

[Anonymous Coward]

When does "play pump" end and "child labor" begin?

Re:Biological systems suck

[oneirophrenos]

Farming is a noble occupation, but if you have to spend time tending a biological system when a chemical system will work flawlessly without any monitoring, well, that's why we make chemical systems instead of just using biological ones.

Don't all systems require monitoring? Besides, biology is just applied chemistry. There are applications where chemical processes are just too complex for us to manage, so we have cells managing it for us, like in composting.

Re:There's only

[BikeHelmet]

Yes, look at the horrible child labour [inhabitots.com] going on.

Side note: RTFA. The link was right there!

Re:Yawn...

[cptdondo]

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.

Saudiswillkillhim tag

[GabriellaKat]

More likely the oil companies will bury everything he invented and give him enough money to disappear. Just like those darn pesky inventions that were claimed to give your car 100mpg back in the 80s and 90s. IF they were ever real.... And let us not forget the 100mpg diesel motorcyle that is currently only sold to the US Military. When will those ever be allowed to be sold to the public? The one made by Hayes Diversified Tech. Everything good is always suppressed (meaning delayed, bought out, or just plain disappears). Good luck with this one!

Re:The absolutely necessary obnoxious remark...

[thesp]

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...