Events Calendar

Environmental Technology Challenges & Entrepreneurship

Environmental Technology Challenges & EntrepreneurshipAnthony MichaelsManaging Director
Proteus Environmental Technologies
Los Angeles, CA 90071The entrepreneurial spirit that creates new and profitable companies is one of the most effective methods for spreading new technologies and innovations throughout the human population and across the Earth's landscape. This can be for both better and worse. Damaging technologies with good local economics can quickly spread a form of pollution or an impact on human or environmental health. At the same time, a novel solution to a compelling environmental challenge can gain widespread use through the self-reinforcing power of markets. Environmental scholarship within universities is one of the most creative sources of innovation, however many challenges exist for using markets to spread those innovative solutions to our homes, towns and lives. These challenges reside in the university culture, the sources of funding - the valley of death - and within the traditions and practices of the business community. However, I have a great optimism about the potential for markets to take some of the best academic scholarship, apply it to some of the largest human environmental challenges and make a major improvement in the quality of life and the sustainability of our society. I will present a few examples based on my own USC experience - one made more real by my personal choice to leave academia and form Proteus Environmental Technologies, a company designed specifically to help universities commercialize their academic environmental discoveries. Biofuels are a renewable energy source that illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of new environmental technologies. Algae-based fuels have the greatest promise, but have significant challenges, both biological and technical. The systems at full scale require well-mixed bio-reactors with cost effective methods for re-introducing carbon and nutrients. Extracting algae and processing becomes a dynamic problem as the extraction process shifts the algal ecosystem towards cells that escape extraction. It is also the largest capital cost in an algae farm. Scaling itself is an interesting challenge as individual farms must be at the scale of 1000s of hectacres and a meaningful solution may require 10-20 million hectacres. In the end, nobody wants algae for its own sake, it must be a product that fits into the current or future energy or food markets. The technologies to transform 1,000s of tons per day of green powder to a coal substitute, a liquid fuel or an animal feed must parallel the development of an algae farm and have a strong feedback on the design choices for the farm and its crop. Microbial fuel cells are a biological curiosity with the potential to transform energy production world wide. Again, scaling is key. How do we take a device at the scale of liters and make a facility that can process a million cubic meters per day? The technical challenges range from the biology of biofilms, the materials for anodes and cathodes to the fluid mechanics of dilute solutions that must interact with those biofilms, all at a reasonable cost.

Location: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall, Room 102 (SLH 102)

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Jennifer Cantwell