imagine you’re driving to work
and looking through your window you see
smog smog so thick you can’t even see
the cityscape in the distance this is my
reality on most days in Los Angeles and
the air pollution in Los Angeles is
relatively minor compared to places like
Beijing or Delhi in some areas of the
world the pollution is so hazardous that
at times government officials have
issued a red alert which means closing
public schools and urging people to stay
indoors I’m very worried for my future
and the future my kids will grow up in
in terms of the environment and for that
reason I chose to go to graduate school
and study mechanical engineering where
my entire profession is designed to
solve problems the effects of air
pollution are urgent but we are not
powerless against it and that is a goal
of my talk today to show you how making
connections in our everyday can have a
huge significance like reducing air
pollution at the UCLA micro and nano
manufacturing lab we asked ourselves
what are the biggest polluters in the
world and we were surprised to find out
it’s things we don’t often think about
ships due to the low-cost bunker fuel
they burn ships are super polluters to
be fair shipping is the most economical
mode of transporting goods but it’s
moving these ships larger than 100
storey buildings across an ocean for
weeks on end
that make them a large-scale polluter if
we look at the history of shipbuilding
we’ve made ships greener but we forget a
ceiling because there are only so many
ways you can tweak the components on a
ship to make them better and there are
some things you can’t change such as the
drag from a ship skin come into contact
with the water this drag is from water
friction which causes ships to move
slower
and consume more fuel if the drag was
much less ships would move faster and
arrive at their destination sooner so
you can see we are fighting water to
transport cargo we need a new
perspective that will flip the problem
on its head so let’s ask ourselves where
in everyday life can you find something
that moves with zero drag how about air
hockey we all enjoy those competitive
moments playing air hockey it’s so much
fun because the puck seems to defy the
physics of friction as it glides across
the table let’s take a closer look at
how it works
when you try sliding a puck on a dead
air hockey table the puck will drag to a
stop when you turn the air on and try
sliding the puck again the puck will
glide across the table because now
you’ve separated the puck from a table
surface with an air layer what if we can
apply this principle of separating
bodies with a cushion of air the ships
to reduce water drag but how do we get
an air layer outside a ship there’s a
popular science experiment performed in
high schools they uses water and a
battery to generate gas you get a
battery two wires and two metal rods
hook them all together and place the
rods in the water if you do this you
will separate the H and O in h2o this
experiment is called
electrolysis and actually this
experiment works best in salty water
well ships live in salty water we found
a hidden intersection between two
existing technologies ships and the
science of electrolysis have common
ground salt water if we can have gas
generation from electrolysis happen on
the skin of a ship then we can reduce
water drag the way an air hockey table
uses air to reduce drag on a hockey puck
now our team recognizes overlap in these
two technologies and so we fused them
together and we designed a super
hydrophobic surface
that generates and maintains a gas layer
when it’s submerged in seawater and we
found that ships have the potential to
be up to 20 percent faster using gas
lubrication over shipping today that’s
the equivalent of taking ships out of
the water for two to three days
on voyages that normally take 18 days to
complete if we reduce drag ships will go
faster and use less fuel when we use
less fuel we produce fewer emissions and
thus reduce pollution if we cover the
whole of a ship with our super
hydrophobic surface we expect the
electrical energy used to maintain the
gas layer to be a fraction of the energy
it takes to turn a propeller the results
are less overall air pollution per ship
now this technology is still in its
infancy but the bottom line is it takes
radical thinking to save our planet
not conventional ideas and with that I
want to take a step back and look at the
bigger picture innovation doesn’t always
mean creating a new product from scratch
innovation can be combining two existing
things that seem unrelated to create new
value and ships are not the only thing
you can apply this thinking to there’s
connections everywhere examples all
around us for instance in the 1940s an
engineer working on a radar instrument
noticed the chocolate boy in his pocket
was melting it melted because the radar
instrument was shooting microwaves at
his chocolate bar focused radar waves
producing heats quickly and there’s a
need to warm food fast
hence the radar range was born or
commonly known today as the microwave
the common denominator in radar waves
and food is heat ships and the science
of the chalices have a common
denominator of salty water now these are
examples to get you to put on your
creative thinking hat
there’s connections everywhere sitting
around being untapped all we need to do
is mix the ingredients that are
available to us and we’ll see there’s a
whole new world to be explored what ingredients are you looking at thank you
and looking through your window you see
smog smog so thick you can’t even see
the cityscape in the distance this is my
reality on most days in Los Angeles and
the air pollution in Los Angeles is
relatively minor compared to places like
Beijing or Delhi in some areas of the
world the pollution is so hazardous that
at times government officials have
issued a red alert which means closing
public schools and urging people to stay
indoors I’m very worried for my future
and the future my kids will grow up in
in terms of the environment and for that
reason I chose to go to graduate school
and study mechanical engineering where
my entire profession is designed to
solve problems the effects of air
pollution are urgent but we are not
powerless against it and that is a goal
of my talk today to show you how making
connections in our everyday can have a
huge significance like reducing air
pollution at the UCLA micro and nano
manufacturing lab we asked ourselves
what are the biggest polluters in the
world and we were surprised to find out
it’s things we don’t often think about
ships due to the low-cost bunker fuel
they burn ships are super polluters to
be fair shipping is the most economical
mode of transporting goods but it’s
moving these ships larger than 100
storey buildings across an ocean for
weeks on end
that make them a large-scale polluter if
we look at the history of shipbuilding
we’ve made ships greener but we forget a
ceiling because there are only so many
ways you can tweak the components on a
ship to make them better and there are
some things you can’t change such as the
drag from a ship skin come into contact
with the water this drag is from water
friction which causes ships to move
slower
and consume more fuel if the drag was
much less ships would move faster and
arrive at their destination sooner so
you can see we are fighting water to
transport cargo we need a new
perspective that will flip the problem
on its head so let’s ask ourselves where
in everyday life can you find something
that moves with zero drag how about air
hockey we all enjoy those competitive
moments playing air hockey it’s so much
fun because the puck seems to defy the
physics of friction as it glides across
the table let’s take a closer look at
how it works
when you try sliding a puck on a dead
air hockey table the puck will drag to a
stop when you turn the air on and try
sliding the puck again the puck will
glide across the table because now
you’ve separated the puck from a table
surface with an air layer what if we can
apply this principle of separating
bodies with a cushion of air the ships
to reduce water drag but how do we get
an air layer outside a ship there’s a
popular science experiment performed in
high schools they uses water and a
battery to generate gas you get a
battery two wires and two metal rods
hook them all together and place the
rods in the water if you do this you
will separate the H and O in h2o this
experiment is called
electrolysis and actually this
experiment works best in salty water
well ships live in salty water we found
a hidden intersection between two
existing technologies ships and the
science of electrolysis have common
ground salt water if we can have gas
generation from electrolysis happen on
the skin of a ship then we can reduce
water drag the way an air hockey table
uses air to reduce drag on a hockey puck
now our team recognizes overlap in these
two technologies and so we fused them
together and we designed a super
hydrophobic surface
that generates and maintains a gas layer
when it’s submerged in seawater and we
found that ships have the potential to
be up to 20 percent faster using gas
lubrication over shipping today that’s
the equivalent of taking ships out of
the water for two to three days
on voyages that normally take 18 days to
complete if we reduce drag ships will go
faster and use less fuel when we use
less fuel we produce fewer emissions and
thus reduce pollution if we cover the
whole of a ship with our super
hydrophobic surface we expect the
electrical energy used to maintain the
gas layer to be a fraction of the energy
it takes to turn a propeller the results
are less overall air pollution per ship
now this technology is still in its
infancy but the bottom line is it takes
radical thinking to save our planet
not conventional ideas and with that I
want to take a step back and look at the
bigger picture innovation doesn’t always
mean creating a new product from scratch
innovation can be combining two existing
things that seem unrelated to create new
value and ships are not the only thing
you can apply this thinking to there’s
connections everywhere examples all
around us for instance in the 1940s an
engineer working on a radar instrument
noticed the chocolate boy in his pocket
was melting it melted because the radar
instrument was shooting microwaves at
his chocolate bar focused radar waves
producing heats quickly and there’s a
need to warm food fast
hence the radar range was born or
commonly known today as the microwave
the common denominator in radar waves
and food is heat ships and the science
of the chalices have a common
denominator of salty water now these are
examples to get you to put on your
creative thinking hat
there’s connections everywhere sitting
around being untapped all we need to do
is mix the ingredients that are
available to us and we’ll see there’s a
whole new world to be explored what ingredients are you looking at thank you
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