SXSW Eco Interview: Alejandro Rios, Masdar Institute

This post is part of Triple Pundit’s ongoing coverage of the SXSW Eco conference. For the rest, please visit our SXSW Eco page here.

We've been following Masdar Institute for some time on 3p, which meant I was particularly pleased to talk to Dr. Alejandro Rios last week at SXSW Eco.  Specifically, we talked about a new project called ISEAS, which stands for "Integrated Seawater, Energy and Aquaculture System."  The concept is every bit as interesting as the acronym suggests.  Take the challenges of feeding people, producing clean energy and dealing with scarce fresh water, and engineer a solution for all three.  It may be a tall order, but the ISEAS project proposes to do exactly that.

In a nutshell, Masdar Institute is attempting to use halophytes (plants that grow in seawater) to produce biofuels while at the same time filtering the pollutants associated with growing fish or shrimp in aquaculture ponds. The benefits are potentially huge:

• The process uses only salt water, which is plentiful -- even in Abu Dhabi -- thus eliminating any debate about whether it wastes water.


• The halophytes will also eliminate waste from the aquaculture -- a major problem in traditional shrimp farming operations.


• Useful biofuel will be produces when plants are harvested -- possibly even jet fuel.


• The whole thing is a carbon sink with a negative carbon footprint.

Granted, it's all just an experiment at this point, but in the video below, Dr. Rios explains the basics...