Ocean Fuel, Desert Rain

About this episode

This episode explores innovative approaches to water use, including harvesting water from the air and creating carbon-neutral fuel from seawater.

This episode of The Moonshot Podcast explores two moonshots that investigated very different ways to use water: harvesting it from the air and transforming it into fuel. Astro Teller first chats with Neil Treat and Claudia Truesdell from Project H2E (“Hydration to Everyone”). The H2E team explored whether it would be possible to improve access to safe drinking water by harvesting water from the air. Next he sits down with Kathy Hannun from Foghorn, an X project that found a way to pull carbon and hydrogen out of seawater and combine it to create a new type of carbon-neutral fuel. The team successfully created fuel using this method, however they weren’t able to do so at a cost competitive with gasoline. 0:00 - Intro 00:58 - Meet Neil Treat and Claudia Treusdell from H2E 01:48 - The crisis: Global water insecurity 04:14 - The location of water-stressed communities 06:17 - The "Magic Box": Harvesting water from the air 09:00 - Defining H2E’s "Kill Criteria" 09:25 - Mechanics: How the H2e device functioned 11:24 - Engineering the internal air flow 12:51 - Material science: Selecting the right desiccant 14:29 - The "Mule": Prototyping a moonshot 15:24 - Early H2E prototype evolution…

People in this episode

Host: Astro Teller

Guests: Neil Treat, Claudia Truesdell, Kathy Hannun

Topics covered

• water harvesting
• carbon-neutral fuel
• global water insecurity
• engineering challenges
• moonshot projects

Keywords

• water insecurity
• H2E
• Foghorn
• carbon-neutral fuel
• engineering hurdles
• moonshot

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Project H2E, Foghorn

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