Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast
I collaborate with bacteria.
And I'm about to show you
some stop-motion footage that I made recently
where you'll see bacteria accumulating minerals
from their environment
over the period of an hour.
So what you're seeing here
is the bacteria metabolizing,
and as they do so
they create an electrical charge.
And this attracts metals
from their local environment.
And these metals accumulate as minerals
on the surface of the bacteria.
One of the most pervasive problems
in the world today for people
is inadequate access
to clean drinking water.
And the desalination process
is one where we take out salts.
We can use it for drinking and agriculture.
Removing the salts from water --
particularly seawater --
through reverse osmosis
is a critical technique
for countries who do not have access to clean drinking water
around the globe.
So seawater reverse osmosis
is a membrane-filtration technology.
We take the water from the sea
and we apply pressure.
And this pressure forces the seawater
through a membrane.
This takes energy,
producing clean water.
But we're also left with a concentrated salt solution, or brine.
But the process is very expensive
and it's cost-prohibitive for many countries around the globe.
And also, the brine that's produced
is oftentimes just pumped back out into the sea.
And this is detrimental to the local ecology
of the sea area that it's pumped back out into.
So I work in Singapore at the moment,
and this is a place that's really a leading place
for desalination technology.
And Singapore proposes by 2060
to produce [900] million liters per day
of desalinated water.
But this will produce an equally massive amount
of desalination brine.
And this is where my collaboration with bacteria comes into play.
So what we're doing at the moment
is we're accumulating metals
like calcium, potassium and magnesium
from out of desalination brine.
And this, in terms of magnesium
and the amount of water that I just mentioned,
equates to a $4.5 billion
mining industry for Singapore --
a place that doesn't have any natural resources.
So I'd like you to image a mining industry
in a way that one hasn't existed before;
imagine a mining industry
that doesn't mean defiling the Earth;
imagine bacteria helping us do this
by accumulating and precipitating
and sedimenting minerals
out of desalination brine.
And what you can see here
is the beginning of an industry in a test tube,
a mining industry that is in harmony with nature.
Thank you.
(Applause)