1 00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:18,702 But this does get me to the why this matters, 2 00:00:18,702 --> 00:00:20,670 which has to do with how you cook pasta. 3 00:00:20,670 --> 00:00:28,611 And, of course, since we're talking about O2, 4 00:00:28,611 --> 00:00:32,849 when I have finished cooking pasta, what do I do? 5 00:00:32,849 --> 00:00:33,917 I pour it. 6 00:00:33,917 --> 00:00:34,584 There it is. 7 00:00:34,584 --> 00:00:36,419 It's like it's sophisticated. 8 00:00:36,419 --> 00:00:38,488 I pour it through a colander. 9 00:00:38,488 --> 00:00:40,724 That's a membrane. 10 00:00:40,724 --> 00:00:41,491 That's a membrane. 11 00:00:41,491 --> 00:00:42,625 You did use a membrane. 12 00:00:42,625 --> 00:00:43,793 You did a filter. 13 00:00:43,793 --> 00:00:46,763 Now, but I could also have done that separation, 14 00:00:46,763 --> 00:00:50,400 that same separation, I could have left it on the stove. 15 00:00:50,400 --> 00:00:52,002 I could have. 16 00:00:52,002 --> 00:00:54,137 And it would have boiled out all the water 17 00:00:54,137 --> 00:00:57,741 and left me still with the pasta separated from the water. 18 00:00:57,741 --> 00:00:59,976 I've accomplished the same exact thing. 19 00:00:59,976 --> 00:01:01,945 I have separated the pasta from the water. 20 00:01:01,945 --> 00:01:03,913 Test done. 21 00:01:03,913 --> 00:01:05,849 Pasta may not taste as good. 22 00:01:05,849 --> 00:01:07,083 [LAUGHTER] 23 00:01:07,083 --> 00:01:07,884 But you've done it. 24 00:01:07,884 --> 00:01:10,754 But see, the thing is that if you separate things this way 25 00:01:10,754 --> 00:01:13,923 versus that way, you can just feel how much less energy 26 00:01:13,923 --> 00:01:14,724 it's going to take. 27 00:01:14,724 --> 00:01:17,293 In fact, you can save over 80% of the energy 28 00:01:17,293 --> 00:01:19,529 if you do a membrane based separation 29 00:01:19,529 --> 00:01:21,865 as opposed to a thermal one. 30 00:01:21,865 --> 00:01:22,966 Gazuntite. 31 00:01:22,966 --> 00:01:24,634 So those are two ways to separate pasta. 32 00:01:24,634 --> 00:01:27,537 But see, there's two ways to separate lots of things. 33 00:01:27,537 --> 00:01:30,173 Like how about 1 to 10 nanometer particles? 34 00:01:30,173 --> 00:01:31,274 How about chemistry? 35 00:01:31,274 --> 00:01:33,009 How about molecules? 36 00:01:33,009 --> 00:01:35,478 How do you separate those? 37 00:01:35,478 --> 00:01:37,113 Well, you got the same two ways. 38 00:01:37,113 --> 00:01:40,917 And if you count up all the things we separate this way, 39 00:01:40,917 --> 00:01:41,785 it's a lot. 40 00:01:41,785 --> 00:01:42,852 It goes on and on. 41 00:01:42,852 --> 00:01:45,255 And it will go all the way down the Infinite Corridor. 42 00:01:45,255 --> 00:01:47,223 And this is how we do chemistry. 43 00:01:47,223 --> 00:01:52,062 In fact, has anyone seen this on the side of the road? 44 00:01:52,062 --> 00:01:53,396 That's a distillation column. 45 00:01:53,396 --> 00:01:55,799 It's a big pasta cooker. 46 00:01:55,799 --> 00:01:59,402 That's all you're doing is boiling one molecule off 47 00:01:59,402 --> 00:02:05,475 of another over a long time with a whole lot of fossil fuel. 48 00:02:05,475 --> 00:02:07,777 In fact, if you look at the US energy consumption, 49 00:02:07,777 --> 00:02:10,080 roughly a third of it goes into industry. 50 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:12,682 40% of that is for this one thing. 51 00:02:12,682 --> 00:02:13,783 It's boiling pasta. 52 00:02:13,783 --> 00:02:17,987 But the pasta is 1 nanometer to 10 nanometer particles. 53 00:02:17,987 --> 00:02:21,324 40% goes into boiling one chemical species off 54 00:02:21,324 --> 00:02:21,925 of another. 55 00:02:21,925 --> 00:02:23,960 Separation. 56 00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:26,196 Separation. 57 00:02:26,196 --> 00:02:29,165 That's 12% of all the energy. 58 00:02:29,165 --> 00:02:31,634 That's the same as every single drop 59 00:02:31,634 --> 00:02:35,038 of gasoline in every single car truck and bus. 60 00:02:35,038 --> 00:02:37,207 Just to give you a sense of how much energy that is. 61 00:02:37,207 --> 00:02:40,276 You'll say, well, why aren't we using a colander? 62 00:02:40,276 --> 00:02:42,112 Why don't we just pour it through a colander 63 00:02:42,112 --> 00:02:43,813 like we do our boiling pasta? 64 00:02:43,813 --> 00:02:45,615 Well, we do that for one field. 65 00:02:45,615 --> 00:02:46,649 Desalination. 66 00:02:46,649 --> 00:02:48,952 I got a [INAUDIBLE] on that another time. 67 00:02:48,952 --> 00:02:51,054 But we don't do it for all those other things. 68 00:02:51,054 --> 00:02:52,522 And there's a really simple reason. 69 00:02:52,522 --> 00:02:56,292 We don't have the right pasta colander. 70 00:02:56,292 --> 00:02:57,694 We don't. 71 00:02:57,694 --> 00:03:01,064 There's no option for that size scale 72 00:03:01,064 --> 00:03:05,201 that can withstand the conditions that are in all 73 00:03:05,201 --> 00:03:07,137 of those chemical separations. 74 00:03:07,137 --> 00:03:10,039 But if we did-- 75 00:03:10,039 --> 00:03:14,210 we take so much O2 out of the air. 76 00:03:14,210 --> 00:03:15,278 We need O2. 77 00:03:15,278 --> 00:03:16,846 But we don't want the N2. 78 00:03:16,846 --> 00:03:18,515 So we have to separate it. 79 00:03:18,515 --> 00:03:19,516 How do we do it? 80 00:03:19,516 --> 00:03:20,750 We go cryogenic. 81 00:03:20,750 --> 00:03:22,318 We go to very, very cold temperatures, 82 00:03:22,318 --> 00:03:24,420 which is the same as boiling. 83 00:03:24,420 --> 00:03:25,355 Right. 84 00:03:25,355 --> 00:03:27,290 But you're still spending all this fossil fuel 85 00:03:27,290 --> 00:03:29,025 to lower the temperature. 86 00:03:29,025 --> 00:03:32,295 That's how much O2 we generate each year. 87 00:03:32,295 --> 00:03:33,863 And this is how much energy it takes. 88 00:03:33,863 --> 00:03:37,066 It's like 1/2 a percent of all US energy, just to get-- 89 00:03:37,066 --> 00:03:40,236 But what if you could use something 90 00:03:40,236 --> 00:03:42,305 like O2's paramagnetism? 91 00:03:42,305 --> 00:03:45,708 What if you could use something about the chemistry or O2 92 00:03:45,708 --> 00:03:49,212 to do this separation more efficiently, 93 00:03:49,212 --> 00:03:53,416 lower energy, or maybe make a new colander that does that? 94 00:03:53,416 --> 00:03:56,452 And if any of you have ideas, come talk to me. 95 00:03:56,452 --> 00:03:59,589 This is a problem I care a lot about.