Our research in MECC will focus on five thematic drivers: power generation, water desalination, marine energy, carbon harvesting, and coastal resiliency to natural hazards. Technology development in MECC will address some of the most pressing challenges while capitalizing on the most opportune ideas within the five themes.
Marine energy technologies convert energy from ocean waves, tides, and ocean currents into electricity or other forms of usable energy. There is also interest in extracting power from salinity and thermal gradients, albeit their development is in its infancy. Particularly for coastal areas that are challenged with natural hazards that can potentially disrupt their land-based power generation facilities and distribution networks, marine energy will be explored in MECC as a critical component of resilience
Desalination, while receiving significant attention as a strategy for increasing freshwater supplies and reclaiming poor quality source waters, remains an energy intensive technology. Combining the potential of marine energy with emerging desalination technologies and using seawater as a water source are exciting research frontiers for MECC.
Marine energy, particularly low-power salinity/thermal gradient-based, might be useful for powering energy needs of algal growing operations at sea. With the world’s largest Exclusive Economic Zone (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2015), much of which is viable for growing microalgae and macroalgae, the United States has the potential to become a leader in growth at sea for biofuels.
The marine environment offers unique opportunities for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and for mining of minerals and other valuable gases.
Many of the limitations of land based systems that underpin their vulnerabilities can be circumvented by either replacing them with marine based systems or enhancing resilience via redundancies offered by marine-based systems. Power, water, aquaculture, and autonomous observation are all possible avenues for inquiry in MECC.