• Dr. Yi Chao
  • Remote Sensing Solutions, Inc. / Seatrec, Inc.
  • 104D Surge Building
  • 4:00 p.m.
  • Faculty Host: Dr. Kevin Wang

This talk will describe a new stand-alone power system to harvest temperature differentials from the environment.  This is a unique power solution in remote areas where solar energy is not available, and is the only power source underwater in the absence of wind and wave energy.  The current state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicles are all powered by primary battery, and therefore have limited lifetime and can carry only limited sensors.  Harvesting the ocean thermal energy associated with vertical temperature differentials between the warm surface and cold deep water has the potential to power these autonomous vehicles and sensors indefinitely.  Recent results from the development, deployment and recovery of a prototype thermal recharging underwater float (known as SOLO-TREC) in the ocean will be presented.  With eight hours energy harvesting and sampling interval, SOLO-TREC has made more than a thousand dives between the ocean surface and 500 meters water depth over a period of 1.5 years.  Plans to commercialize this SOLO-TREC thermal recharging technology in support of several climate and oceanographic initiatives will be presented.  Potential applications of this thermal energy harvesting technology to power autonomous vehicles and sensors on land and ice will also be discussed.

Biography:

Dr. Yi Chao is now the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Seatrec, Inc.  He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1990, and was a postdoc fellow at UCLA during 1990-1993.  During 1993-2011, Dr. Chao worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on a variety of research projects ranging from ocean science, satellite remote sensing, numerical modeling, and underwater technology development.  Dr. Chao was the Project Scientist during 2003-2011 for the Aquarius mission ($300M NASA investment to launch the first salinity satellite), and responsible for science, interface with technology and engineering implementation leading to the successful satellite launch in June 2011.  Dr. Chao also has management experience working as a group supervisor (managing more than 10 FTEs) during 2005-2006 and section managers (managing more than 70 FTEs) during 2007-2009.  Dr. Chao initiated the ocean thermal energy harvesting project at JPL in 2005.  He was the Principal Investigator (PI) for the seed funding from JPL through a Research and Technology Development fund during 2005-2007.  He was the PI for the SOLO-TREC project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) during 2008-2011, and the PI for the follow-on project Slocum-TREC until his departure from JPL in January 2012 to establish Seatrec, Inc. to commercialize the thermal energy harvesting technology.  Currently, Dr. Chao is also affiliated with University of California at Los Angeles as an Adjunct Professor, and with Remote Sensing Solutions as a Principal Scientist.