I don't want to be dismissive, but I swear this headline like 100 times over the past 10 years. This, and "teen finds bacteria culture to digest plastic waste".
Honestly, almost every one of these 'teen finds...' story are very sensational and clickbaity. Eventually it turns out to be something already known, absolutely cannot scale, way too costly for any practical purpose, nothing related to the headline etc
This one is better than most because what he accomplished is a very good science fair project, and that's what he's being lauded for. The fact that it has some potential to be developed in to a real world solution is just icing on the cake.