4 ms·

Why algae? An alternative could be power to X with carbon capture for sugars' synthesis. This is more land efficient than growing plants.

by joak 3y ago

hinkley 3y ago
I don't recall exactly why. Algae on nutrient effluent, then harvest the lipids. Some people used carbon capture to carbonate the water.
- maxbond 3y ago
  [ES: Educational and professional experience. All this comes with caveats because many parts of working with algae are unsolved, you probably won't get all of these properties at once.] Algae are much more efficient for various reasons. Or rather, the efficiency ceiling is higher, whether it is realized is a separate question. They make better use of space (your culture may vary). They can have a higher proportion of their mass as oil or protein (relevant if you're harvesting them for food). They are highly adaptable, they can acclimate themselves to new environments readily. They are simpler and lack the "overhead" of vascular plants. Relatedly, on paper at least it's a very nice system to engineer. You've got a logistic growth curve (a sigmoid) for biomass in suspension, and you're harvesting when you get to the flat part of the curve to "rewind" to the exponential part of the curve, so you're staying in the part which is very productive. Biomass is difficult to measure, but there are good proxies for it (such as pH, optical density, or conductivity). You can get many harvests in a year, you may be able to harvest them every day or every week depending on conditions (I've worked in an algae farm that harvested every day during the summer and occasionally in the off season [though technically it was cyanobacteria, which some don't count as algae, it's kind of a Pluto situation]). Vascular plants I think are usually harvested 1 to 3 times a year (though I won't discount someone clever being able to get more harvests by harvesting sap or something like that).
  - regularfry 3y ago
    One of the important bits about use of space is that you can do it so you're not taking land use away from food growth, because you can grow algae in places you can't grow crops.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      I don't see that as a very strong reason, you can cultivate algae for food (spirulina, chlorella) and you can use adjacent technologies (controlled environment agriculture) to grow vascular plants in harsh environments.

Why algae? An alternative could be power to X with carbon capture for sugars' synthesis. This is more land efficient than growing plants.

by joak 3y ago

Why algae? An alternative could be power to X with carbon capture for sugars' synthesis. This is more land efficient than growing plants.

hinkley 3y ago

I don't recall exactly why. Algae on nutrient effluent, then harvest the lipids. Some people used carbon capture to carbonate the water.

maxbond 3y ago
[ES: Educational and professional experience. All this comes with caveats because many parts of working with algae are unsolved, you probably won't get all of these properties at once.] Algae are much more efficient for various reasons. Or rather, the efficiency ceiling is higher, whether it is realized is a separate question. They make better use of space (your culture may vary). They can have a higher proportion of their mass as oil or protein (relevant if you're harvesting them for food). They are highly adaptable, they can acclimate themselves to new environments readily. They are simpler and lack the "overhead" of vascular plants. Relatedly, on paper at least it's a very nice system to engineer. You've got a logistic growth curve (a sigmoid) for biomass in suspension, and you're harvesting when you get to the flat part of the curve to "rewind" to the exponential part of the curve, so you're staying in the part which is very productive. Biomass is difficult to measure, but there are good proxies for it (such as pH, optical density, or conductivity). You can get many harvests in a year, you may be able to harvest them every day or every week depending on conditions (I've worked in an algae farm that harvested every day during the summer and occasionally in the off season [though technically it was cyanobacteria, which some don't count as algae, it's kind of a Pluto situation]). Vascular plants I think are usually harvested 1 to 3 times a year (though I won't discount someone clever being able to get more harvests by harvesting sap or something like that).
- regularfry 3y ago
  One of the important bits about use of space is that you can do it so you're not taking land use away from food growth, because you can grow algae in places you can't grow crops.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    I don't see that as a very strong reason, you can cultivate algae for food (spirulina, chlorella) and you can use adjacent technologies (controlled environment agriculture) to grow vascular plants in harsh environments.