4 ms·

Why grow fuel, and not a fertilizer/top-soil additive for agriculture or soil remediation? If you've got a product which contains that much carbon, covering fie

Why grow fuel, and not a fertilizer/top-soil additive for agriculture or soil remediation? If you've got a product which contains that much carbon, covering fields with it is a great way to take CO2 from the air and put it in the ground while also improving the soil. Cover millions of acres of marginal/desert soil with sheets of algal mesh built for moisture retention. Plant trees or crops into it. That it can't be burnt and turned back into CO2 seems like a positive, not a negative. Oh, it doesn't make money? I guess that's the rub.

lukas099 3y ago
Couldn't you get carbon credits or whatever for this?
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  No idea how reliable or good that revenue source is now, or in the long term. I wonder how hard it would be to make such an "algal mat". I would use something like this around here on my little farm/vineyard even as a kind of weed block, alternative to "plastic mulch": rolls of algal-produced fibrous mats, 2" or so thick. Permeable so water and air can get through, but thick and tight enough that weeds get blocked out. Would just degrade or be tilled into soil over time. There's already equipment out there for laying "plastic mulch" but the stuff itself is fairly controversial because even the biodegradable stuff is still a plastic. If one could economically produce such a thing made out of algae, and compete with plastics on cost, that would be pretty damned nifty. That and just some kind of bulk powder that can be soil incorporated as a carbon amendment. Pay farmers to lay the stuff down in huge quantities as a way of improving soil while getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even better if a bioreactor and related equipment to make this stuff could be made to operate locally on site.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    For what it's worth, I worked for a company making an algal soil amendment, and we would distribute it as a suspended biomass (green water).

lukas099 3y ago

Couldn't you get carbon credits or whatever for this?

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
No idea how reliable or good that revenue source is now, or in the long term. I wonder how hard it would be to make such an "algal mat". I would use something like this around here on my little farm/vineyard even as a kind of weed block, alternative to "plastic mulch": rolls of algal-produced fibrous mats, 2" or so thick. Permeable so water and air can get through, but thick and tight enough that weeds get blocked out. Would just degrade or be tilled into soil over time. There's already equipment out there for laying "plastic mulch" but the stuff itself is fairly controversial because even the biodegradable stuff is still a plastic. If one could economically produce such a thing made out of algae, and compete with plastics on cost, that would be pretty damned nifty. That and just some kind of bulk powder that can be soil incorporated as a carbon amendment. Pay farmers to lay the stuff down in huge quantities as a way of improving soil while getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even better if a bioreactor and related equipment to make this stuff could be made to operate locally on site.
- maxbond 3y ago
  For what it's worth, I worked for a company making an algal soil amendment, and we would distribute it as a suspended biomass (green water).