2 ms·
Anything that is water soluble is going to be a pretty poor building material, unfortunately. The organics floating about (protozoa, algae, fish) also generally
by zdragnar 3y ago
Anything that is water soluble is going to be a pretty poor building material, unfortunately. The organics floating about (protozoa, algae, fish) also generally decompose, another undesirable property. The remainder- very very fine silt and microplastics- might be useful.
With all the chemical processing that would be needed to stabilize the salts, mechanical filtering and such, I think we're better off continuing to use bricks and ground sourced gravel and cement. At least the holes we dig can be repurposed into sanitary landfills.
- Blahah 3y agoCorals manage it quite effectively
- zdragnar 3y agoBut not efficiently. Scientists think the polyps absorb bicarbonate and calcium ions and deposit calcium carbonate, but they're not really sure of the bio/chemical process involved. Regardless, a polyp adds about 1mm to 1cm to the reef a year. You can get that right now just by throwing a shovel at the ground where I live.