cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/28875492
Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere soared by a record amount in 2024 to hit another high, UN data shows, deepening the climate crisis that is already taking lives and livelihoods across the world.
Growing algae for carbon capture as a exetential crisis hobby. 1lb dry solid carbon this year, equivalent to 4lbs atmospheric CO2, I have a process down now and equipment for next spring, as well as a substantial indoor grow/storage over winter.
Doing something is better than nothing.
My friend is a marine biologist who did his thesis on a research project to try to develop biodiesel from algae.
In short, small scale efforts in a laboratory were very successful, but there were significant roadblocks to scaling it up. One of the issues in open environments was that once there was a large amount of algae it would always become contaminated by one cell organisms that would take the algae as their food supply. Algae in the wild have a wide array of symbiotic and pathenogenic relationships within the living world.
What do you do with the dried carbon? As I understand, you will need some way to store it long-term if you want to take it out of the atmosphere. Otherwise it might (at some point, given enough moisture, but this can already happen under high air humidity) be broken down by microorganisms to CO2 (which incidentally will end up in the armosphere again).
Anyway, I wanted to mention that I think your hobby is very cool. Algae are amazing, and growing them for carbon capture sounds like a fun project.
Currently… Paper bag to make it easy to weigh. Trying to sell as fish food to fund the project. I would like to transition to converting it to algenic acid for sale. A bit of funding and I could also probably purchase a better strain of algae to farm than the yellow-green I collected from a pond.