Climate change solutions?

[Tito]

Hi everybody,

Anyone here interested in direct air capture for carbon removal? https://www.fastcompany.com/40510680/can-we-suck-enough-co2-from-the-air-to-save-the-climate

The current generation of tech is chemical engineering. I'm curious what solutions biology might offer. Figured some people on this list might be thinking about it already.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Tito

[Bryan Bishop]

For a few billion dollars you could put a giant inflatable sunshade into orbit. It seems that most people want to complain about climate change instead of doing anything about it.

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[Nathan McCorkle]

Seems like to meet the desired CO2 target levels in reasonable time
period, biology is going to be too slow.

Something I don't know is how long the past (pre-human) era of
high-CO2 lasted in time... was it sufficient to enable evolutionary
selection/optimization of fast CO2 consumers?

It seems fast CO2 capture has already been on scientists' and
engineers' minds for some time, for example in the forestry and
agriculture fields. I remember an internship I almost accepted years
ago at ORNL, where they were looking at the microbiome (among other
things) of Poplar because it grows quite fast, and that would be a
boon to people wanting wood for product manufacturing.

It seems to me the best solution would be hooking up a clean/green
nuclear plant to an industrial-scale CO2 chemical capture system. If
we could figure out a way to produce something more-dense than water,
then we could just start dumping diamonoids into a pile at the bottom
of the ocean, etc.

[Brian Degger]

Here in NCL, scientists are experimenting with carbon capture meadows, where stony rubbish + plants   provides a substrate/calcium + energy/biome for carbon-> calcium carbonate fixation on Brownfield i.e. Post-Industrial landsites. (the science is in infancy)

NCL is aslo the centre of Coal -> Biochar revolution

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/12/carboncapture/

"Carbonation involves the combination of calcium – which is abundant in brownfield soils that contain demolition wastes such as concrete dust and lime – with atmospheric CO2 to form calcium carbonate (calcite).

But whereas the large amounts of organic carbon locked away in peatlands have accumulated very slowly, inorganic carbon in calcite can form very rapidly in brownfield soils, making them more useful in cutting atmospheric CO2."

Cheers

B

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[Patrik D'haeseleer]

The biggest problem with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is that the efficiencies go down dramatically the more diluted the carbon is. So capturing CO2 at a smokestack is way more efficient than sucking it straight from the air. 

By extrapolation, by far the most efficient form of carbon capture and sequestration would be to capture the carbon in its purest form. That is, take coal and other fossil fuels, and bury them underground!

Patrik

[Tito]

Great perspective, Nathan!

• Too slow: I heard a story that at some point duckweed covered the Atlantic, caused a 2000 ppm drop in CO2, and triggered a cooling. In the sense of evolution, I just found this page that CO2 levels are "now changing about 25,000 times faster than in known geologic history." Link also has a nice chart of CO2 levels up to 600 million years ago.
• Nuclear + Diamonoids: This does seem highly efficient from an energy standpoint. Why make more complex molecules (more energy) when pure carbon will do? The thing that's missing for me is economics, who pays to make gigatons of diamonoids? Maybe the extra energy is necessary to create value.

Tito

[Tito]

Agreed, Patrik, burying fossil fuels sounds like a plan, I know a place right down the street that sells liquid fuel!

And yes, smokestack is way more energetically efficient than sucking it straight from the air, carbon dioxide at industrial smokestack "can be as much as 10−25 volume percent or more of the flue gas". The main limitation seems to be that the uses of concentrated carbon dioxide are limited.

Tito

[Cathal Garvey]

Thinking-emoji-face.. When the USDA wanted to make peanuts a thing, they created cookbooks of things you could do with peanuts. It worked.

We have some industrial processes already that use supercritical CO2. Perhaps if we devised more uses, especially ones that would be awesome but are uneconomical because of the cost of CO2, we could help create demand for high-volume CO2?

No uses that do not involve full recovery/recycling of CO2, please..

One obvious sink for the CO2 is, of course, greenhouses. CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas after all :)

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[Jonathan Cline]

Climate change is a policy problem, an anti-stance in government, more than a technology problem. 

The most important act which biologists and scientists could do for climate change is to go directly into politics.  Run for an office and get elected and introduce science into evidence-based policy and funding decisions.

The meat and dairy industry is probably more a factor than burning fossil fuels.  If everyone went vegan the climate balance could be restored.  That is the biology solution which most refuse to accept.

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[Tito]

You're totally spot on here, Cathal. Cookbooks for peanuts. Cookbooks for carbon.

More uses of carbon dioxide would change the game. Right now it's treated as a nearly worthless burden ($40/ton) that civilization has to bury underground or turn away from. The IPCC modeled a tax of up to $27,000 per ton of carbon dioxide by 2100 though!

Our team wanted to explore high-value uses of carbon. We set out to make a diamond using atmospheric carbon dioxide. Turns out that's really hard. So we made a decorative planter out of air instead: http://airminers.org

Tito

[Simon Quellen Field]

We set out to make a diamond using atmospheric carbon dioxide. Turns out that's really hard.  

Diamonds are hard? Whodathunkit? :-)

 

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[Raza]

Recently had a conversation about how nice it would be to have decaffeinated (+ ideally de-theobrominated, do-theophyllinated, but those are highly related molecules) chocolate. Someone mentioned that the ideal way to decaffeinate coffee beans right now is using CO2, and I remembered this topic. Could CO2 be used to decaf chocolate beans?

[Jonathan Cline]

"High-impact beef producers create 105kg of CO2 equivalents and use 370m2 of land per 100 grams of protein, a huge 12 and 50 times greater than low-impact beef producers. Low-impact beans, peas, and other plant-based proteins can create just 0.3kg of CO2 equivalents (including all processing, packaging, and transport), and use just 1m2 of land per 100 grams of protein.  ... The researchers show that we can take advantage of variable environmental impacts to access a second scenario. Reducing consumption of animal products by 50% by avoiding the highest-impact producers achieves 73% of the plant-based diet’s GHG emission reduction for example. Further, lowering consumption of discretionary products (oils, alcohol, sugar, and stimulants) by 20% by avoiding high-impact producers reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of these products by 43%. This creates a multiplier effect, where small behavioural changes have large consequences for the environment. However, this scenario requires communicating producer (not just product) environmental impacts to consumers. This could be through environmental labels in combination with taxes and subsidies.    'We need to find ways to slightly change the conditions so it’s better for producers and consumers to act in favour of the environment,' says Joseph Poore. 'Environmental labels and financial incentives would support more sustainable consumption, while creating a positive loop: Farmers would need to monitor their impacts, encouraging better decision making; and communicate their impacts to suppliers, encouraging better sourcing.'"  http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmental-cost-food

The researchers are basically concluding that product labelling will allow customers to vote with their wallets and government incentives or taxes discourage bad producers.

See the graphs in the article.

Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers

J. Poore1,2,*, T. Nemecek3

Science  01 Jun 2018:

Vol. 360, Issue 6392, pp. 987-992

DOI: 10.1126/science.aaq0216

Abstract

Food’s environmental impacts are created by millions of diverse producers. To identify solutions that are effective under this heterogeneity, we consolidated data covering five environmental indicators; 38,700 farms; and 1600 processors, packaging types, and retailers. Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product, creating substantial mitigation opportunities. However, mitigation is complicated by trade-offs, multiple ways for producers to achieve low impacts, and interactions throughout the supply chain. Producers have limits on how far they can reduce impacts. Most strikingly, impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes, providing new evidence for the importance of dietary change. Cumulatively, our findings support an approach where producers monitor their own impacts, flexibly meet environmental targets by choosing from multiple practices, and communicate their impacts to consumers.

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[Matt Lawes]

Good luck with changing human behavior. Viz ... riots in France over taxes on gasoline to meet climate goals.

Personally I view the 'climate change' data as fraudulently manipulated to the extent that it's impossible to know what's going on. A mini ice age is just as likely as continued warming. 

Sent from my iPhone

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[Jonathan Cline]

All research on the "plastic grocery bag ban" over the past few years
has been positive. It has worked, new plastic waste has significantly
reduced by policy change and public opinion, resulting in.... a
significant regular change to human behavior. As just one simple and
recent example.

Therefore your reply is uneducated and pompous.

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On 12/2/18, Matt Lawes <ma...@insysx.com> wrote:
> Good luck with changing human behavior. Viz ... riots in France over taxes
> on gasoline to meet climate goals.
> Personally I view the 'climate change' data as fraudulently manipulated to
> the extent that it's impossible to know what's going on. A mini ice age is
> just as likely as continued warming.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Dec 2, 2018, at 12:10 PM, Jonathan Cline

> ## jcl...@ieee.org<mailto:jcl...@ieee.org>

> ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
> ########################
>
>
> On Sunday, October 14, 2018 at 9:39:30 AM UTC-7, Jonathan Cline wrote:
> On Friday, September 21, 2018 at 11:48:57 AM UTC-7, Tito wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> Anyone here interested in direct air capture for carbon removal?
> https://www.fastcompany.com/40510680/can-we-suck-enough-co2-from-the-air-to-save-the-climate
>
> The current generation of tech is chemical engineering. I'm curious what
> solutions biology might offer. Figured some people on this list might be
> thinking about it already.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
> Tito
>
>
>
> Climate change is a policy problem, an anti-stance in government, more than
> a technology problem.
> The most important act which biologists and scientists could do for climate
> change is to go directly into politics. Run for an office and get elected
> and introduce science into evidence-based policy and funding decisions.
>
> The meat and dairy industry is probably more a factor than burning fossil
> fuels. If everyone went vegan the climate balance could be restored. That
> is the biology solution which most refuse to accept.
>
> --
> ## Jonathan Cline

> ## jcl...@ieee.org<mailto:jcl...@ieee.org>

> ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
> ########################
>
>
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[Matt Lawes]

Ad hominem attack. You loose, king of pomposity.

Sent from my iPhone

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[Matt Lawes]

Not only did you ad hominem but you used a BAN as an example of changing human behavior. So unless you propose BANNING 'high impact' beef production, your example if changing human behavior SUCKS.
Though you are so virtuous, maybe you do want to ban stuff like a petty little Fascist.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 2, 2018, at 12:37 PM, Jonathan Cline <jcl...@ieee.org> wrote:
>

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[Cathal Garvey]

This is a list for science discussion, please keep poorly sourced and knowingly inflammatory opinions for Twitter or Facebook.

[André Esteves]

hI!

A solution which i believe has been overlooked is to make coal
again... And i am not talking about "biocoal" wich is a sham.
Why don't we just harvest trees after they follow their optimal carbon
intake (a adult tree takes less carbon than a growing tree) and then
bury it deep to sequester the carbon...
Eucalyptus have the advantage of being able to regro fast after being
harvested (they keep the root system and grow fast)

If you want to increase the odds of carbon sequestration you could
burn the wood in a solar vacuum furnace, making coal and releasing
back into the atmosphere the water, nitrogen and oxigen.
The sequestering would be the equivalent of open fiel coal mining but
in reverse, using the same equipment and machines...

Deserts could be used to both plant, burn and sequester the carbon...

Cheers,

Andre Esteves

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[Dakota Hamill]

Oddly enough spending the past 2 months in Ireland where there is a 20 cent to 70 cent fee for each plastic bag you take from the store has made me change my behavior to bringing a bag from home often.  

In the US I rarely do which is from my own laziness/lack of planning.  

All I know is that I'm guilty of bringing a reusable bag now because of a 20 cent fee, not because global warming and pollution is in the back of my mind.  Selfish and shortsighted perhaps but I am only human. 

Nothing will change a person's behavior more quickly than making it a money based decision.

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[Jonathan Cline]

On 12/2/18, Dakota Hamill <dko...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Nothing will change a person's behavior more quickly than making it a money
> based decision.
>

Thats absolutely right. Bizarrely the current main argument against
veganism and climate change is to argue that existing workers in the
CO2-heavy industries will lose their jobs, which is a hollow argument
in an open economy. "But cattle ranchers will be put out of work" is
a poor defense in comparison to global implications, especially since
cattle ranchers can migrate to a new industry. The paper I cited has
a reader retort that the paper's conclusions are not implementable
because 'people in arid climates can't grow vegetables and are reliant
on farm animals'.. that's incredibly misinformed.

Which, to Tito's point of looking for technology solutions, if the
above represents the main argument from the opposition, then there are
technology solutions which can be developed for that concern. People
do change behavior based on their wallets and based on witnessing more
successful peer competitors. If the cattle ranchers see neighbors who
are making more money in less time and less effort by growing plants
(or whatever), then they will change both their businesses and their
lifestyles within years. Find the main opponents to climate control
and present the economically better solution. The prior movers in
veganism marketed the lifestyle as an luxury product (Whole Foods,
fake organics, etc) to maintain and increase their profit margins and
so the public perception is that it is more expensive to be vegan,
however in real terms, legumes, roots etc. are the cheapest source of
nutrition, much cheaper than buying dead animals. Especially when
considering meat eating-related medical costs. (Which is back to the
cookbook idea. In fact, the most frequent basic first question about
veganism is, "But what do you cook, how do you do it?")

The difficulty in implementation is in competing with lopsided
governmental policies which subsidize, rewarding, bad industries and
bad producers, at the expense of better ones. Which is why more
biologists and scientists should go into government ASAP.

Long ago I cited a couple papers related to insects as superior
dietary protein sources (especially if compared to CO2-producing
animals). Such papers are rare yet cyclical. The first large barrier
is social, it's psychological. The easier barrier is technological.
I'm sure if farm-raised crickets were developed into a somewhat tasty
protein powder, with the protein profile clearly compared to and
stomping the existing and quite expensive specialty products, the
nutty Paleo Crossfit crowd and such would adopt it rapidly and shift
entire parts of society with it, in a short amount of time.

[Matt Lawes]

Yes fracking is awesome!
Cheaper product, cheaper energy from natural gas and less greenhouse gases from production and from consumption. Market based forces. Not bans and taxes, both of which are coercive.
Now burn me or ban me from here for my heresy.
>'Uneducated' Matt PhD MBA

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[Ravasz]

Hi,

The solution we are working on is to grow algae as a food and feed source. Algae are several times more efficient at producing biomass than any plant and provide a protein-rich feed for animals. As a consequence adding algae to animal feed greatly reduces the environmental impact of meat. It is not as good as veganism, but as someone said above, changing people's habits is a difficult task, switching from soy protein to alga protein is comparatively easier.

Algae can also be used as food, plastic feedstock and for producing various chemicals for industry. They can be grown in areas where no plants grow like deserts our out at sea. So growing algae does not need farmers to remove natural habitats to make way for plantations.

If you want to capture carbon from the air, algae are by far the most efficient biology has to offer.

Cheers,

Mate

[cathal...@cathalgarvey.me]

Lately I've become interested in abiotic carbon capture also: Also known as "Enhanced Weathering", one of the only geoengineering solutions that doesn't seem to have scary or unknown side-effects. Essentially, you get some carbon-weathering rock, crush it, and spread it on fields or beaches.

Some rocks make great fertiliser, so in theory they could help displace some Haber-Bosch fertilisers, or mass-produced manure as used by some Organic* farmers, both of which constitute huge contributors to greenhouse gas.

There is some speculative work on how plant roots and lichens, thanks to their fungal component, might be able to add a biotic accelerating effect to enhanced weathering by breaking down rock faster. I don't know whether this could be of any use to Algal farming, by itself.

Most work in this area focuses on Olivine, which is a very common mineral and mining byproduct in some areas of the world, and by itself could (if mined & crushed in a low-impact, low-emissions way) make a serious dent in greenhouse gas all by itself. I've heard Basalt will do well, too. I'd love to know whether rocks like Limestone could be useful in their crude crushed state also, as we have much more of that over here in Ireland. Limestone could also perhaps replace some agricultural lime as a slower-acting soil buffer, for cases where an immediate amendment isn't necessary.

* Mandatory notice: Organic farming is not ecologically sustainable, having drastically lower yields with no clear health or consistent environmental benefit attached at scale

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[Ravasz]

I see the point of spreading carbon weathering rock so it soaks up carbon from the air, but I thought this is a fairly slow an inefficient process that is mostly relevant on the geological scale. My first thought was that if you plan to mine, crush, and distribute rock onto some barren landscape, then how much time would it take to capture back the carbon released during preparation?

In terms of use as fertilizer, olivine is Mg₂SiO₄ whereas basalt is MgO, CaO and similar stuff (I didn't know this, I looked it up :)  ). Neither of them have nitrates of phosphates though, the main ingredients of fertilizers, so I am not sure what use they would have as fertilizers other than things like adjusting soil pH or adding granularity or somesuch. Some algae like diatoms do require silica to make their shells, but for them, so little is required that its easily found in any tap water that's stored in a glass bottle.

Admittedly I know far too little about the topic to be helpful, I only know that limestone traps quite a lot of carbon during formation, but that is again a partly biotic process and its rather slow I think.

[VladimirGent]

The only process on Earth that capture  carbon  from atmosfere  for  a long  time   is zooplancton  in the ocean,  and it  critically  dependent  on Amazon river  system  that brings  organic  food  to the ocean.  ... I  do not belive that Brasil  will stop destruction of  Amason forest  in favor  of  new  agricultural land.   We  still need  to feed that rising  population of  humans.  No one is busy  with reducing our population.   The rising  temperature  will melt  Siberian permafrost  land  that will release  hell on Earth,    as methan gas   , 4 times  more powerful  in GreenHouse effect  then CO2,  will go to  athmosphere  in massive amounts.  So  what we need really  to talk about is how to prepare   to  global  climate catastrophe .

We are going to expect  massive crops  falure , becouse of  frost and snow  in July, several years  in  a row , naturally  floods and extremely  dry periods ...     And  we cannot  stop it ... too late ... we can only  do  something  to prepare  for it.    I  work on Genetically  modifications  that can make plants  resistant  to the broad range of  pathogens.   

[Brian Degger]

Not so slow : "a hectare of urban soil can sequester up to 85 tonnes of atmospheric CO2 per year." 

Brian

Source:

carbon capture gardens from : https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2016/02/07/carbon-capture-gardens-a-nature-based-solution-for-managing-urban-brownfield-soils-for-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-services/

 Recent research by Carla Washbourne and others at Newcastle University suggests that the FAO may have been too hasty to disregard a role for SIC. Soil carbonate formation was measured over an 18-month period at Science Central, a large brownfield site in the heart of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, U.K. The result was striking: urban soils have a huge capacity to capture atmospheric CO2 and store it inorganically as calcium carbonate (calcite). Calcium availability is the key limiting factor, and this is provided abundantly in brownfield soils that contain demolition wastes such as concrete dust and lime. The carbon capture process is extremely rapid: a hectare of urban soil can sequester up to 85 tonnes of atmospheric CO2 per year. Scaling this up, appropriate management of <12,000 ha of urban land to maximise calcite formation could potentially remove 1 million tonnes of CO2from the atmosphere annually. To put that another way, the U.K. has 1.7 million ha of urban land and proactive management of 700,000 ha for mineral carbonation has the potential to meet 10 percent of the U.K.’s annual CO2reduction target. But, what does ‘appropriate’ and ‘proactive’ management for carbonation in urban soils entail? How do we maximise rates of inorganic carbon capture in urban soils and are there important synergies or trade-offs with other urban ecosystem services?  

On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 3:00 PM VladimirGent <vladim...@hotmail.com> wrote:

The only process on Earth that capture  carbon  from atmosfere  for  a long  time   is zooplancton  in the ocean,  and it  critically  dependent  on Amazon river  system  that brings  organic  food  to the ocean.  ... I  do not belive that Brasil  will stop destruction of  Amason forest  in favor  of  new  agricultural land.   We  still need  to feed that rising  population of  humans.  No one is busy  with reducing our population.   The rising  temperature  will melt  Siberian permafrost  land  that will release  hell on Earth,    as methan gas   , 4 times  more powerful  in GreenHouse effect  then CO2,  will go to  athmosphere  in massive amounts.  So  what we need really  to talk about is how to prepare   to  global  climate catastrophe .

We are going to expect  massive crops  falure , becouse of  frost and snow  in July, several years  in  a row , naturally  floods and extremely  dry periods ...     And  we cannot  stop it ... too late ... we can only  do  something  to prepare  for it.    I  work on Genetically  modifications  that can make plants  resistant  to the broad range of  pathogens.   

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[Jonathan Cline]

On Friday, September 21, 2018 at 11:48:57 AM UTC-7, Tito wrote:

Hi everybody,

Anyone here interested in direct air capture for carbon removal? https://www.fastcompany.com/40510680/can-we-suck-enough-co2-from-the-air-to-save-the-climate

The current generation of tech is chemical engineering. I'm curious what solutions biology might offer. Figured some people on this list might be thinking about it already.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Tito

Quote

Hypergiant Industries wants to use algae boxes to solve the problem.

...

The prototype bioreactor is 3' x 3' x 3', and holds 55 gallons of water and algae. "Algae wants CO2 and light," the company explains on its website. "The light can be from the sun, or in this case, artificial light. The algae and water are pumped through a series of tubes to maximize their exposure to light sources lining the inside of the Reactor."

Inside the reactor, the algae absorbs the carbon dioxide and in the process creates a biomass, essentially dried algae. In the oceans, dried algae has a crucial role: It sinks to the bottom of the ocean and creates food for microorganisms. The company says the algae biomass can then be "harvested and processed to create fuel, oils, nutrient-rich high-protein food sources, fertilizers, plastics, cosmetics, and more."

The Hypergiant team claims the device is 400 times more effective than trees at carbon sequestration. 

“With the first generation Eos, we have precise control of every aspect of the algae’s environment and life cycle,” Ben Lamm, CEO and founder, tells Fast Company. “It’s a photobioreactor, but it’s also an experimentation platform. We’ll be using this platform to better understand the environment that best suits biomass production under controlled circumstances, so that we can better understand how to design reactors for the variety of environmental conditions we’re going to encounter in the wild.”

The company has a local vision for the biogenerators. Rather than (at least at first) a field of the algae boxes in an energy grid, Hypergiant envisions HVAC units, close to exhaust and industrial pipes, breathing in the carbon dioxide from a office building.

According to the International Energy Agency, buildings and building construction account for 36 percent of global final energy consumption and nearly 40 percent of the world's total direct and indirect CO2 emissions.

But a prototype is still just a prototype, and Libby says the company has no plans to start selling quite yet. The next step, in spring 2020, will be to make the design for the algae boxes open-source and see what the world will make of them.

End Quote

[Ravasz]

This thread is from last year...

Since then we also formed an alga biotech startup: www.algacraft.com

We are currently being funded by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation and hope to build bioreactors that that can mitigate the carbon output of other industries.

Our idea is too hook our systems up to the flue gas of power plants, cement factories and similar, and use the CO2 rich gas to grow algae even more rapidly than they would with plain old air.

If anyone is more interested in this, do not hesitate to write.

Cheers,

Mate

[Tito Jankowski]

Wow Algacraft looks cool! Submit it to the AirMiners index, http://airminers.org

Also, click “Join Community” to join AirMiners Slack, the world’s largest community of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs mining carbon from the air.

Cheers,

Tito

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[S James Parsons Jr]

Not to seem negative, with the great work being done by harvesting carbon from the air. But what happens when we have a CO2/green-house-gas deficit? Our lifestyles created cars, green-house producing food chain, pollution from consumable goods where the negative externality. But what happens when our lifestyle makes zero-emission cars, green-house free foods, and carbon offsetting consumer goods. What happens to the O2 harvesting companies? Do they go out of business, or do they become the enemy? 

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[Tito Jankowski]

Ice age 2.0!

There’s a million million tons of excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. 10^12. Current capacities for removing carbon are in the tens or hundreds of tons per year. So we’re not there yet. My sense is the technologies become attractive for use on Mars, their atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide.

Cheers,

Tito

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[Ravasz]

Hi,

I agree with Tito, CO2 production so far exceeds the capacity of capture technologies that we are nowhere near to breaking even. In addition, the carbon economy is based on a cycle, its not a linear process. In our example, algae produced using flue gas will be used as animal feed or a food additive, so after consumption the captured carbon will be released again as CO2. Therefore its not carbon negative, but a zero carbon solution. If we want carbon negative, then we need to make sure the organics created are not broken down again and released into the air. As an example, dried algae can be used as a soil additive or a plastic feedstock, both cases trapping most of the carbon and making the process a carbon negative one. So should we in the distant future end up capturing more CO2 than we produce, we can release it back into the cycle to keep a desired concentration if we wish to.

CO2 concentrations are actually increasing because we are bringing dormant stocks into the cycle, like carbon trapped underground via the oil industry, or carbon stored in the soil and the sea, which is brought into the cycle by farming and fishing.

And also, Tito, you may be interested to know that we received some funding to develop a proof-of-concept alga bioreactor for Mars. Algae are the top choice as fresh food source for future Mars missions so technologies to that end are being developed by Algacraft, and others. Next month we will be showcasing our work at the Space Research for Food & Water Security on Earth  Conference in Dubai, if anyone is around, you are welcome to come by. The event will be held alongside the Humans in Space Flight Symposium: https://www.his2019.com/ .

Cheers,

Mate

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[Tito Jankowski]

I’m excited about these new foods. It’s hard to make a case to raise cattle on Mars for example, so many better things to do with the space and energy. Algae food all the way! Good luck at your show in Dubai.

Cheers,
Tito