Phytoplankton and Industrial uses

[Blaise006]

I’m sure smarter people then me have considered this to combat CO2 levels and deemed it too inefficient.

Does growing phytoplankton offer a viable industrial use that also can sequester carbon efficiently to generate carbon credits on the open market?

Has anyone seen anything like this brought up where I could read a bit more on the pros and cons?

 

[H2OPlayar]

Phytoplankton and the marine carbon cycle - NTNU

www.ntnu.edu

Phytoplankton, The Ocean's Carbon-Grubbing Skin

Plankton aren't just the foundation of the ocean's food chain; they're also really important for getting carbon dioxide out of the air.

indianapublicmedia.org

Yes, phyto is critical to our ecosystem already and is being looked at for CO2 removal.

 

[Blaise006]

Phytoplankton and the marine carbon cycle - NTNU

www.ntnu.edu

Phytoplankton, The Ocean's Carbon-Grubbing Skin

Plankton aren't just the foundation of the ocean's food chain; they're also really important for getting carbon dioxide out of the air.

indianapublicmedia.org

Yes, phyto is critical to our ecosystem already and is being looked at for CO2 removal.

Thank you. Good read, I’ll try to find the results of their study. Looks like it concluded a few years ago.

MIT recently released an article on the “biological pump” as well stating that our initial estimates of the carbon sequestered was wrong to the tune of 10-15% (don’t quote me on that, been a since I read the article)

I will keep looking to see if this has been turned into or could be turned into a viable business model.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I’m sure smarter people then me have considered this to combat CO2 levels and deemed it too inefficient.

Does growing phytoplankton offer a viable industrial use that also can sequester carbon efficiently to generate carbon credits on the open market?

Has anyone seen anything like this brought up where I could read a bit more on the pros and cons?

I think I saw something a while back about an idea to dump a ton of iron dust (small stuff) into the oceans to help spur the rapid growth of it, not sure why iron but whatever. There's gotta be a reason that didn't work out.

That said, any biological way to absorb carbon tends to be carbon neutral unless said biologic ends up getting trapped. That's to say trees are carbon neutral even though they absorb co2 because they eventually die and when they break down (whether fungal or burning in the case of the West Coast) they release the carbon back to the atmosphere. The ones that got buried millions upon millions of years ago, that we now call oil & coal, did sequester it ... that is until some upright walking monkeys realized you can get a lot of energy from burning it.

 

[BAYMAC]

Talk to Chad @ Reef Nutrition about this. We got this question quite often at Reed Mariculture while I worked there. I'm sure there has been change in technology, papers, etc since I was there so I'm not going to answer.