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Is DIY Algae Farming the Future?
hex0D points to this "interview with Aaron Baum explaining why people growing algae at home for food can help the environment and their health, and what he's doing to facilitate this. 'We'd like to create an international network of people growing all kinds of algae in their homes in a small community scale, sharing information, doing it all in an open source way. We'd be like the Linux of algae – do-it-yourself with low-cost materials and shared information.' And one of the low-cost materials is your household urine."
Although I wouldn't consume algae as a food source, I could certainly use it as a fuel source.
I even make LED panels for growing specific species of algae, for this very purpose.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You might want to reconsider growing algae for food, one research group at my university is investigating growing algae to produce sugar, so we don't have to cut down forests to grow sugarcane. Also, I really hope those LED panels are solar powered. As solar powered LED panels emitting light at frequencies the algae uses can be far more efficient than growing algae in direct sunlight(even cheap solar panels are more efficient at solar conversion than algae).
It's put in the summary for shock value I think, but really what they need is mainly nitrogen (prevalent in fertilizer and also urine) and carbon dioxide. In one of their experiments they fed the algae exhaust from a generator. They could also be fed agricultural runoff rich in fertilizers, which is a problem when it reaches streams and oceans because it is so nutritious for algae that it produces algal blooms.
I'm sure you could feed your algae off of a bag of fertilizer from home depot, it's just like gardening but in water.
on a gram by gram basis Corella Algae is actually like SUPER nutritious. NASA i think experimented with using it for long space flights in the 60/70's. So your body can function longer running on a tomato-sized amount of algae than it could on an actual tomato.
Ancient alien conspirators actually believe that the Holy Grail was actually a Manna Machine that produced this kind of algae. Fun Fact..
kinda skimmed the article but i think hes getting at the idea that it's a good supplement and could have potential in enriching foods.
I think growing a maple tree or two in the back yard and tapping them would produce about the same amount of calories he's taking in, with a lot less maintenance, and much better tasting product.
Asimov predicted this decades ago. Just another case of science catching up to fiction, or perhaps this just validates the theories of psychohistory that we aren't supposed to know about..
Of course, there's a long way to go before we generate enough recipes and concoctions of artificial ingredients to make it palatable, so that it's economically and socially mandated to create massive bio-farms.
For more information, refer to your copy of the Encyclopedia Galactica.
Spirulina is pretty much the king of the hill in that respect. The problem with it though is that it's cleansing, consuming enough to make for even a small snack would definitely be enough to give you diarrhea amongst other things. But it's packed with nutrition.
To some extent same goes for other algae, they've got lots of nutritional value, but you have to be mindful that they are used medicinally for a reason.
AT 100,000 gallons of oil/acre/yr in the desert Algae may be
the new source of oil for the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hioZ7C6HLs
With some modification it can be switched over to
produce hydrogen in a biological fashion as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_hydrogen_production
Once we get the infrastructure for hydrogen in place
it would be a viable transition between these two methods.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
You would think that, but I've been working on systems to produce far more while consuming far less.
http://imgur.com/TOgCX.jpg
As another example, an acre of barley grass takes about 100,000 gallons of water to produce on regular land, and about two weeks for usable animal fodder harvest. Newer systems I work on cut that down to about 1500 gallons, it happens in 7 days, and we don't even need ANY source of light. We grow it in completely dark sheds.
http://imgur.com/TYJUR.jpg
And we have these already in production for growing biofuel-producing algae, so your assumption would be somewhat wrong. The Middle East is one of my bigger clients.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You might want to consider all the hormones and/or pharmaceuticals in it. "Sterile" does not necessarily mean "desirable".