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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.
I'm skilled at cultivating mold on the floor, shower curtain, and walls of my shower. Perhaps these moldy efforts can help the environment and health.
Somehow I think this business is it's own worst enemy. Perhaps they should omit that little part of the plan, at least until they start making some progress with the rest. How could they think this was a good way to promote a new food source?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
So, like I start going down on the bitch, and complain that she tastes like algae and household urine. And then she quips, "But it runs Linux!"
Can't argue with that . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You do understand that in many places normal food crops are still fertilized by feces?
And yes, I was under the influence of something else that was green when I thought that'd be a good idea.
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).
In commercial algae growth, the water is not standing, it is agitated. For home algae growth you may not use an agitator, but I imagine at the least you would use an air bubbler like in fish tanks to keep things mixed. And of course, by screening any openings the mosquitoes can't get in to lay eggs.
Is shooting yourself in the head to avoid a pointless and severely unpleasant (but "sustainable") existence in a dystopian ecologically green world "the future"? Can we deprive ourselves of everything good about life so our children can inherit a world where they'll also have to deprive themselves of everything good about life? Is this wise?
Why wouldn't we choose to strive for a good outcome rather than the worst possible outcome where we all (sort-of) survive?
Do you have the blueprints to the Discovery Channel building?
Yay! The pool I don't clean is the FUTURE!
In the developed world, we prefer the euphemism "biosolids".
Dealing with the leftovers of sewage treatment is so much more cost effective when they can be classified as fertilizer. Luckily, absolutely nobody would dream of dumping heavy metals or some of the nastier organics into the general sewage system, so soil application is entirely safe...
Nope. We are all dying of cancer because we now live long enough to get cancer.
If you don't want to die from cancer, I suggest that you move to a preindustrial society so you can die in your 30s or 40s from some other cause like malnutrition or disease.
You do understand that in many places normal food crops are still fertilized by feces?
But....
The use of human feces as fertilizer is a risky practice as it may contain disease-causing pathogens and because it contains heavy metals. Nevertheless, in developing nations it is widespread. Common parasitic worm infections, such as ascariasis, in these countries are linked to night soil, since their eggs are in feces. Night soil
Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related diseases, including cholera, according to WHO statistics. More than 80 percent of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. Human Waste Used by 200 Million Farmers, Study Says
The advantage of "progress" that makes life worse, or at least having access to the technology and engineering needed to institute it on short notice, really depends on how optimistic you are about the alternative.
If you are of the optimistic "steady-state-or-even-better" school, giving up long hot showers, giant pieces of perfectly cooked cow corpse, and 85 degree buildings all winter for its own sake is a rather curious and masochistic hobby. Fine if that is your thing; but not really for general consumption, much less compulsory introduction.
The great utility of "worse progress" comes in the event of some sort of nasty supply shock. The basic problem is this: "progress"(R&D, engineering, building infrastructure, educating people, etc.) requires that a civilization be able to run a surplus in energy, food, and other useful materials. If civilization falls short of that, it generally falls back on eating its own infrastructure to survive(just consider the amount of european masonry that was just pilfered from roman stuff; because that was easier than mining it, and they couldn't make concrete anymore). Worst case, you not only get infrastructure degradation(both material and human capital) from lack of maintenance and training; but further destruction as people fight over the scraps.
In our case, hydrocarbons have essentially allowed us to, for the past century or two, run massive surpluses. If we have to get off that particular train, we have to hope that the fusion/solar/orbiting microwave satellite/thorium breeder reactor/etc. guys have it together by that time, or things are going to get ugly. The nightmare scenario is that we lose the ability to run surpluses before we perfect the next energy source. If that happens, we might never have another shot at it. "Worse" technologies have the potential to be a useful delaying tactic, allowing us to run an R&D and infrastructure construction surplus long enough to get something else in place. Also handy in extreme environments, like space colonies or antarctic bases or what have you.
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.
Who gives a shit what extreme anybody thinks, it doesn't mean you don't have to worry about sustainable alternatives because you don't agree with some whack that wants you to sit on your hands all day. Sounds like a convenient excuse to do whatever you want because the extreme opposition is 'wrong'.
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.
We could use extreme environmentalists as fuel. Since most of them are also vegetarian, they'd even be carbon-neutral!
Mind the frickin' laser...
I lived in one of those places while in the military. We were advised to not eat the local fresh veggies unless we could peel them. I think hepatitis was one of the concerns due to blood in the untreated sewage.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Sterile, sure, but with all the prescriptions we are on here in the developed world... not necessarily free from extras.
Someone had to do it.
You'll have some very happy depression-free and horny little soil microbes, then? That's a good thing, right?
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.
Sugar producing algae? I WANT!!!
Just add yeast. Fun for all.
Most of the population has enough trouble with basic sanitation, leading to thousands of preventable cases of gastric poisoning each year. Now people are going to poison or kill themselves with home cultured algae gone wrong. At best they'll poison the local waterways & wildlife when they dump their bad algae.
The is kind of why flying cars and jet packs, although feasible, haven't really taken off, pardon the pun. Drivers can barely manage turn signals let alone handle a third dimenson. People poison themselves with DIY alcohol brewing, preserves and curing gone wrong quite frequently.
Anyone considered the disposal implications here? Many local governments would not allow you to dump this stuff via sewer or storm water.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I agree that hiding from dystopias makes a lousy overall culture; but having some people specializing in it can be quite useful.
More to the point, in this case, the chap in TFA sounds optimistic to the point of utopian. He isn't railing about the imminent demise of all Haber-Process based agriculture, he is geeking out about the second coming of the vegetable garden. Given the percentage of the American population that basically lives on things that food chemists can turn corn into, and the percentage of the world population that spends a lot of time not actually eating, he is (arguably) proposing progress in line with your definition.
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.
These guys claim to be "Open-Source" but when you go to their website they want you to come to California and pay $150 for a seminar to learn from them. No designs or instruction available for free.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
We'd be like the Linux of algae
I'll be right here waiting for the year of Algae on the Rooftop.
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.
There was an article a few months back that showed that you need certain enzimes produced by some specific bacteria, to digest algae.
It depends on the type of algae. For instance, macroalgae (such as seaweeds) are pretty much similar to any other kind of plant, in that the cellulose portion of it whistles straight out of your exhaust-pipe unless you happen to be a goat, which has bacteria secreting cellulase in his rumen.
Lots of phytoplankton are pretty much digestible, though I guess diatoms (which have silica cell walls) might be a bit problematic.
Once we get the infrastructure for hydrogen in place
it would be a viable transition between these two methods.
Why bother? We have the fueling infrastructure for biodiesel right now, and mechanics who know how to work on diesels. Diesel fuel is less dangerous than gasoline, while hydrogen is arguably moreso, or at least in the same ballpark. Batteries are gaining quick charging technologies that are setting them up to rival the speed of hydrogen refueling, and they are already approaching the best-case energy density of hydrogen while currently providing superior efficiency in giving up their energy as opposed to hydrogen through a fuel cell. Hydrogen in cars is stored at extremely high pressures necessitating an extremely costly storage and distribution network that is simply not necessary with diesel fuels; meanwhile we have an adequate power grid for nighttime charging of MANY electric vehicles before ANY changes need be made. Indeed this would improve the overall efficiency of the grid system because of our currently wasted nighttime base load.
There are zero compelling reasons to use fuel cells. Give up on them already: that means giving up on hydrogen, too, which has its own special set of problems that we simply don't need on the road. Biodiesel from algae grown in our deserts on seawater (and optionally coupled with saltwater aquaculture of other food that people actually want to eat!) has the potential to replace our entire diesel fuel consumption and then some, and profitably, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why bother?
For cars and heating? You wouldn't - it would be a stupid idea. For laptops and other mobile devices, it might make sense. You can make a hydrogen fuel cell a lot smaller than you can make a diesel turbine. More likely, however, you'd want to produce methanol, which can also be used in very small fuel cells but can be stored easily without needing to be kept under pressure. Interestingly, these are more efficient at around the temperature of a warm CPU, so you might end up with the methanol flowing in a pipe over your chips then cooling the waste water (or just dumping it) in future laptops.
The main problem with using fuel cells (of any kind) in consumer electronics is that you can't recharge them at home, you need to buy the fuel to refill them. A small algae tank that could produce methanol would eliminate this problem and make it a much more attractive fuel source.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Batteries are improving faster than fuel cells, though.
But methanol still has 15 times the energy density of the best Lithium-ion batteries, and about 5 times the energy density of LiS batteries (which currently die after so few charge cycles that they're not in use anywhere outside military UAVs).
Except that practical methanol fuel cells are seemingly even further away than the hydrogen ones.
The first functional cells were produced in 1990. They've been refined significantly since then and they are commercially available.
Also, a methanol leak is immediately hazardous: the bad things in it can be absorbed through the skin and make you blind
You need to consume 10ml to make you blind. Absorbing this much through your skin would be very difficult. It's volatile, so a small leak will disburse into the air, making it only dangerous in confined spaces.
I'm just not seeing this EVER being allowed on public transportation, nor should it be.
Better check the law. They've been allowed for a few years. Quoth Wikipedia (complete with citations, if you want to follow them):
However, the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Dangerous Goods Panel (DGP) voted in November 2005 to allow passengers to carry and use micro fuel cells and methanol fuel cartridges when aboard airplanes to power laptop computers and other consumer electronic devices. On September 24, 2007, the US Department of Transportation issued a proposal to allow airline passengers to carry fuel cell cartridges on board[4]. The Department of Transportation issued a final ruling on April 30, 2008, permitting passengers and crew to carry an approved fuel cell with an installed methanol cartridge and up to two additional spare cartridges
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You might want to consider all the hormones and/or pharmaceuticals in it. "Sterile" does not necessarily mean "desirable".