[geo] Re: "CO2 Enhancement" or ocean afforestation

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:11:26 -0700

Johnnie - You are suggesting ocean afforestation with increased CO2 concentration for a faster growth rate.  The ocean afforestation is a good idea, but the CO2 Enhancement would be nutrient limited or mining nutrients.  Plus, you are expending a lot of energy to move CO2 when the CO2 will come to you in the air.  Extra CO2 is not useful without matching amounts of other nutrients.

 

Ocean afforestation is similar to terrestrial afforestation.  Terrestrial rainforests generally have thin nutrient-poor topsoil.  The nutrients come from rapidly decaying biomass.  The rainforest even manufactures its own rain (local water recycling).  Most of the ocean is a nutrient desert.  Setting up an ecosystem that rapidly recycles the nutrients (not mining the nutrients, recycling the nutrients) allows ocean afforestation with a forest of sargassum (or kelp, or microalgae, or ...).

 

Rapid decomposition of aquatic plants into the nutrients needed to grow more aquatic plants is accomplished by bacteria.  When there is an excess of aquatic plants due to an excess of nutrients, aerobic bacteria will deplete all the dissolved oxygen while creating nutrients, water, and carbon dioxide.  The aerobic bacteria cause ocean dead zones.  When there is no oxygen available, anaerobic bacteria will continue the decomposition creating nutrients, water, methane, and carbon dioxide.  Because the carbon dioxide will dissolves about ten times (by moles or volume) more than methane, we can harness the anaerobic bacteria to produce pure methane (renewable natural gas), pure carbon dioxide for sequestration, nutrients for ocean afforestation, and harvest a little food on the side.

 

None of this needs new science.  We only help nature do what it normally does a little faster.  We have plenty of research on gas production from anaerobic digestion, aquatic plant growth rates, fish farming, etc.  The result is a process that mimics nature.  Every living plant and creature is allowed to function naturally with relatively little change of their natural environment.

 

Applying engineering to the existing research suggests:

1)     We start with an ocean reforestation project on 100 million hectare of the North Pacific Gyre's plastic trash.  We remove the trash before starting the PODenergy process because autonomous aquatic plant harvesting can use the same equipment as autonomous plastic harvesting.

2)     100 million hectare will produce 22 quads a year of methane worth $90 billion a year at today's prices for natural gas (not even considering the carbon credits premium for renewable natural gas).

3)     At the same time, incidental to the methane production, we could harvest less than 2% of the fish that accompany this ocean reforestation.  That would be a trillion kg per year or 140 kg of fish per person per year for 7 billion people.

4)     At the same time, incidental to the methane and fish production, we could sequester the 850 million tonnes of liquid carbon dioxide produced.

 

Of course we can start with smaller lake and coastal project harvesting nuisance aquatic plants.  But it is nice to know the PODenergy ecosystem is sustainable at very large scales.  More details are available at www.PODenergy.net.

 
 
Mark E. Capron, PE
Oxnard, California
www.PODenergy.net
 
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [geo] . . . "CO2 Enhancement Process" . . .
From: Johnnie Buttram <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, October 20, 2009 3:58 pm
To: [email protected]

Dear Geoengineering Group;
 
Please find attached a solution called;
 
. . . "CO2 Enhancement Process" . . .
 
I will appreciate any comments you
may have.
 
Thank you for your time.
 
                              Sincerely,
                       Johnnie  Buttram



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