Frederick Sparber wrote:
BTW, Jed.
The lagoons required around livestock operations produce copious
amounts of algae year around without any odor. The CO2 produced by
Anerobic bacteria synergises it the manures produce more than enough
nutrients too.
Yup. When I said "if it is only 0.1% efficient, like photosynthesis .
. ." I meant dry land plant photosynthesis on average in North
America. Aquatic plants are a whole different story.
Actually, naturally occurring aquatic plants in North America in
swamps and wetlands to not produce all that much more biomass than
dry land plants. They are limited by nutrients and sunlight, whereas
dry land plants are of limited by water supplies. However, algae that
is fertilized artificially by people would be limited only by the
plant physiology, and it is not clear what the upper limits are. (Not
clear to me, anyway. I read two books and asked several experts about
this, and they do not appear to know either.)
I estimated that the lettuce grown in the Japanese food factory
converts roughly 15% of the light into biomass. It grows under
optimum conditions, in aqueous solution. See chapter 16 of my book.
- Jed
