Kara Lightburn, Jacmel, Haiti, July 23, 2015, "Hey Bob - we have a seaweed phenomenon going on along the coast - how can we use this for the crops in Anse-a-Pitres... Trying to think how to use local resources to respond to this crisis..."
Dry, aerobic composting, that seaweed mixed with human solid waste like SOIL Haiti EcoSan sanitation method, might yield compost, Konpòs Lakay, in 30 days. That would be used in gardens or French raised beds, which use more water than aquaponics/hydroponics.
Sargassum seaweed drifts to tourist beaches on Caribbean islands. It hurts business. It's used for fertilizer, how about biogas? "This plant also produced charcoal, used as a fertiliser and deodorant for earth closets, and biogas used to light the buildings."
"Although Edward Curtis Stanford was using algal derived biogas to light his factory in Tiree in the 19th century, the history of seaweeds as a source of bioenergy – biogas and alcohols – is just beginning. US experiments in the 1970s demonstrated methane production but failed to be followed through primarily because of a lack of adequate supply. This is no longer a significant constraint and the economic and social importance of renewable energy have been revolutionised in the past 25 years.
We expect BioMara to be at the forefront of the novel developments upon which the next, and possibly the greatest, seaweed- based industry in Ireland and Scotland will be based. The production of transport fuels, particularly in remote, rural, isolated and island communities, such as many in rural Scotland and Ireland, may well come to depend upon liquefied algal-derived biogas and bioalcohols."
"One solution may be to dry and compact the seaweed into bales, and then use those bales as the base of new dunes. The theory is that these seaweed-based dunes will withstand waves and storm surges even better than natural ones. That won’t help beaches that don’t have dune systems, of course, which includes many of those in the Caribbean. Sargassum is sometimes used as fertilizer, but there’s not a high enough demand for that to make a dent in the amounts piling up. Dumping seaweed offshore may be an option, but it would also require heavy equipment and could potentially harm the marine environment."
Most of the world's supply of carrageenan comes from Chondrus crispus (Irish moss) populations in Eastern Canada and to a lesser extent New England and Northern Europe.
"Seaweed resources are limited in area and are now heavily exploited. At the same time, the demand for phycocolloids is steadily increasing (Moss 1977). The discovery that different algal species or blends of phycocolloids from different algal species have dissimilar gelling or emulsifying properties has led to a large number of new applications of these products. These factors together have led to a screening of various species and world-wide surveys of seaweed resources by the industry over the past two decades, in an attempt to expand the base of its operation. One example of such expansion is the relatively new exploitation of the red alga Eucheuma in the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia. These resources, old and new, are decreasing due to overharvesting (Blanco 1972, Suto 1974, Doty 1974), pollution (Ozazaki 1971, Suto 1974, Wildman 1974) and storm damage (Parker 1974) to the extent that the industry is resource limited. Attention has become focused on cultivation as the only long-term solution."
"The use of seaweed digestate as a fertilizer may be restricted because of the high heavy metal content especially cadmium. Reducing the concentration of heavy metals in the digestate will enable its use as a fertilizer. In this laboratory-scale study, the potential of seaweed and its leachate in the production of methane were evaluated in batch tests. The effect of removing the heavy metals from seaweed leachate was evaluated in both batch test and treatment in an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor. The heavy metals were removed from seaweed leachate using an imminodiacetic acid (IDA) polyacrylamide cryogel carrier. The methane yield obtained in the anaerobic digestion of seaweed was 0.12 N l CH(4)/g VS(added). The same methane yield was obtained when the seaweed leachate was used for methane production. The IDA-cryogel carrier was efficient in removing Cd(2+), Cu(2+), Ni(2+) and Zn(2+) ions from seaweed leachate. The removal of heavy metals in the seaweed leachate led to a decrease in the methane yield. The maximum sustainable organic loading rate (OLR) attained in the UASB reactor was 20.6 g tCOD/l/day corresponding to a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 12 h and with a total COD removal efficiency of about 81%. Hydrolysis and treatment with IDA cryogel reduced the heavy metals content in the seaweed leachate before methane production. This study also demonstrated the suitability of the treatment of seaweed leachate in a UASB reactor."
The digestion of a mixture of two or more substrates (adding human, pig, or cow slurry to seaweed) can provide an optimal nutrient balance by maintaining the proper C/N ratio in the reactor and therefore better digester performance and higher biogas yields. Co-digestion of algal sludge with other by-products of biorefineries, such as glycerol, is also a promising recycling strategy. Glycerol is generated in large amounts as end waste product during the production of both bioethanol and biodiesel. Therefore, one possible solution for its use is the anaerobic treatment to produce biogas as a renewable and versatile energy source.
Finally, the organic residue produced from the AD (digestate) is used as an organic fertiliser during cultivation of terrestrial biofuel crops."
"Seaweed..lacks lignin and has a low cellulose content, which makes it a better material than land plants for complete biological degradation to methane. Biodiesel from microalgae has two key advantages over biodiesel produced from other plant oils:
• Microalgae produce high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids. This gives microalgal biodiesel much better cold weather properties. It is fluid at lower temperatures, and so allows diesel engines to function well in cold conditions
• Microalgae produce 20 to 30 times more oil than temperate plant oil crops when cultured in photobioreactors or on land in open ponds."
Bearded: Gracilaria terete - common cultivar, attaches to rocks but grows on ropes and raft. 4-6 weeks harvest.
Centipede: Gracilaria domingensis - easier to prepare, more gel, easier to clean. Grows on rocks, not on ropes or rafts. Propagates by spores it produces, so does grow well on rocks.
"The Caribbean islands contribute only 0.3 per cent of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere but suffer their effects in a rise in sea levels, increasingly extreme weather and the spread of Sargassum algae that repels international tourists"
Do-Nothingism
"'If there is nothing in terms of finance for countries that are the most vulnerable and the poorest, they won't follow you,' French President François Hollande told the world's rich nations...The summit in Martinique's main town, Fort de France, was attended(listened to) by Haitian President Michel Martelly." Martelly quotes.(return to top of page)
Haitian President Michel Martelly, who received his mandate from only 16.7 percent of registered voters, has been running the country without a fully functioning government in order to avoid dealing with constitutionally mandated checks and balances.
As evidence of Martelly’s unbridled commitment to democracy, instead of holding elections for mayors whose terms expired in 2012, he personally handpicked the representatives, appointing them as “municipal agents.” As a result of Martelly’s political inaction on the national level, one third of the seats in the Haitian Senate remain empty. This congressional inability to establish quorum on issues of national importance has been particularly convenient for the President. In September 2013, the Senate put forward a resolution to indict President Martelly, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, and the Minister of Justice Jean Renel Sanon for high treason, lying to the public, and playing a harmful role in the death of Judge Jean Serge Joseph.
Three officials from the same political party as CIA Duvalierist dictator Michel Martelly resigned from Haiti gov't over President Michel Martelly's remarks to a woman, telling her in Haitian Creole to go get a man and go in the bushes to have rough sado-masochist sex. Legislative elections are this month, presidential elections in October, Martelly will not be allowed to run in October, so distancing his party from himself improves the image of CIA's neolib economics do-nothing trickledown cult. The woman had accused his government of incompetence and complained that it failed to bring electricity to her community, which is all just CIA neolib trickledown cult's propaganda working out do-nothing policy fronting a superstitious cult wizard's curtain for the same old colonialist resource rape and slavery. While Martelly has separately insulted a woman, Martelly and his party and government and oligarchy have together poisoned a judge and shot down six agronomists, along with electoral officials and political candidates, in classic 1980's CIA School of the Americas style, basing on Teddy Roosevelt's databasing of Africans in Cuban liberation army and politics leading to genocide in 1912, and FDR's USMC-trained gendarmarie sustaining US occupation of Haiti 1915-34 into FDR's USN intel and OSS leader William Donovan, becoming a CIA man in 1947, with Allen Dulles of United Fruit and Sullivan and Cromwell extending FDR's USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's nightmare banana republicanism as CIA director.
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