Hey Elodie. :) so I was reading your moss post and I had a question: you know those algae lights that they want to put everywhere? How does that work? If the CO2 goes to making biomass of a plant, how is algae so good at making O2 when there isn't a ton of it physically? I mean presumably it is pretty good at it cause afaik that's where the O2 on earth came from to begin with?
(in reference to my general grumpiness about people’s claims that moss sequesters more carbon than is physically possible)
To engage with this post, you’ll first need to know that photosynthetic organisms absorb carbon dioxide and break the molecule apart. Carbon dioxide consists of a carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. These organisms keep the carbon atom and release the two oxygen atoms. This is how plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. The carbon atom goes into their biomass. Right now, there is too much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, caused by the burning of carbon, which reacts with oxygen when burned to form carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is making the atmosphere too hot. As our economies depend on burning carbon, people do not want to stop doing it. Many people are now interested in “absorbing the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” in order to survive on the planet. The problem is, as I point out, that the atoms of carbon have to go SOMEWHERE. Carbon dioxide doesn’t just magically turn into oxygen - the C atom is still there. And when plants break CO2 down, they need to do something with the carbon - they use it to grow. The C atom goes to making the biomass of the plant. If you see a product that claims to use plants to suck enormous amounts of CO2 out of the air (I argue) you should look for the biomass that it will produce. If you can’t see where the carbon went, it’s probably not real.
Anyway! Ah! It’s a good question! but there is a ton of algae physically! And it does make biomass! Lots of it! PLANETS FULL OF IT! It’s its best trick. And it grows very quickly, too. The fact that algae still produce a huge chunk of the oxygen we use today is a big clue to the fact that there is Really Quite A Lot of It. Anyone who has ever had an aquarium can attest to how quickly algae can increase its biomass. That’s where the carbon goes! Into the biomass! That’s where the oxygen comes from! It’s discarded as a product of all that growth! There’s a huge amount of it!
I’m just going to dump this whole quote from a relevant paper here:
There are several reasons for the greater biomass yields of algae versus land plants. Generally, algae have higher photosynthetic efficiency than land plants because of greater abilities to capture light and convert it to usable chemical energy (Melis 2009, Weyer et al. 2010). Under ideal growth conditions algae direct most of their energy into cell division (6- to 12-hour cycle), allowing for rapid biomass accumulation. Also, unlike plants, unicellular algae do not partition large amounts of biomass into supportive structures such as stems and roots* that are energetically expensive to produce and often difficult to harvest and process for biofuel production. In addition, algae have carbon-concentrating mechanisms that suppress photorespiration (Spalding 2008, Jansson and Northen 2010). With algae, all the biomass can be harvested at any time of the year, rather than seasonally. In contrast, only a portion of the total biomass of terrestrial crops (corn cob, soybean seed) is harvested once a year
* this means that instead of slowly growing into a more complicated structure, like plants do, algae just doubles and doubles and doubles. FYI, moss is a plant. algae is not. algae can casually double its mass even caring, and that’s where the carbon goes: literally into LITERALLY doubling the biomass, INCREDIBLY quickly. Moss will not. Moss will grow, become more complicated, and eventually flower - all quite slowly, in comparison.
Anyway, here is a picture from the paper, showing the Biomass. you can see exactly where the carbon is going. There is so much carbon being made here, they’re literally turning it into ... oil?
Yeah... oil. Algae fuel is considered to be a reasonable replacement for fossil fuels. (starting link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel). Algae fuel is used as reliable gimmick in science fiction, as a renewable fuel that spaceships can generate as they go - the handwaving possibilities are endless: ‘ooh, here’s a thing that takes the waste breath of human crew and makes fuel and oxygen out of it. hurray!’
So you may be like, “oh Elodie, but surely burning carbon-based fuels contributes to climate change, because it releases CO2, so uhhhh why would you bother replacing fossil fuels with a slightly fresher version of the same product?”
and I’m like “YEAH I KNOW RIGHT? the argument is that because algae removes the CO2 from the air, and burning the oil releases the same amount of CO2, it’s argued that it’s a carbon-neutral fuel. the carbon goes in, the carbon goes out. The algae puts it into the atmosphere and it takes it back out. it’s always the same carbon.”
WHICH. THE MATH CHECKS OUT, BUT I DON’T LIKE IT. The argument for developing algae fuels is that the math works out as carbon-neutral, and that it reduces reliance on the oil industry and its geopolitics, as every nation on Earth can easily grow and refine their own oil. BUT I STILL DON’T LIKE IT.
Anyway, the trick here is to look for the biomass. In the diagram above, YOU CAN SEE WHERE IT IS. The carbon goes from the carbon dioxide into the algae, where it can be made into carbon-based fuel. The carbon is THERE. it is FOUND. The peer-reviewed, heavily researched industry is so confident in the math, and the carbon, and the physical laws of photosynthesis that algae can genuinely be called a carbon-neutral fuel. The carbon has been AUDITED. the mass is KNOWN.
So what about those “algae lamps that [THEY] want to put everywhere?” I know exactly what you’re talking about. They are glowing street lamp things full of algae and they have the amazing claim of “fixing as much carbon dioxide as 200 trees.”
Those appear to be bullshit. Sorry.
However, on Tumblr, you will find a lot of posts about the algae lamps. I know. I’ve seen them. And I really wanted to believe in them! I may have even reblogged one! But then I just couldn’t find any more evidence about them. And neither could these science bloggers who tried to track down ANY ANSWERS AT ALL in 2012, https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/04/streetlight-powered-algae-actually-possible/1854/ and again in 2015. https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/the-green-algae-street-lamps-that-suck-up-co2/
The algae were reported on in 2012 and 2013 as a funky startup invention, but apparently, only one lamp was ever made. The inventor, an utterly obscure man known as Pierre Calleja, does not appear to have a scholarly record and his scientific qualifications are a bit murky. A few scientists appeared to have asked, “Since algae grows so quickly, what will you do when they overgrow the container/ block the light?” and “Anyone who has maintained an aquarium know that removing the algae - even if you want algae! is part of maintenance; won’t these require a huge amount of maintenance?” and there was no answer. There was definitely no peer-reviewed research. The claim of “fixing as much carbon as 200 trees” (by generating equivalent biomass) cannot be backed up because all of the actual materials have disappeared from the web. The TED talk he did is gone. The startup has vanished. The website is gone. Considering that it attracted millions of dollars of investments, that’s sad news for stakeholders, but normal for a startup based on an idea easily blocked by the question, “don’t you need to clean it.”
Calleja reappeared in the news in 2017, having left the lamp startup (the article has some explanations - apparently the issue was ‘finance people’) and now he wants to make vegetarian smoked salmon out of algae. https://thefishsite.com/articles/algae-can-spearhead-a-culinary-revolution So I think it’s fair to say that the lamps didn’t work and aren’t going anywhere and have disappointed a lot of people and wasted a lot of money. However, I like his new project better. It’s obvious where the biomass is going. It’s going into the fake meat! Carry on, Pierre!
“They” are not going to put them “everywhere” because there is no secret panel of “Them” who, like, Decide Things. There was one inventor, a few reporters who talked about him, no scientific research, no marketable product was ever created, and now the creator is trying to generate fish. Just because that post has 6 bajillion notes on Tumblr doesn’t mean it’s real.
(It’s a bit awkward because two of the science communicators who reported on the lamps are friends of mine, and I know that they simply reported on it in good faith as an interesting bit of pop news, based on the now-vanished TED talk. The tumblr post in the screencap claims its source as Jess’s 2012 snippet from the Grist, which was just meant to be a cheerful description of a cool Youtube video of Pierre Calleja’s TED talk... which has now vanished from the internet entirely. She wasn’t reporting on research, just pointing out a cool video. But yeah, the ‘‘‘‘‘source’‘‘‘‘‘‘ for the Tumblr post we’ve all seen is ... literally just my friend, mentioning a cool TED talk she saw. in 2012. Which is now gone. Because the startup folded with its tail between its legs. And people are using it as a ‘source’, which I don’t think is fair!)
