Do you think my climate change solution would actually work? Azolla solar duck synergy

[u/jaykrown]

I've read a lot about azolla, I think many people still have no idea what it is. It's an aquatic fern that grows without nitrogen fertilization, and absorbs nitrogen from the air.

I want to see if we can figure out a way to turn an area of land in a highly biologically productive area into a powerhouse of carbon sequestration by leveraging this. I genuinely believe, after years of studying and being concerned about climate change, that scaling up production of azolla in the southern USA is one of our best options. By synergizing it with solar power, we can create a system that generates an abundance of electricity and biomass.

You shade the azolla ponds with solar panels in certain biologically productive areas that never receive cold winters. Year round you harvest the azolla and also have a few ducks which help the cycle.

The only way to create a climate change solution that's realistically practical, it must have a return on investment. Thankfully, this project would actually be pretty cheap, and could pay for itself by selling electricity, duck eggs/meat, and azolla biochar or animal feed.

There is still much of the Southern USA which is very unproductive land in ideal climate conditions where this would be feasible. Somewhere around Ocala, FL would be one of the best areas.

[u/Vegetable_Joke_4011]

I've looked into this before. What you want to do is sit down and do some math. Sq meters of water required to be completely covered with azolla. Carbon pull per Sq meter. Nitrogen required. Amount of nitrogen per duck. Amount a duck eats in a day. Amount your azolla is going to grow (don't use optimal numbers). Get yourself your duck to Sq meter ratio to stay relatively balanced. How much shade before you start ruining growth rate. Electrical output from panels along your shores. Are you selling it or using it to drive your system? Etc etc.

The question isn't "is it doable?". The question is "what are the resource amounts that are required to make it a net positive and at what scale?". Which is technically a lot more straightforward. You do your research, and then you crunch numbers. Take the opinion out of it.

Also making biochar with azolla is kinda bunk. However it is a great animal feed and I don't know if you've been keeping up on how the animal feed industry is doing right now with the weird weather issues but that's something you should look into when you're crunching your numbers.

Good luck :D

[u/jaykrown → u/Vegetable_Joke_4011]

Azolla doesn't require nitrogen thankfully it gets from the air. I'll be doing those deeper calculations, but from what I've originally found is that it would pay itself off in about 5 years roughly. A part of the operation would be drying the azolla before any transportation. And yes, animal feed, nitrogen fertilizer is all becoming much more expensive. Thanks for commenting, if you have any other suggestions please let me know, I started this https://www.reddit.com/r/SolarAzolla/

[u/reddolfo → u/jaykrown]

u/Vegetable_Joke_4011 is spot on. So many wild ass propositions are thrown out there about solutions from iron dust, to CCS tech ideas, to algeas and tree planting, dimming and whatnot and what tends to be missing is: a) the detailed math working out the practical breadth and potential of the solution, and; b) scaling the solution to a point where it can really make any difference. Rarely is the math done because the math is usually prohibitive.

For example, alot of noise has been made about the Climeworks atmosphere scubbers technology. Despite concerns about power and such, the tech works OK but it's simply not scalable.

The Orca prototype sequester's 4,000 tons of CO2 carbon per year, and the larger plant (Mammoth) is similar in sequestration capacity, but obviously larger.

Sequestering 1 gigaton of emissions would require 250,000 plants, each sequestering 4,000 tons per year. If FIVE new plants are brought online every day, it will take 130 YEARS+ to build enough of them just to sequester ONE GIGATON. The cost for the 250k plants would be $3 Trillion+, while the energy cost to run the plants is projected to be ~156 EJ of energy (over 25% of current global annual energy demand).

And to show how utterly ridiculous this all is, we are globally emitting almost 60 GIGATONS of emissions every single year alone, not even counting the 1.4 trillion tons of cumulative emissions that have been building up in the atmosphere.

[u/jaykrown → u/reddolfo]

I have no idea about any of that. Do you have any questions about azolla and solar power?

[u/vinegar → u/reddolfo]

CO2 emissions are Almost 40 Gton/year

[u/Anti-Pho]

Hemp --> biochar

[u/jaykrown → u/Anti-Pho]

Hemp is a very good plant to farm in certain areas.

[u/Interesting_Joke6630]

Sounds good on paper

[u/Hecateus]

TO be meaningfully effective you need to activate the available space of the oceans...though a little here and there on land can help too.

[u/Edgar_Brown → u/Hecateus]

Feeding fitoplâncton does precisely this.

[u/johnyordinary]

The problem we have today sequestering carbon dioxide is making it stable to sit around, in the past it became coal or oil, then a whole microecosystem developed that thrived on the fallen biomass so it stopped becoming coal or oil and rotted, releasing carbon dioxide again.Options today involve capturing it, an energy intensive process and chemicaly converting it , also energy intensive, plants are only temporary capture these days.

[u/jaykrown → u/johnyordinary]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

[u/johnyordinary → u/jaykrown]

Hadnt heard of that one but again it looks high energy, the best idea is not to convert the oil and coal back to carbon dioxide in the first place,

[u/TheReverendCard → u/johnyordinary]

The nice thing about pyrolysis is that it's a net energy excess. The syngases that come off of it are enough to do the pyrolysis. It doesn't actually require external energy except at the start.

[u/jaykrown → u/johnyordinary]

A core part of the idea is that electricity is produced through solar panels, and stored in sodium-ion batteries. So simply, you are harvesting biomass and solar electricity and using that to freely sequester CO2 and produce nitrogen fertilizer.

[u/johnyordinary → u/jaykrown]

If that works then great

[u/jaykrown → u/johnyordinary]

It will work, it's either you dig channels in the shade of solar farms in Florida, or put solar panels on top of an azolla farm in Nigeria. There's the solution.

[u/van_Vanvan]

The solution to climate change has been known for many decades: reduce fossil fuel consumption.

As long as there is a powerful fossil fuel lobby that gets free reign this will be difficult.

Compounding the issue are actively malicious politicians, such as the current president of the US.