Engineers Generate Electricity by Tapping Into Algae Cells

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100413121336.htm via Rachel Amstrong

Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, near Catalina Island, California. Engineers have generated electrical current by tapping into the electron activity in individual algae cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Todd Winner)

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2010) — In an electrifying first, Stanford scientists have plugged in to algae cells and harnessed a tiny electric current. They found it at the very source of energy production -- photosynthesis, a plant's method of converting sunlight to chemical energy. It may be a first step toward generating "high efficiency" bioelectricity that doesn't give off carbon dioxide as a byproduct, the researchers say.

"We believe we are the first to extract electrons out of living plant cells," said WonHyoung Ryu, the lead author of the paper published in the March issue of Nano Letters. Ryu conducted the experiments while he was a research associate for mechanical engineering professor Fritz Prinz.

The Stanford research team developed a unique, ultra-sharp nanoelectrode made of gold, specially designed for probing inside cells. They gently pushed it through the algal cell membranes, which sealed around it, and the cell stayed alive. From the photosynthesizing cells, the electrode collected electrons that had been energized by light and the researchers generated a tiny electric current.

"We're still in the scientific stages of the research," said Ryu. "We were dealing with single cells to prove we can harvest the electrons."

Plants use photosynthesis to convert light energy to chemical energy, which is stored in the bonds of sugars they use for food. The process takes place in chloroplasts, the cellular powerhouses that make sugars and give leaves and algae their green color. In the chloroplasts, water is split into oxygen, protons and electrons. Sunlight penetrates the chloroplast and zaps the electrons to a high energy level, and a protein promptly grabs them. The electrons are passed down a series of proteins, which successively capture more and more of the electrons' energy to synthesize sugars until all the electron's energy is spent.

In this experiment, the researchers intercepted the electrons just after they had been excited by light and were at their highest energy levels. They placed the gold electrodes in the chloroplasts of algae cells, and siphoned off the electrons to generate the tiny electrical current.

The result, the researchers say, is electricity production that doesn't release carbon into the atmosphere. The only byproducts of photosynthesis are protons and oxygen.

"This is potentially one of the cleanest energy sources for energy generation," Ryu said. "But the question is, is it economically feasible?"

Ryu said they were able to draw from each cell just one picoampere, an amount of electricity so tiny that they would need a trillion cells photosynthesizing for one hour just to equal the amount of energy stored in a AA battery. In addition, the cells die after an hour. Ryu said tiny leaks in the membrane around the electrode could be killing the cells, or they may be dying because they're losing out on energy they would normally use for their own life processes. One of the next steps would be to tweak the design of the electrode to extend the life of the cell, Ryu said.

Harvesting electrons this way would be more efficient than burning biofuels, as most plants that are burned for fuel ultimately store only about 3 to 6 percent of available solar energy, Ryu said. His process bypasses the need for combustion, which only harnesses a portion of a plant's stored energy. Electron harvesting in this study was about 20 percent efficient. Ryu said it could theoretically reach 100 percent efficiency one day. (Photovoltaic solar cells are currently about 20-40-percent efficient.)

Possible next steps would be to use a plant with larger chloroplasts for a larger collecting area, and a bigger electrode that could capture more electrons. With a longer-lived plant and better collecting ability, they could scale up the process, Ryu said. Ryu is now a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Other authors of the paper are Prinz, the senior author,; Seoung-Jai Bai, Tibor Fabian, Rainer J. Fasching, Joong Sun Park, and Zubin Huang, all researchers in the Rapid Protoyping Laboratory at Stanford University; and Jeffrey Moseley and Arthur Grossman, both researchers in the Department of Plant Biology at the Carnegie Institution and Department of Biological Sciences.

History of kites and flight

http://www.carnetdevol.org/


Gibson Girl Kite : According to the conditions weather, the operator used either the balloon or the kite, which had as a function to support the antenna of the radio of distress.

I find the history of flight very inspiring for Open_Sailing. How an ancient dream came true.
About inhabiting the ocean, I believe the has happened and is still happening here under many forms.
It took such a long time... The transition between the kite and the plane... How exciting is that !!!





Imagine this mad feeling!
...

Now imagine, inventing a soft structure at sea, that would provide an entirely new sensation...


http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheesekid/121647693/

The brothers Wright focused on the shape of the wing and the material to build it... What should be Open_Sailing focus to build the first International_Ocean_Station?
We need to define this for the lab dealing with the question of structure engineering...
A whole new world... What a feeling...

Case Study Part 2: Marine Protected Areas in West Bali - Algae aquaculture as a solution

Part Two: Algae farming - method and specifications

1. Introduction

Algae farming was introduced to Sumber Kima in 2003, but the first attempts were more or less failures, as the seaweed would not thrive in their particular bay.

Different species of red algae were tested, among them Eucheuma Catonii. Finally, a species brought in from Maumere, Flores - another Rodophyte species called Kappaphycus Alpharezi - proved to be suitable for that area. (Maumere, in turn, got it from the Phillipines: the species is not native to the Indonesian seas).

Red algae are known for their high contents of the gelling agent carrageenan, which has many commercial applications in the food and cosmetics industry, for example in dairy products, pet foods, or toothpastes. Red algae high in carrageenan, as the species mentioned above, are therefore the major types of algae to be commercially cultivated in SE Asia.

"Hello, my name ist alvarezii"

[/caption]

Seaweed farming is actually not an ancient practice in Indonesia, and therefore the knowledge about suitability and adaptability of species still low. While Japan has a very ancient tradition of algae cultivation, the Philippines were pioneers in SE Asia, from where it spread to Indonesia. In Bali, the first algae culture was done in the area of Nusa Dua, South Bali, in the 90ies.

Certainly, wild seeweads have been harvested in Indonesia for decades, and used in a variety of dishes, as salads or as gelling agent (Agar).

2. The method

2.1 Planting

Algae farmers in Bali Barat employ the long-line cultivation method. The seedlings are attached to a very long sythetic rope, which floats close to the surface of the water, held up by little buoys every few meters.


this sketch is borrowed from here! Thanks!

The seedlings, which are simply cut-off branches from an older plant, are tied to the rope with a thinner rope with a loose knot, allowing for some movement with the currents, with spaces of approx. 20 cm between knots. The floaters, usually pieces of Styrofoam, plastic bottles or balls, do not only keep the line at a more or less constant depth of 30-40cm and make it easier to spot but also increase the amount of movement of each little segment.




"'field of' long lines and floaters, clearly visible from the shore"



The line itself is attached to a stong pole or frame which sits firmly in the ground on both ends. This method is suited for bays which are steep, but no too deep.

At Nusa Dua, for example, algae is grown it along the ground. The advantage of this is that it can be planted and harvested on foot at low tide. But this works only on a flat, plan coastline. The result is the same, but the environmental damage is probably higher because you walk on any existing coral. Floating method and harvest/planting by boat is pretty low impact. The only impact really are some runaway styrofoam floaties, but these are usually collected again because they are needed.

In fact the seaweed cultivation creates favorable environment for fish, and the seaweed farmers report that the fish have increased in the area of seaweed farming and are easy to catch.

2.2 Harvesting

After 35-45 days, the algae has grown enough to be harvested. For harvest, the line is lifted above the water and the algae cut off close to the knot.

The tips of some of the harvested plants are cut for use of re-planting. Planting and harvesting is thus done in a constant cycle. While harvesting the ‘field’ on one side, young seedlings are being replanted on the other.

While harvest is technically possible throughout the year, the growth rate of the algae is best during the rainy season. During the dry months, june-september, seedlings grow slowly and are more prone to deseases.

The reason for this is not known for sure, because the farmers don’t have the means to measure temperature/salinity or any other factors that might be influencing this. However, the observation implies that during hot months, the water gets too muddy/warm or salty. In other areas, it’s the other way around and it seems to depend strongly on the species. Here, the alage aquaculture could profit greatly from a scientific research partnership. Perhaps it could prove best to cultivate one species during the hot months and another during the rainy season to yield maximum profits?

2.3 Drying

After harvest, the seaweeds are spread out on flat thatched bamboo boards and these are put on top of wood or concrete stand, directly in the sun. They get sun and wind from top and sides and a little from underneath because of thatched board. They needs to be spread evenly and only one layer to avoid fouling. If it starts to rain, they need to be covered with a synthetic cloth immediately, it is simply thrown over the drying structure and held up by the wooden bar running along the middle. If it’s hot and sunny it will only take two days to dry. Hanging is also possible but is simply much more work and the results are the same.

"drying stands"




"spreading out the algae on the drying stand"



After drying, they will have lost 90% of their weight. In dried form, the algae can be stored for several months.

"wet product on the left and dried on the right"





inside the currently very empty storage room

The dried product is sold on the markets in Bali’s capital Denpasar, but the farmers don’t know much about what happens then.

3. Species, reproduction, diseases

As described in the introduction, the species cultivated in Sumber Kima, and all over SE Asia as a matter of fact, are red algae of the Kappaphycus or Eucheuma kind. Both are high in carrageenan and essentially very similar.

They are branched, have thick, fleshy thalli and are olive-brown to purplish-red in color.

Highly interesting is their capacity for vegetative regeneration, which essentially is the reason for the entirely asexual reproduction method employed by farmers in Sumber Kima (simply cutting off tips of older plants and regrowing from there, and so on). Thinking back to our visit to Kiel, this method really sets them off from the German alage farmers who were obtaining new generations of their brown algae from spores in each cycle.

Now I am not a expert (yet) but I came across this study which seems to imply that purely vegetative methods in algae farming may lead up to problems such as decrease in productivity after several ‘generations’, increased vulnerability to catch diseases and so on, which are precisely the problems Sumber Kima farmers were also reporting.

At the time of my visit, two types of diseases had been affecting the harvest: first something called Ice-Ice. The algae starts to turn white around the attachment area, and is prone to break off. It is not so fatal and can be diminished by cutting the stems above the white spot one by one and reattaching it – a lot of work, but can be done

The other disease is known as Karat (‘Rust’). It is some sort of fouling or infection of the seaweed and it spreads quickly. It does not kill the seaweed entirely but inhibits growth and results in an uglier, less-branched and rather rough-skinned plant. Karat is one of the diseases which befalls the algae during the already less productive dry season. Again, more scientific support could help in gaining a better understanding of the diseases and finding ways how to deal with them.



healthy vs. sick algae

Look out for Part 3 of my report: processing algae: candy, crackers and more

City Symbiosis

02-16-2009 : http://www.thefunctionality.com/blog/2009/2/16/city-symbiosis.html

Michael Rakowitz is not an architect, but he has probably made more houses than many architects in the last ten years. Architects should be envious of the artist's production and vision. He is working with the margins of society. His project Parasite uses a building's heat exhaust to inflate plastic sheeting, creating dwellings for the homeless. For Rakowitz the project is about community involvement as well as dwelling design. He is responsive to the needs of his "clients."

Courtesy Michael Rakowitz

Bill S.’s paraSITE shelter. He requested as many windows as possible, because “homeless people don’t have privacy issues, but they do have security issues. We want to see potential attackers, we want to be visible to the public.” Six windows are placed at eye level for when Bill is seated and six smaller windows for when Bill is reclining.

The article on these structure at World Changing highlights the social impact of his projects. The social agenda is remincient of Archigram, Archizoom and the social idealist and critics of the sixties,where the concept of building was challanged to mean utopian spaces, inflatable huts, or technological phenomena in the guise of a natural environment.

Copyright David Green - Courtesy Archigram

Projects like the living pod,above, imagines a green field condition where the building tapped into site resources to make its own place. Parasite deals with the roughness and tactics of city dwelling. These structures are deployable in the aims of allowing their inhabitants to move when they are at the limits of the law.

At The Functionality we want to encourage this type of tactical thinking. Architects, artists, urban designers, even graphic designers need to re-examine how we will approach the city, our suburbs and even our housing as the economic and environmental conditions unfold. We think the sooner we start the better off we will be.

Microcosmic Aquaculture

<Cesar Harada> 07-2-2009, straight from http://www.thefunctionality.com/blog/2009/7/2/microcosmic-aquaculture.html

[Editors' Note]: For this week's Friday Feature (posted early for the holiday), The Functionality is proud to host "Microcosmic Aquaculture," a speculative project by new design office Bittertang (Michael Loverich + Antonio Torres). The project recently won inclusion as part of [Bracket] magazine's feature on the future of farming, which explores "the modification of infrastructure, urbanisms, architectures, and landscapes toward a privileging of production." We love "Microcosmic Aquaculture" because it is both completely whimsical and completely convincing as a concept that could help increase marine biodiversity and replenish the world's overfished waters. Think of it as a biodegradable fish farm. Or a synthetic reef. Or an edible scuba museum. Or a pile of goo. Either way, it follows on the heels of an (unintentional) theme here at The Functionality over the past month: self-sustaining pods. From Mary Mattingly's water pods to Tomás Saraceno's floating blob, we're embracing the post-apocalyptic condition with gusto...



Gelatinous orb section and detail (courtesy bittertang)[Project statement]: We imagine a future where the vast and deep expanses of the ocean will teem with overabundant floating gelatinous reefs. Human's will be nourished physically and aesthetically by encouraging new floating worlds of reefs that sustain large quantities of harvestable wild and captive fish. Farming in this project is not viewed as a monoculture but the creation of a new ecology where wild and captive wildlife are 'raised' and their aesthetic potential is enjoyed by future divers and fishermen.

By encouraging the establishment of new ecosystems contemporary farmers as well as the public can reap sustenance and aesthetic benefits from environmental stewardship. The ocean is a vast resource that can accommodate more life when the proper conditions are met. These conditions are minimal and new ecologies can flourish around the simplest substrate. In the ocean it is not a matter of making space for life but by making objects that attract life. By combining manufactured products with plant material we will help to define a new bio-engineered aesthetic associated with qualitative benefits that disturbs romantic desires to return to nature and environmentalism. Our ominous orbs will provide the structure from which this aesthetic will arise.

Gelatinous Armada (courtesy bittertang)By encouraging the establishment of new ecosystems contemporary farmers as well as the public can reap sustenance and aesthetic benefits from environmental stewardship. The ocean is a vast resource that can accommodate more life when the proper conditions are met. These conditions are minimal and new ecologies can flourish around the simplest substrate. In the ocean it is not a matter of making space for life but by making objects that attract life. By combining manufactured products with plant material we will help to define a new bio-engineered aesthetic associated with qualitative benefits that disturbs romantic desires to return to nature and environmentalism. Our ominous orbs will provide the structure from which this aesthetic will arise.

Gelatinous orb lifecycle (courtesy bittertang)The advantage of this methodology is that farmed fish are grown within a larger reef system that manages and cleanses the waste and accumulation of typical farms. Large colonies of wild fish and shellfish will be attracted to the new substrate and can be harvested by a farm's owner of may be made available to the public.

These orbs will not only be productive and efficient farms, but the giant spherical reefs will become an aestheticized and living object to be explored by divers and recreational fisherman. Shape and gelatin mixture will produce different living conditions and various reef typologies, no two will be the same. Once set loose in the wild the orbs will literally take on a life of their own, following currents and attracting life wherever they go, possibly even mingling with other spheres of various ages, sharing their ecosystems and giving them away as they collapse and die. In the ocean this growth can happen very quickly within months of being born the orbs will be covered with living material becoming new edible living worlds.

From the fellows at bittertang.

(courtesy bittertang)

Cesar Harada>

Remember Biosphere 2?

As a child my dream was to become an astronaut. Until it dawned on me that with my congenital heart defect plus being slightly claustrophobic this was not likely going to happen. What remained was a fascination for exploring outer space, the dream of one day being able to colonize distant planets and re-creating Earth under new (and hopefully improved) circumstances. I was sure that if I could, I would be one of the first ones to go.

"Aerial view of Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert"


A project that truly awed me at that time was the Biosphere 2, a giant man-made enclosed ecosystem completely sealed off from its surroundings. Two "closed bubble" missions were carried out, the first lasting from 1991-93 with a crew of 8 people sealed inside; the second, starting in 1994, had to be broken off prematurely due to internal quarrels about the project's funding and the direction in which research was going. I remember seeing images of pale, thin scientists being ushered out of the gigantic complex by US Federal Marshals. All in all, Biospehere 2 was considered to be a tremendous flop. Both Missions had trouble regulating the oxygen levels inside the sealed structure. Animals died or failed to reproduce while one ant species which was accidentally locked in, became too dominant.

Now, more than 15 years later, the structure still stands, and is a research site under the management of the University of Arizona. Wired Science has recently launched some interesting articles, which sum up the problems and points out that there actually were valubale papers written and insights gained from this large scale, scientific, social and psychological experiment.

read more here: wired1, wired2, wikipedia

"inside Biosphere 2"


images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Who will feed your Fish when you are out?

My wife frequently asks me to bring pet animal at home (i.e.: Fish) but I have some (maintenance) problem, especially who will feed my fish when we are out?
Now she got an answer to my dilemma - A Robotic Fish Feeder is the answer. (Designer: Ran Xiangfei) FIFER robot (Fish Feeder) does feeding job to Fish. Fish finally get the attention they deserve. One less item you need to worry about on your day to day tasks. (Related article: End of one more boring task - inflate your car tire)

Fish feeder not only feeds but feeds the fish in correct amount. First it calculates the density of Fish in water and dispenses the right amount of food at the pre-set times. If you are growing fish in fish pond then Robot moves to another area (based on pre-set path setting) of the pond calculate the fish density and dispenses. There is also a plant on top which grows to represent the health of your fish.

See more pictures here
Via [GearFuse.com and Designer: Ran Xiangfei Gerard Rallo]
Via [http://www.technologymadness.com/?p=415]

Siphonophora by Rob Davis and Usman Haque

It's not exactly Open_Sailing, but it looks very similar! This is a cool project looking at making aquatic devices that react to their surroundings. They should be living in Gunpowder park right now.

The Siphonophiora project uses small reactive devices situated in one of Gunpowder Parks lakes to record and observe environmental data. Borrowing its name from a class of marine invertebrates, Siphonophora is an interactive research project by Rob Davis and Usman Haque. The small reactive devices will track light, temperature, pH levels and other pond life activity, feeding this information live onto pachcube.com, a website which collects environmental data worldwide and which will compare this information with other natrual sites all over the world.

Images © Rob Davis. Images and words taken directly from the project website. Find out more here.

Shimp/algae combinations

The following is taken from the Kevin Kelly book The New Biology of Machines. If you find this section interesting, you can buy the book or read the rest online! (NB - I was turned onto this subject by Claudia Pasquero, who gave a fantastic demonstration of a living structure last week at the Architectural Association. Thanks Claudia!)

----------
The next question is evident: How big a bottle closed to outside flows, filled with what kind of living organisms, would you need to support a human inside?

When human daredevils ventured beyond the soft bottle of the Earth's atmosphere, this once academic question took on practical meaning. Could you keep a person alive in space -- like shrimp in an Ecosphere -- by keeping plants alive? Could you seal a man up in a sunlit bottle with enough living things so that their mutual exhalations would balance? It was a question worth doing something about.





Every school child knows animals consume the oxygen and food that plants generate, while plants consume the carbon dioxide and nutrients that animals generate. It's a lovely mirror, one side producing what the other needs, just as the shrimp and algae serve each other. Perhaps the right mix of plants and mammals in their symmetrical demands could support each other. Perhaps a human could find its proper doppelganger of organisms in a closed bottle.

The first person crazy enough to experimentally try this was a Russian researcher at the Moscow Institute for Biomedical Problems. In 1961, during the heady early years of space research, Evgenii Shepelev welded together a steel casket big enough to hold himself and eight gallons of green algae. Shepelev's careful calculations showed that eight gallons of chlorella algae under sodium lights should supply enough oxygen for one man, and one man should generate enough carbon dioxide for eight gallons of chlorella algae. The two sides of the equation should cancel each other out into unity. In theory it should work. On paper it balanced. On the blackboard it made perfect sense.

Inside the airtight iron capsule, it was a different story. You can't breathe theories. If the algae faltered, the brilliant Shepelev would follow; or, if he succumbed, the algae would do likewise. In the box the two species would become nearly symbiotic allies entirely dependent on each other, and no longer dependent upon the vast planetary web of support outside -- the oceans, air, and creatures large and small. Man and algae sealed in the capsule divorced themselves from the wide net woven by the rest of life. They would be a separate, closed system. It was by an act of faith in his science that a trim Shepelev crawled into the chamber and sealed the door.

Algae and man lasted a whole day. For about 24 hours, man breathed into algae and algae breathed into man. Then the staleness of the air drove Shepelev out. The oxygen content initially produced by the algae plummeted rapidly by the close of the first day. In the final hour when Shepelev cracked open the sealed door to clamber out, his colleagues were bowled over by the revolting stench in his cabin. Carbon dioxide and oxygen had traded harmoniously, but other gases, such as methane, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia, given off by algae and Shepelev himself, had gradually fouled the air. Like the mythological happy frog in slowly boiling water, Shepelev had not noticed the stink.

Shepelev's adventuresome work was taken up in seriousness by other Soviet researchers at a remote and secret lab in northern Siberia. Shepelev's own group was able to keep dogs and rats alive within the algae system for up to seven days. Unbeknownst to them, about the same time the United States Air Force School of Aviation Medicine linked a monkey to an algae-produced atmosphere for 50 hours. Later, by parking the tiny eight-gallon tub of chlorella in a larger sealed room, and tweaking the algae nutrients as well as the intensity of lights, Shepelev's lab found that a human could live in this airtight room for 30 days! At this extreme duration the researchers noticed that the respirations of man and algae were not exactly matched. To keep a balance of atmosphere, excess carbon dioxide needed to be removed by chemical filters. But the scientists were encouraged that stinky methane stabilized after 12 days.

By 1972, more than a decade later, the Soviet team, directed by Josepf Gitelson, constructed the third version of a small biologically based habitat that could support humans. The Russians called it Bios-3. It housed up to three men. The habitat was crowded inside. Four small airtight rooms enclosed tubs of hydroponically (soil-less) grown plants anchored under xenon lights. The men-in-a-box planted and harvested the kind of crops you might expect in Russia -- potatoes, wheat, beets, carrots, kale, radishes, onions and dill. From the harvest they prepared about half of their own food, including bread from the grain. In this cramped, stuffy, sealed greenhouse, the men and plants lived on each other for as long as six months.

The box was not perfectly closed. While its atmosphere was sealed to air exchanges, the setup recycled only 95 percent of its water. The Soviet scientists stored half of their food (meat and proteins) beforehand. In addition, the Bios-3 system did not recycle human fecal wastes or kitchen scraps; the Bios-dwellers ejected these from the container, thereby ejecting some trace elements and carbon.

In order not to lose all carbon from the cycle, the inhabitants burned a portion of the inedible dead plant matter rendering it into carbon dioxide and ash. Over weeks the rooms accumulated trace gases generated by a number of sources: the plants, the materials of the room, and the men themselves. Some of these vapors were toxic, and methods to recycle them unknown then, so the men burned off the gases by simply "burning" the air inside with a catalytic furnace.

NASA, of course, was interested in feeding and housing humans in space. In 1977 they launched the still-going CELSS program (Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems). NASA took the reductionist approach: find the simplest units of life that can produce the required oxygen, protein, and vitamins for human consumption. It was in messing around with elemental systems that NASA's Joe Hanson stumbled on the interesting, but to NASA's eyes, not very useful shrimp/algae combo.

In 1986 NASA initiated the Breadboard Project. The program's agenda was to take what was known from tabletop experiments and implement them at a larger scale. Breadboard managers found an abandoned cylinder left over from the Mercury space shots. This giant tubular container had been built to serve as pressure-testing chamber for the tiny astronaut capsule that would spearhead the Mercury rocket. NASA retrofitted the two-story cylinder with outside ductwork and plumbing, transforming the interior into a bottled home with racks of lights, plants, and circulating nutrients.

Just as the Soviet Bios-3 experiments did, Breadboard used higher plants to balance the atmosphere and provide food. But a human can only choke down so much algae each day. Even if algae was all one ate, chlorella only provides 10 percent of the daily nutrients a person needs. For this reason, NASA researchers drifted away from algae-based systems, and migrated toward plants that provided not only clean air but also food.

Ultra-intensive gardening seemed be what everyone was coming up with. Gardening could produce really edible stuff, like wheat. Among the most workable setups were various hydroponic contraptions that delivered aqueous nutrients to plants as a mist, a foam, or a thin film dripping through plastic holding racks matted with lettuce or other greens. This highly engineered plumbing produced concentrated plant growth in cramped spaces. Frank Salisbury of Utah State University discovered ways to plant spring wheat at 100 times its normal density by precisely controlling the wheat's optimal environment of light, humidity, temperature, carbon dioxide, and nutrients. Extrapolating from his field results, Salisbury calculated the amount of calories one could extract from a square meter of ultradensely planted wheat sown, say, on enclosed lunar base. He concluded that "a moon farm about the size of an American football field would support 100 inhabitants of Lunar City."

One hundred people living off a football field-size truck farm! The vision was Jeffersonian! One could envision a nearby planet colonized by a network of Superdome villages, each producing its own food, water, air, people, and culture.

But NASA's approach to inventing a living in a closed system struck many as being overly cautious, strangulatingly slow, and intolerably reductionistic. The operative word for NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems was "Controlled."

What was needed was a little "out-of-control."

Read more here
--------------
I think we are going to have a fair amount of "out of control" on the Open Sailing project...

6 sides, 12 pieces, 5 levels

- 6 sides
- 12 parts
- 5 levels thick

Unstable, fragile, uneven...

Download the 3d sketchup file (220kb)


http://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/www/labs/nomadic_ecosystem/drafts-ideas

volontary shipwrecker, Alain Bombard: "Naufragé volontaire"

Alain Bombard, french doctor, using a fish-squeezer to obtain freshwater in the laboratory of the oceanographic museum of Monaco. Preparation of a sea survival experience made in the 50's.

Scenarii of usage for nomadic ecosystem modules

by Nadine Freischlad

Letting our minds run wild with the possibilities of the modular floating system we came up with this ideal-world-scenario for its use and application.
In the setup, we have considered the following needs and applied them to the modular system.

Growing
- Land garden indoor (regulated temp/water/nutrients // regular veggies)
- Land garden outdoor (exposed to salt/temp // halophytes)
> needs to be accessible, close to storage facilities
- Salt Water gardens (algae)
- Salt Water fisheries (fish)
> need to be accesible, larger space, free circulation of water

Water refinement
- water stills (large surface/heat)
- water catch (large surface/rain)
> water stills need to be accessible, water catch needs to be very flexible for fast setup and cover max. surface

Process and store
- water store (filled from stills and rain water catch)
- food store (cool/dry, abover water and below water)
- food drying (exposed to wind/hot/dry)

waste
- compost/biomass/ biogas production unit
- fed from organic waste

Algae Farm Excursion to Kiel

In the beginnig of August, we went on a field trip to the shore of the Baltic Sea close to the city of Kiel in Northern Germany. We had an appointment to visit an algae farming site, operated by Coastal Research and Management.



CRM is a team of marine biologists led by Prof. Levent Pieker. Apart from research, consultancy and mpact assesment, they have adapted their knowledge onto developing products from the sea. In their own words:

"We see the great marine potentials and search for ways to make them work in environmental projects as well as in cosmetics, food and pharmacy. In doing so we insist on - short and long term - positive environmental effects of producing and use of the products." (taken from the website)

Specifically, their focus now lies on the cultivation of algae which CRM harvests, refines and has developed into their own line of cosmetics, oceanwell.

We chatted with Mr Pieker for a while as he explained the process of algae farming at CRM.

Algae type: Kombu Royal (Laminaria Saccharina)


Harvesting cycle

Kombu reproduces in two cycles/generation: sexual (gametophyte) and asexual (sporophyte). Asexual plant releases spores which in turn develop into gametophytes.

At CRM, Kombu is cultvated by releasing flagellated spores in water tanks, where several hundred meters of rope slowly unwound into the tank. tank is illuminated with daylight lamp.



The rope is covered with a special (secret) mixture so spores LOVE to settle on it… spores start growing, attached to the rope. Once it has reached a certain stage of maturity, the rope is released into the ocean, attached to a semi-flaoting structure.

Kombu grows during the cold season, November-March/April, and is harvested quite young, before parasites start growing on it.

Refinement

At CRM algae are processed with highly specialized machines, preserving as many of the bio active ingredients as possible. Cosmetics is the most lucrative, extracts such as agar or alginate are very low cost products.

Freezing is a good way to preserve algae, better than drying (in terms of bio active ingredients)

Semi-floaiting structure

Our excursion took place in late summer, thus harvesting time was already over and we could not go out to see the farm site on the ocean. However, Levent Pieker was kind enough to give us a copy of some short underwater films they made to document the algae growing site in the ocean. This gave us a pretty clear impression about how the strucutre works.

See what happens under the water, film by Prof. Levent Pieker
http://international-ocean-station.org/download/20091115MVI_1646.avi

For our nomadic floating garden it is important to cultivate species of algae that can travel, adapt to different circumstances... we asked Mr. Pieker if he knows of any nomadic algae?

Turns out that algae are usually quite adapted to local conditions. Especially salinity is important. In the Baltic sea, there is a significant drop in salinity from East to West. This might be a problem. On the other hand it is possible that there are types which are robust and can deal with fluctuating salinity. Time needs to be invested into finding the types. Also check some ‘nomadic’ seaweeds that travel with the currents.

About biomass

This folowing article come from the very good website Practical answer

What is biomass?

Biomass is the term used to describe all the organic matter, produced by photosynthesis that exists on the earth’s surface. The source of all energy in biomass is the sun, the biomass acting as a kind of energy store. To make use of biomass for our own energy needs we can simply burn it in an open fire to provide heat for cooking, warming water or warming the air in our home. More sophisticated technologies have been developed for extracting this energy and converting it into useful power and heat in more efficient and convenient ways.
Until relatively recently it was the only form of energy which was used by humans and is still the main source of energy for more than half the world’s population for their domestic energy needs. The extraction of energy from biomass is split into 3 distinct categories:

1. Solid biomass
The use of trees, crop residues, animal and human waste (although not strictly a solid biomass source, it is often included in this category), household or industrial residues for direct combustion to provide heat. Often the solid biomass will undergo physical processing such as cutting, chipping, briquetting, etc. but retains its solid form.

2. Biogas
Organic material to produce a combustible gas known as methane. Animal waste and municipal waste are two common feedstocks for anaerobic digestion

3. Liquid Biofuels
These are obtained by subjecting organic materials to one of various chemical or physical processes to produce a usable, combustible, liquid fuel. Biofuels such as vegetable oils or ethanol are often processed from industrial or commercial residues such as bagasse (sugarcane residue remaining after the sugar is extracted) or from energy crops grown specifically for this purpose. Biofuels are often used in place of petroleum derived liquid fuels.

Biomass use:

Solid biomass is widely used in developing countries, mainly for cooking, heating water and domestic space heating. Biomass is available in varying quantities throughout the developing world - from densely forested areas in the temperate and tropical regions of the world, to sparsely vegetated arid regions where collecting wood fuel for household needs is a time consuming and arduous task.

Biomass Practical Action

In past decades the threat of global deforestation, provided a focus for the efficient use of biomass (as well as introducing alternative fuels) in areas where woodfuel was in particular shortage. Although domestic fuelwood users can suffer greatly from the effects of deforestation, it often arises because of land clearing for agricultural use or for commercial timber. There have been many programmes aimed at developing and disseminating improved stove technologies to reduce the burden, primarily borne by women, of fuelwood collection as well as reducing health risks associated with smoke from burning fuelwood. Technologies have also been introduced to help with the processing of biomass to improve efficiency, allow for easy transportation or to make it more useable. Crop and industrial biomass residues are now widely used in many countries to provide centralised, medium and large-scale production of process heat for electricity production or other commercial end uses. There are several examples in Indonesia of timber processing plants using wood waste-fired boilers to provide heat and electricity for their own needs, and occasionally for sale to other consumers. There are also small scale options to utilising crop residues.

floating gardens

Floating garden par Benjamin Graindorge, systeme de filtration naturel pour aquarium

Bio-Hypercommunication

How can we exchange and transfer information through another media and method from the current internet? What is bio-computing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocomputation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_biology

Swarmanoid

A good example of structure modules and components forming a super-organism. Swarm robotics is a good source of inspiration when thinking about formations of "mini-gaias" through fluid, mobile living.



http://www.swarmanoid.org

The Swarmanoid project (IST-022888) is a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET-OPEN) project funded by the European Commission.

The main scientific objective of this research project is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. The system will be made up of heterogeneous, dynamically connected, small autonomous robots. Collectively, these robots will form what we call a swarmanoid. The swarmanoid that we intend to build will be comprised of numerous (about 60) autonomous robots of three types: eye-bots, hand-bots, and foot-bots.

'Fluid' the floating expo center - coming to a port near you?

18:02 November 9, 2009 PST
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/10/27/fluid-amphibious-pavilion-for-2012-world-expo/
Bridgette Meinhold, 10/27/09



A futuristic adaptable living building called “Fluid – Amphibian Pavilion” has been proposed by architects Peddle Thorp as an exhibition center for the World Expo 2012 to be held in Yeosu, Korea. Apart from its unique design, the building has a low impact on the environment because, when the Expo finishes, this floating exhibition space can be “unhooked” and sailed away to its next location.

The architects, based in Melbourne, Australia, have taken to heart the Expo’s theme “The Living Ocean and Coast” for this eye-catching creation, albeit a concept. Designer Antoine Damery has incorporated sustainability and conservation throughout the structure. The open interior has enough flexibility to accommodate all types of events and uses, now and in the future – which also adds greatly to the building’s financial viability.

Damery says his design takes its contours from fluid dynamics and oceanic organisms, and shows the previously static building model to be outdated.

If built, this pavilion could be bobbing on seas in ports around the world for years to come.

Peddle Thorp hopes “Fluid” will promote dialogue and encourage collaboration between Asia Pacific countries about the importance of the preservation of oceans and ecosytem.

The concept for Fluid was actually created for PTA by Antoine Damery, who is known for his sustainable and environmentally conscious designs. Sustainability and conservation are integral elements of the design of the structure, acting also as a metaphor of change for the emerging city of Yeosu. Fluid will be anchored to a harbor and can rise and fall with the tides, resting on the water, but not fully built into its environment. Extremely organic in form, Fluid even appears as an aquatic animal with it’s flowing lines and smooth facade.

PTA and Antoine Damery’s hope for Fluid is that it will encourage collaboration between the Asian and Pacific countries, especially with regards to the preservation of oceans and ecosystems. Created with adaptation in mind, the interior of the pavilion is open, capable of hosting various types of events during the Expo and afterwards, becoming more sustainable as the lifespan and utility of the environmentally aware pavilion is expanded. Post World Expo 2012, Fluid can be sailed around to coastal Asian cities, showcasing various exhibitions or acting as a venue for events, celebrations or concerts, meaning that new pavilions will not have to be constructed at those locations.

+ Peddle Thorpe Architects
+ Antoine Damery