(Moved) Mass Algae Farm for Carbon Sequestration

[BrandonBerchtold]

Summary:: Not looking for concrete answers, just want to spitball some ideas about the basics of Algae cultivation and implications of scaling to large scale.

So the idea is this:

Build massive ponds and seed them with an initial culture of algae.
Wait one doubling period and filter out half the population.
Dehydrate this filtered algae and burry it.
Repeat.

Obviously the devil is in the details and the scale of such an operation would be colossal, but I have a couple questions about algae in general:

1) What sort of doubling periods can I expect from algae? Is 5 doublings per day (with only natural sunlight) reasonable? I've seen this value quoted before but that was likely in ideal lab conditions, not an open air pond. Are there strains that surpass this value in nature? Does bubbling air through the water and agitating the water significantly improve the doubling rate?

2) Are there any growth hormones, nutrients, environmental stimuli that can increase biomass production / doubling rate?

3) Is algae generally sensitive to contamination? It seems algae seems to pop up in any standing body of water so I'd assume they are pretty hardy, though not sure if this is the case in kilometer scale ponds.

 

[BillTre]

1) Doubling periods would depend on species and conditions.

3) Algea will show up but your results will be better if you seed your pond.

Fertilizing the ocean would probably more effective in many ways. The algae 9or things that eat them) will sink to the bottom of the ocean when they die.

There was an extensive thread on this recently,
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/algae-carbon-capture.1004876/.