Ocean CO2 Capture-William Hall
See my prior posts over the last few days on ocean fertilization and farming for the capture and sequestration of carbon. ~half the surface of the oceans of the world is basically desert because there is so little iron and/or magnesium available that phytoplankton can't make enough chlorophyll to survive. Supplying these trace elements in micronutrient quantities seems to be sufficient to make these areas literally bloom. It remains to the 'farmers' to seed the fertilized areas with optimum mixes of phytoplankton and zooplankton to maximize the carbon captured; and then to add and manage suitable suites planktivores and higher order predators to package the captured carbon in fecal pellets and carcases that will rapidly sink to the ocean floor before the captured carbon can be recycled into CO₂. Some of the premium animal protein can be harvested as fish-fillets, etc. to replace the need for dedicating vast areas of arable land surface to farming animal protein. In turn, this would allow revegitation and farming to optimize carbon capture and sequestration on land. Of all the schemes I have seen more thermodynamically, physically, logistically, and economically practical than any other proposal I have seen. Except for the need to refit converted fossil fuel transporters with wind/photovoltaic propulsion to make them green, most of the required infrastructure already exists in the soon to be redundant fossil fuel and mining industry. Deployment could be started on a large pilot scale within a year. Might not be terribly efficient from year one, but at least some carbon would be captured with efficiencies to increase rapidly through trial and error learning as well as guidance from controlled experimentation. A further advantage is that this system comes equipped with a built-in emergency switch. If it shows signs of going awry turn off the micronutrient taps to starve it to a stop as the residual chlorophyll carries trace elements to the bottom along with the last of the captured carbon.
