American Startup Growing Kelp to Pull Carbon From the Air, Then Sink it in the Ocean
Carbon emissions have proven to be disastrous for the environment and the inhabitants of the planet. Excessive emission of greenhouse gases by industries and various human activities has led to climate change and various diseases.
In an effort to reduce carbon emissions, Running Tide Technologies, a startup based in Maine, United States is using kelp to pull carbon from the air.
Kelps that are grown by Running Tide Technologies | Image: CNN
As per the startup, kelp is a type of seaweed that will be helpful in pulling carbon from the air and storing it deep beneath the ocean.
Martin Odlin, the founder of Running Tide Technology, along with a team of engineers, software developers, maritime professionals, data scientists, oceanographers, and hatchery technicians is working to bury large amounts of kelp deep under the ocean.
American startup using kelp to pull carbon from the air and sink it in the ocean afterward | Image: CNN
Martin Odlin said,
Kelp is one of the fastest growing things in the world, so it pulls carbon in at the fastest rate of any species in the world. After the kelp grows, the biodegradable buoy will dissolve and lose it buoyancy and everything will sink to the ocean bottoms. The intentional removal of eight hundred gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere will probably be the biggest engineering challenge in the human history.
With the help of ocean currents, Odlin and his team move the kelp into deep water to sink it. Running Tide Technology grows the seeds in a hatchery and when the kelp is ready, the team puts the kelp into biodegradable buoys.
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The kelp gets too heavy for the buoy as it grows. As a result, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean and reaches the ocean’s floor due to massive water pressure.
Apart from this, Odlin is also working with scientists and with universities in order to collect data to make sure that carbon is being removed.
Running Tide Technology’s first big customer for carbon removal credits is Shopify, an E-commerce platform. Running Tide is also being helped by Shopify in scaling and commercializing their technologies and in creating more partnership opportunities.
Via: CNN Business
