The Anonymous Widower

Brown Seaweed Could Remove 550 Million Tons Of Carbon

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Carbon Herald.

This may seem like a story that has arrived a few months early.

But the report does come from the respect Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology.

The research is detailed on this page on their web site, which is entitled Slime For The Cli­mate, De­livered By Brown Al­gae.

It is introduced by this sub-heading.

In form of fuc­oidan, brown al­gae could re­move up to 550 mil­lion tons of car­bon di­ox­ide from the at­mo­sphere every year.

Which is followed by this paragraph.

Brown algae take up large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and release parts of the carbon contained therein back into the environment in mucous form. This mucus is hard to break down for other ocean inhabitants, thus the carbon is removed from the atmosphere for a long time, as researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen now show. They reveal that the algal mucus called fucoidan is particularly responsible for this carbon removal and estimate that brown algae could thus remove up to 550 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year – almost the amount of Germany’s entire annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Note that fucoidan has a Wikipedia entry.

The page says this about brown algae.

Brown al­gae are true won­der plants when it comes to ab­sorb­ing car­bon di­ox­ide from the air.

It does seem to me that the Germans are on to something.

December 31, 2022 - Posted by AnonW | Energy | Carbon Capture, Germany, Max Planck Institute, Research, Seaweed