Experimental Evaluation of Direct Air Capture CO2 for Marine Microalgae Cultivation

Abstract

As the world’s energy and food demands increase, research shows the potential for algae to provide alternative food and fuel sources is high. However, this potential is limited by the need for production to be at a large scale to be economically possible and the question of how to sustainably scale up algae remains. New direct air capture technology can capture carbon that can be used for algae feed, creating the opportunity of harvesting sustainable carbon that is not collected from fossil fuel sources. Here, we evaluate the direct air capture carbon against fossil fuel carbon in terms of algae growth, health, and physiological composition. We find that algae fed direct air capture carbon did not have a noticeable difference in metrics when compared to the control carbon. While this data suggests there is now a potential for sustainable carbon, direct air capture carbon would need to be scaled up to test its feasibility in the real world.