Could you make valuable products from the Sargassum?

Seaweed Generation is the result of over twenty years of algal research which culminated in our recent action to combat climate change and do something about the carbon crisis.

We believe that there is amazing potential to utilise seaweed (in particular Sargassum in the near term) in Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) processes, which is why we are leading with it.

We are frequently asked about making fuels, fertilisers and other products (like plastics and other materials) from Sargassum, and whether we could do that instead.

We have given heaps of consideration to many other products and services we could utilise Sargassum for. Take a look at some of our papers that we have put out into the public domain over the past few years on algae fuels made by hydrothermal processing¹, and algae derived fertilisers², nutraceuticals³, pharmaceuticals⁴ and feedstocks⁵.

After all of this work, we have come to the conclusion that Sargassum, and the limitations that are associated with a free floating, uncontrollable, seasonable biomass are not conducive to sustainable industrial manufacturing processes⁶⁷.

The Sargassum also creates a major health risk when it gets beached and starts decomposing⁸. We think the best thing we can do is stop this happening and simultaneously enable essential research into one of very few scaleable pathways to gigatonne scale CDR.

If you think we’ve missed something, please do get in touch and tell us. We are always happy to discuss opportunities if you think we’ve overlooked something or you can help us make a breakthrough.

Here’s something to whet your appetite: we have successfully made a litre of biocrude from the hydrothermal liquefaction of Sargassum washed up on a Mexican beach.

We reckon it needs about $50-100M investment to possibly make it a viable process, but there are some significant challenges that need to be overcome first. If you can help and support us please get in touch. More information can be found here.

We’ll be publishing the phytohormone analysis of Sargassum, as part of our search for potentially useful molecules, soon as well.