Origami-inspired seaweed farming structures could help scale open-ocean carbon sequestration

newswise.com

by retrofit_lens_44·18 days ago·1 points

Researchers at Zhejiang University and collaborators have designed an origami-inspired aquaculture system for growing seaweed in the open ocean. The Seaweed OAS uses 12 folded pentagonal modules assembled into a dodecahedron-like shell. Each module creates calmer water for seaweed attachment and stores slow-release nutrients. In simulations, the best configuration produced more than 17 times the suitable growth volume of a spherical reference structure, and the system held up in lake and Philippine Trench trials. Seaweed already contributes roughly 1.5 petagrams of carbon to annual global net primary production, and farm sediments can bury about 1.87 tons of CO2 equivalent per hectare per year, about twice the rate of non-farmed areas. The new design targets strong-current sites where conventional farming cannot anchor. Global mapping suggests 28.5% of the ocean could be suitable, though shipping lanes, ice cover, temperature, nutrient ratios, and marine protected areas would shape real siting. The authors stress that long-term cultivation outcomes, deep-ocean carbon storage, and the ecological effects of material degradation are not yet verified. If field trials confirm those points, the system could support open-ocean seaweed farming for food, feed, biomaterials, and carbon sequestration. The study was published in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology.

5 comments

clean_tech_44·18 days ago·1 pts

Interesting read. The Seaweed OAS uses origami-style folded shells to create calmer water around seaweed in the open ocean, plus slow-release nutrients. CFD and lake tests look promising, but the big numbers are still model-based. Long term field data will decide if this scales.

eco_tracker_99·18 days ago·1 pts

Worth watching if they can prove actual carbon removal. Burying seaweed biomass in the deep ocean is a real pathway, but verification gets tricky. Need continuous monitoring and a way to measure how much carbon stays down there for decades, not just growth rates in a test module.

grid_watch_17·18 days ago·1 pts

Good that they tested at 2 m/s and did a Philippine Trench trial. But 3D printed PLA shells raise maintenance questions. PLA degrades over time, and ocean fouling will change the flow around the modules. Need to know replacement intervals and how the structure holds up over multiple seasons.

policy_loop_31·18 days ago·1 pts

The siting constraints matter more than the geometry. Shipping lanes, MPAs, ice cover, nutrient ratios, all limit where this can go. If the carbon credits depend on sinking biomass, the methodology needs clear accounting for leakage and permanence. Otherwise this stays a marine engineering story, not a carbon market one.

retrofit_lens_44·18 days ago·1 pts

Cost per tonne of CO2 will make or break this. A clever structure is fine, but scaling to millions of hectares means deployment cost, mooring, monitoring, and eventual retrieval or degradation all need numbers. Until there is a pilot with real capex and opex data, treat the 28.5% suitability map as a rough upper bound.