The Complexity and Wide Use of Algae
Algae as a solution to modern-day problems
Everyone at least once in their lives has encountered Algae in water, in the mud, in an old piece of wood, or even in food.
That’s because Algae are common all over the Earth. Even more so, they are classified as a polyphyletic group — organisms that don’t share a common ancestor — and that’s because of their wide range of classification, attributed to their also highly complex diversity of known life forms.
As photosynthetic eukaryotes, Algae is an informal term that includes a broad range of organisms, which range from unicellular microalgae to multicellular macroalgae. In other words, Algae is one of the most predominantly present forms of life.
Their different biological structures allowed them to adapt to almost every type of environment on Earth.
However, how is Algae being used, and what’s their real potential?
Humanity is not abstracted from nature. Natural resources are what lead us to build communities, feed them, and develop a sustained society (with its current limitations).
The question we should ask ourselves should be: How can we use natural resources to our advantage smartly and sustainably?
I believe most of us are aware of the current climate-ecological crisis and how it is impacting and will further impact our lives.
In consequence, innovation must flourish, and solutions must be achieved. That’s where Algae enters the scene.
How can Algae charge your phone
Algae can be massively used as a biofuel — fuel that is produced over a short period from biomass or organic matter — in the form of Microalgae.
Its importance radicates in its high-growth potential, its ability to capture high concentrations of CO2, and an important prevalence of lipids and carbohydrates, all of which contribute to an efficient source of energy.
Lipids, particularly, are a major agent in the efficiency of algae to become an energy-efficient source. Due to their concentration of composite fatty acids, proteins, and carbohydrates, this makes them a high caloric density component, which in turn, allows them to serve as an efficient energy source.
Either macroalgae or microalgae can be used with different approaches depending on the type of biofuel one is intended to harvest. For example, Anaerobic fermentation of algae biomass allows the production of biomethane, oil from microalgae may be used as biodiesel, and bioethanol is obtained after saccharification and fermentation of algae. Or, simplistically, Algae as a biomass source can be combusted directly to generate power.
However, many concerns arise from the practical use of algae, their inefficiency, and their potential impact on ecosystems because of the large amounts of water they require.
The increase in energy demand worldwide, combined with the global shift away from fossil fuels, has seen biofuel production increase significantly in the last decades.
Algae in this sense is not the most space-efficient source of biofuel for a typical annual productivity biodiesel plant. For example, Palm oil requires 475 L/km², coconut 215 L/km², while microalgae production needs 1700 L/km².
However, with time comes innovation, and new technologies arise that could eventually increase algae productivity and make it a daily source of energy for every household.
Algae for dinner?
To your surprise, the quality of proteins from algae is superior to other plant sources, including wheat, rice, or beans but inferior to animal proteins, such as milk or meat. These organisms also are a good source of fiber and contain many vitamins and elements — such as calcium, sodium, magnesium, phosphorous, and so on.
In East Asia, eating algae is a tradition centuries old. On the other hand, in Western countries, there has been an increase in interest in the consumption of algae-based products, mainly among vegetarians.
That’s because Algae can be consumed in any circumstance. For instance, algae are used as nutritional supplements, as snacks, to bake salt-free bread, for coloring food, as well as for algae-induced burgers!
Another practical use of algae in the food industry is their easy-to-transport capacity. This comes about when algae are harvested and dried into a powder. Waterless algae reduces costs of transport, making them a new source of supplement for your food, either as a colorant or if you are looking algae-taste-food.
To have a practical example, in Japan, brown algae has been consumed for centuries. It is used in soups, salads, condiments, and more, with an estimated 100.000 tons of edible brown algae being produced annually in the country, out of which 90% is for human consumption and 10% for industry. In other words, algae can be scaled up to become a highly relevant source of food.
Algae can clean it up
We tend to go to the bathroom, do our business, flush the toilet, and forget about the next step. However, a single toilet flush averages 9–11 liters of water, an extraordinary amount if we scale it up to the 57% of the population currently using this service.
This amounts to a huge quantity of water which needs to be reutilized. We call it Wastewater. But, as you may be thinking, in order to be reutilized, wastewater needs to be treated in a way that eliminates any trait of toxic concentrations to the human body (e.g., Nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, pesticides, organic and inorganic toxins, etc.).
In recent years, concern has grown over the sustainability of conventional wastewater treatment systems in terms of economic feasibility and environmental impact, mainly attributed to high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Here’s when algae (especially microalgae for this case) can become a cost-effective and sustainable solution to wastewater treatment. How does microalgae achieve this? First, microalgae need organic and inorganic carbon, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to grow, reducing the concentration of these inorganic substances in water.
Another very relevant function for microalgae is their ability to assimilate the aforementioned inorganic compounds through photosynthesis. The production of O2 as a byproduct of this process enables the proliferation of aerobic bacteria — bacteria that grow when oxygen is predominantly present — which have the potential to metabolize and degrade organic pollutants, creating a combined effect of microalgae-aerobic bacteria to clean things up.
How to replace fish with algae
Aquaculture is the breeding, raising, and harvesting of fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants, such as seaweed algae. In short words, it’s farming in water.
On the other hand, and what interests us the most, seaweed is the common name for countless species of marine plants and algae that grow in the ocean as well as in rivers, lakes, and other water bodies.
The demand and consumption of seaweed farming has increased significantly. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the global seaweed output has increased nearly three-fold, from 118.000 tons to 358.200 tons from 2000–2019. Seaweed can be harvested in the wild, however, by 2019, 81% of seaweed came from farming.
To be short, the expansion of seaweed farming has led a lot of countries (such as China, Mexico, Chile, Indonesia, and Japan, among others) to invest heavily in the development of aquaculture, especially with the use of seaweed.
Seaweed has the potential to grow even further because of the newly found nutrients. Additionally, the potential demand for algal compounds and other chemicals generated by biotechnology is growing. It is expected that seaweed farming will start to take an even higher portion of the aquaculture market, competing with fish products.
Furthermore, due to being farmed in fresh or seawater, seaweed doesn’t require the use of antibiotics or pesticides, which can lead to a shift in consumer demands, attributed to the current changes in how we see the food we consume.
Algae as the driver of interconnected life
We’ve reviewed the many uses and functions of algae across different forms (macroalgae, microalgae, seaweed). But, how does algae behave in their natural ecosystem?
Algae are critical parts of aquatic ecosystems, by powering food webs and biogeochemical cycling. As a simple structure, plants and algae use energy from the sun to grow, at the same time, these are consumed by herbivores, who will, eventually, be consumed by carnivores.
As a result, there is a direct and indirect transfer of nutrients, and organic and inorganic matter across the ecosystem, starting in this case with algae.
For an illustrative example, let's think of microalgae in aquatic food systems. Microalgae, as diatoms for example, can be consumed by what are called zooplankton. In turn, zooplankton is consumed by a diverse range of small fish and crustaceans, known as primary consumers. Primary consumers are also others' dinner, in this case, for larger fish, sharks, penguins, whales, and other vertebrates, and yes, that includes humans.
This encompasses the full food web structure and how algae are one of the main drivers of this energy fuel system.
Algae, like plants or even fungi, are sometimes not taken as relevant to our everyday life as they really are.
In this case, algae have an enormous potential to, in a similar fashion to their ecological role, become a main driver of change in our consumption behavior, by influencing food, energy, and big parts of the economy.
