At the beginning of the semester, in one of my classes, we were challenged to find how certain products are related to the oceans. My group got 'ice cream' and we found that it contains an extract called carrageenan. This comes from sea weed and is used as a thickener.
Recent studies are looking into another use for sea weed... as biomass. Sea weed is being tested as a new form of alternative energy. The hopes are that it will burn as a biomass type of fuel and produce clean energy that we need, but then the waste materials could also be used in agriculture as a fertilizer. As well as this, it is thought that the harvesting of the sea weed could have a positive impact on marine life.
Most problems with alternative energy fuels concern the loss of land due to harvesting farms (wind farms, solar panels), how the alternative energy turbines would affect their surroundings (wave energy) or what to do with the waste products (nuclear). If this research into sea weed all turns out to be proven true, then we may have found a fuel source that does not have these problems.....
Seaweed 'a green fuel alternative' http://environment.uk.msn.com/news/headlines/article.aspx?cp-documentid=10401848
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