Transforming energy and transportation into primary engines for reversing global warming and eliminating ocean acidification

摘要

The invention encompasses multi-stage naturally amplified global-scale carbon dioxide capture systems combining basic capture from (CC—carbon capture) clean-coal-fired and CC gas-fired power plants, natural-gas reformation systems, cement plants, outdoor air, home and building flues, incinerators, crematoriums, blast-furnaces, kilns, refineries, factories, oil gasification systems and coal gasification systems which yield concentrated carbon dioxide, with a collective, globally distributed capture capacity of up to 3 GtC/yr, feeding the captured carbon dioxide into land-based invention stage-1 bioreactors for rapid, selective, high capacity conversion to a high-density, fast-sinking marine algae by means of accelerated photosynthesis and/or coccolithogenesis (calcification) consuming carbon dioxide as the algae bloom, and transporting the stage-1 bioreactor-produced algae to seaports for seeding the oceans at regular intervals in stage-2 operations-at-sea to produce naturally amplified 14 GtC/yr algal blooms at sea, the stage-2 operations circumventing classic prior-art (and natural) ocean fertilization limits of low bloom rate, grazers eating algae seed before it blooms, interfering buoyant strains which don't clear the photic zone to allow light penetration for multiple blooms per year, and proximal post-bloom anoxia. A total invention CO₂ capture and safe storage capacity of 17 GtC/yr (land and sea) is projected during fair-weather, and a 40% foul weather down-time allowance ensures that an average 10 GtC/yr of impact capture would result. If emissions are concurrently capped by at 12 GtC/yr by 2023, with invention-assisted reduction to 6 GtC/yr by 2050, 3 GtC/yr by 2062, and 1 GtC/yr by 2078, atmospheric CO₂ will be reduced to 280 ppm by 2075.;A spin-off technology includes hydrogen (H₂) production by natural-gas reformation—enough H₂ to fuel a significant fraction of transportation by 2050. Spin-off side benefits of the invention system include restoring ideal ocean pH and re-proliferating decimated marine populations, restoring them to levels last seen in the 18^th to mid-19^th centuries. Additional spin-off applications of invention bioreactor algal production include silage, animal feed, feed supplements, fertilizer, biofuels, food for fish and mollusk farming, cleansing lakes and rivers of bacteria and agricultural run-off, and elimination of coastal water HAB's (harmful algae blooms), such as the notorious “red tide” in Florida.