Kelp Stabilization for Rural Communities

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The minute that you take your kelp outta the water,

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it starts to degrade and lose quality and lose value.

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We really started dialing in on these,

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what we're calling ambient

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temperature stabilization strategies.

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Take it from a, a product that degrades as in as little

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as 12 hours outta taking it out of the water

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and keeps it stable for up to a year.

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This creates a feedstock for things like bio refineries

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and bioplastics and, and even biostimulants.

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Those, those off-takers can then metabolize a harvest that,

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that might have happen in a four week period.

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Um, they can stretch out, uh, the extraction

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and the value added of that product.

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Uh, over the entire year.

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The predominant methods of stabilization

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for kelp right now are drying and freezing,

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and it turns out that each

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of them also want a size reduction step.

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First. In the case of freezing, you need

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to remove all the air from the product,

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and so breaking it up so

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that it sits flat in a solution

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is really important for freezing.

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And likewise, when it comes to drying, um,

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increasing the edge

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to surface ratio makes drying go a lot quicker,

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and so it lowers the energy input for drying.

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We're we're finding that, uh, many plate,

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many buyers in the marketplace prefer a f flaked

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or a powdered kelp to a whole leaf dried kelp

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in the, in our journey to try

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and find, uh, really good machines for this application, we,

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we looked high and low.

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We, we really didn't, uh, leave any stone unturned.

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Kelp is kind of a funny material.

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It's pretty pliable and leathery,

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so it doesn't always cut well, like a machine

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that cuts a rigid material like a,

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a wood chipper, which was also tried.

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And it's also very strong intensive wrap around things.

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So things like augers can often be fouled by kelp.

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What's the simplest, cheapest thing that'll, that'll work

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for this application that's durable,

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that doesn't require a specialized, uh, technician

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to fly in from a long,

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a long ways away if something goes wrong with it

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and position it up on a stand

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or wherever you want to use it.

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So one of the reasons that we really like working

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with this machine is that it doesn't use any gear reduction

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or, or any other, uh, interface to the motor.

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So it's just a shaft driven direct drive machine, uh,

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which means that it can be run from an electric motor,

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a gas motor, or even a hydraulic motor, even though, um, it,

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it is very well constructed.

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Two people can actually move it.

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This machine is f flanged on the in feed and the out feed,

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and it's designed to be put into a mechanized line

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that's being fed by a conveyor belt or an auger, uh, or, or,

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or some sort of a mechanism like that for our application.

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We're hand feeding it and,

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and hand collecting, uh, the out feed.

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The other thing that, um, really drew us to this machine is

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that it, it, uh, you can control the particle size

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of the output from it.

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The, the ability to adjust particle size and, and to iterate

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and experiment is really important.

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We've been storing the kelp in 55 gallon drums,

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and so just a five gallon paint bucket from Home

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Depot works really well.

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It's the right shape to collect the output.

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We're very interested in strategies

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and systems that can be distributed that might cost 40,

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$50,000 that a, that a, a good size farmer could own

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and maybe, and maybe rent out to some of their neighbors

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that, that, that were smaller

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and getting started in the business

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that a farmer cooperative could, could really,

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would make sense for them to purchase and operate, um,

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and maybe operate as a service for,

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for farm other farms in the area.