Kelp Stabilization for Rural Communities

A collaborative project developing accessible kelp processing technology for small- and medium-sized farms in coastal communities. GreenWave partnered with Alaska Sea Grant, Macro Oceans, KALI, and Alaska Ocean Farms to create a scalable processing system that transforms fresh kelp into a pumpable slurry ready for stabilization—using minimal space, labor, power, and freshwater. This was built for under $50,000 with off-the-shelf equipment, making regenerative ocean farming more economically viable in rural areas.

This work was supported by a grant from the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation Joint Innovation Project and Southeast Conference, part of the Research and Development component of the Alaska Mariculture Cluster, funded by an Economic Development Administration Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant.

Transcript

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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.

Topics:

Processing + Markets