๐ ๏ธHardware and Test Lab
Running Tide's hardware team developed a fleet of low-cost sensors built to monitor mCDR interventions. Known as "Verification Hardware" or the "Open Ocean Observation Platform" internally, our sensor program was designed to collect data and answer key questions about:
Drift and sinking location of deployed biomass
Environmental conditions: Wave, trajectory, and sea surface temperature
Chlorophyl A (as a proxy for phytoplankton and nutrients)
Biomass accumulation, macroalgae growth
Our verification fleet provided information to tune ocean transport models, calculate the float time distribution of material in the surface ocean, and provide parameters that describe the state of the ocean.
The sensor fleet evolved over time as we iterated to dematerialize the buoys, reduce power consumption, decrease cost, and reduce or eliminate the use of plastics where possible.
In addition to sensor hardware deployed into the open ocean, we designed laboratory hardware to collect data in a controlled environment about:
The impact of waves on formed substrate designs and macroalgae growth
The impact of waves on wood chip float times
Density of various substrates including wood chips over time
Macroalgae growth over time
We focused on lab and offshore data collection to support a product development cycle built around a "learning loop."
Collect lab data to drive a computational model and predict deployment behavior
Deploy a trial and collect offshore data to verify our predictions
Compare results offshore to modeled results and learn about system performance
Improve the system design and conduct lab tests to gather data about improved performance
In total, as part of our 2022 and 2023 trial and terrestrial biomass sinking mCDR seasons, we built and deployed:
48 Cage Buoys
362 v1 Trajectory Buoys
15 Cam-Lite Buoys
152 v2 Trajectory Buoys
and collected thousands of images, sea surface temperature data, drift trajectory data, and solar data to build, tune, and verify our deployments and computational models.
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