Cultivation and Scaling
Running Tide’s approach to cultivation of macroalgae started by applying techniques commonly known in kelp farming. Over the last few years with more acquired knowledge and adoption of biotechnological cultivation systems and practices, the sophistication of the cultivation increased dramatically. Cultivation of selected species took place at numerous locations, while scaling of cultivation in large volumes took place at our research and production facility “Alda” in Akranes, Iceland. Scaling of cultivation was not required for many of our experiments, but it was essential for successfully seeding substrate/buoys for future large scale deployments.
Between 20 and 30 people worked directly on the macroalgae teams at Running Tide, so designing and improving our macroalgae system involved considerable effort and allocation of resources. Three locations (Akranes, Portland and St. Louis) worked with macroalgae, each investigated different aspects of macroalgae cultivation, scaling, sporulation, spore attachment to substrate/buoys and algae growth following attachment.
Standing up production R&D
As previously mentioned Running Tide operated three separate locations that conducted macroalgae research. In the early stages of the company all macroalgae related work was done in Portland Maine out of 40 foot shipping containers that had been retrofitted to be macroalgae hatcheries, capable of receiving living macroalgae from the ocean and conducting experiments. While useful for new operations, available space and power in the containers severely limited the scale of operations. As the company grew and expanded its activities, the St. Louis and Akranes sites were built to study genetics and breeding and scaling respectively. Portland facilities were also expanded to focus on attachment and substrate development.
In the spring of 2022 Running Tide founded its Iceland based subsidiary and announced ambitious plans for expansion of its mCDR operations. An article about the Iceland expansion was circulated in different news outlets in Iceland (see HERE, HERE and HERE). Shortly thereafter, the company shipped to Akranes one of its container macroalgae hatcheries and macroalgae related operations in Iceland began. The container hatchery in Iceland was intended to jump-start macroalgae related activities in Akranes as the container contained all the materials and equipment necessary to receive living algae from the ocean, acclimate it to on-land conditions, and cultivate it for research purposes.
Simultaneously, we made plans for building a pilot-scale macroalgae research and production facility inside Breið Þróunarfélag in Akranes. Running Tide gained access to a 1000m2 space on the ground floor that was well suited for being converted into a macroalgae research and production hub. Months of intense planning and engineering ensued and in spring of 2023 our macroalgae facility “Alda” was inaugurated and officially operational and fully equipped for indoor cultivation of macroalgae. By that point the number of full time Running Tide employees at Alda had increased to five, including three PhD level scientists as well as two skilled technicians.
Following the inauguration of Alda, we spent a few months learning how to effectively cultivate both Ulva and kelp gametophytes and tune our cultivation systems. During this time the Alda team was publishing internally to the rest of the company monthly reports on the activities, both successes and failures. These monthly reports are available as a ZIP archive below. Starting around July-September, the Alda team started experiencing success with its research and production efforts and was able to sustain that momentum throughout 2023. Process details and a summary of 2023 macroalgae activities in Iceland can be found in the "Macroalgae at Alda - 2023 Annual Report.” This overview is a good starting point to understand the cultivation processes we used and the experiments we conducted. The last report on macroalgae activities at Alda was published following Q1 of 2024 and is available HERE.
Photos of some equipment at our Alda facility below:
Production and cultivation modeling
We worked on a hybrid model for the cultivation of Ulva, where the overall goal was to understand the effect of different environmental factors (biomass density, nutrient availability, pH, CO2 administration, moon cycle status and PBR size) on the growth of Ulva. Our preliminary results were promising, demonstrating that we could predict the growth and nutrient dynamics given a set of environmental parameters with considerable accuracy (see figure below).
These results would help the Running Tide team optimize macroalgae deployments - buoy designs, deployment locations, and times of year - to maximize their efficacy.
Quality management and work standardization
Throughout 2023 the macroalgae team at Alda was developing its protocols and in an effort to standardize and share methods and techniques within the company the team wrote and published internally numerous SOPs. These documents are intended to explain in detail how important tasks should be executed and how vital equipment should be operated. The list of published SOPs is below:
Last updated
