Renewable energy researchers have been turning to seaweed as a source of biofuel, and while that’s bubbling up in the background, the COVID-19 crisis has brought renewed attention to the all-around sustainability aspect of harvesting renewable resources from the sea. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some new developments in the field of seaweed, aka macroalgae.
Tina Casey reports in CleanTechnica
No. Do not run out and buy random seaweed to treat yourself for COVID-19 symptoms. However, new research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York does indicate that an extract from seaweed could “substantially” outperform the current go-to COVID-19 treatment, remdesavir.
The paper is available online at the journal Cell Discovery under the title, “Sulfated polysaccharides effectively inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.“
That’s in vitro, not in people, meaning that the research is still in early stages. Nevertheless, it is promising. The Rensselaer team deploys a “decoy” approach that has worked on dengue, Zika, and Influenza A, among other viruses.
The decoy material distracts the virus from latching onto human cells, and locks the virus into a safe space where it can degrade harmlessly.
Tricky!
COVID-19 Treatment, Seaweed Edition
For those of you keeping score at home, the seaweed extract used in the study consists of several variations of the common anticoagulent heparin.
And this is where it gets interesting. Heparin has been manufactured for 100 years or so, but almost all of it has been derived from animals, not seaweed. Our friends over at the National Institutes of Health journal Molecules have the backstory.
“The purification of heparin from offal is an old industrial process for which commercial recipes date back to 1922,” they write. “Although chemical, chemoenzymatic, and biotechnological alternatives for this production method have been published in the academic literature, animal-tissue is still the sole source for commercial heparin production in industry.”
They were saying that back in 2017, but since then it seems that research on the seaweed alternative has picked up steam.
Cost is still an obstacle for commercial interest in seaweed-derived heparin. However, with an unprecedented pandemic well under way and no end in sight, demand for COVID-19 treatments could help jumpstart the seaweed-to-heparin supply chain globally.
The renewable energy angle comes in because the seaweed-to-biofuel supply chain has also attracted little interest on a commercial level. If the heparin market spurs investor interest in seaweed farming for medical applications, economies of scale could also kick in and help bring down costs on the biofuel side as well.
Renewable Energy From The Sea, Heparin Industry Edition
The big question is why the heparin industry needs an alternative to offal. After all, the world is awash in offal. It’s cheap, it’s available, and something must be done with it.
Part of the answer could lie in mad cow disease, which sparked new restrictions on the re-use of offal. Consolidation in the rendering industry is also raising concerns about supply chains and price volatility. Over the long term, offal supplies could shrink as global demand for red meat fades (most pharmaceutical heparin is derived from cattle lungs and pig intestines).
More to the point, seaweed-derived heparin-type drugs could be more efficient than conventional heparin, as suggested by a 2019 study.
Kickstarting The Renewable Energy Market, Seaweed Edition
If all of that falls into place and COVID-19 helps stimulate commercial seaweed farming beyond its current scale, the implications for biofuel could be significant.
The US Department of Energy began prepping for such a venture in 2017, when it launched a new round of funding for the MARINER (Macroalgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources) initiative, which aims to propel seaweed farming into the 21st century and deploy it as a renewable energy resource.
MARINER comes under the Energy Department’s cutting edge ARPA-E office, which specializes in high risk, high reward research.
Of particular interest is a project that involves ramping up farming methods for the brown seaweed Sargassum, which has also been studied for heparin extraction.
That project comes from the University of Mississippi, which received $500,000 in funding to create a system of semi-autonomous, wave powered tugboats that will reposition “paddocks” of Sargassum for optimum nutrient intake.
About the Author
Tina Casey specializes in military and corporate sustainability, advanced technology, emerging materials, biofuels, and water and wastewater issues. Tina’s articles are reposted frequently on Reuters, Scientific American, and many other sites. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter @TinaMCasey and Google+.
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