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Jellyfish Barge: Sustainable Source of Food and Water

1 points by f2hex ↗ HN
After 3 years this award winning project does not takeoff - it should deserve more consideration. http://www.pnat.net/jellyfish-barge.php http://www.matteodemayda.com/filter/photography/Jellyfish-Barge

3 comments

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gus_massa
Why is it better than building a greenhouse on land and using some pipes to get the water?
f2hex
Mainly because it uses water available on the sea: salt, brackish or polluted water. All the need for energy is fulfilled by sun power. Having in on a land would add complexity with the pipes. Moreover scarcity of water and cultivable land are the main obstacles to meet the quantitative and qualitative shifts of the world’s demand. Most of the potentially arable land is concentrated in a few geographical areas, and it is extremely scarce in many of the regions with high population growth rates, such as North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The solution it is also modular and flexible and the capability to move it could be really useful in some circumstances.
gus_massa
IIUC this use the solar power to filter the water, and then it is cultivated in pots or hydroponic or something. So it doesn't matter if the structure is on non arable land or over water.

Being over water simplifies the pipes, but you must be sure that the device floats, this is not so easy, small ships sunk very often and need a lot of maintenance, specially in salty water.

Also, the dome/jellyfish shape is nice, but the light each plant gets is smaller, in a flat surface each plan gets more light. The plants essentially convert sunlight into food, so more sunlight is better.

And most commercial plantation relay in very cheap (or free) water. Any filtration to use salty or polluted water will increase the cost of production.