Abstract
In order to industrialize macroalgal cultivation in Norway, new automated methods and solutions for seeding, deployment and harvesting need to be developed. Today's solutions are time and resource demanding, still yielding volumes nationally in the range of 100–200 tons per year in total (not including wild harvest), while the potential is in the megaton range. Standardization of equipment and automation can be one way to upscale production. Here we present results from a design study of a module-based solution for industrial cultivation, with specific solutions for spinning of thin seedling strings onto longlines, and a robotic module for interaction with the submerged farm at deployment and harvest. A reduced-scale physical prototype of the farm concept with the robot has been built for testing of deployment and harvesting techniques. The concept has been named SPOKe: Standardized Production of Kelp.
Highlights
Cultivation of the oceans is required to meet demands for food, animal and fish feed, materials and energy for a growing global population
The module design allows for a portable gantry robot (Figures 1, 10) to be moved between modules, automatically deploying cultivation rope prepared using the rope spinner (Figure 9) or harvesting seaweed as the rope is detached from the module
A gantry robot was implemented as a separate system that could be mounted on the ring structure, with the rail traveling along the inner and outer rings of the structure
Summary
Cultivation of the oceans is required to meet demands for food, animal and fish feed, materials and energy for a growing global population. Norway has six times more ocean than land area, making the ocean one of Norway’s greatest natural resources. It is already exploited extensively through oil and gas production and farming of Atlantic salmon, but despite having a significant economic potential (Olafsen et al, 2012), the volume of seaweed cultivation is small. Exploitation of wild seaweed resources has a long tradition in Norway (largely Laminaria hyperborea and Ascophyllum nodosum; Meland and Rebours, 2012). The harvested areas are subject to regulations and periodic following, and it is recognized that the growing demands of the industry can not be satisfied solely from the wild (Stévant et al, 2017). Over-harvesting of seaweed in other countries has already shown devastating consequences
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