Seasteading

[ProudLefty]

I posted my seastead concept over at SSI. Here's a link to the post along with the concept overview. If you want to see the pretty pictures and a more thorough explanation of the concept, click the link and check it out.

GenSeneca's Seastead Concept

Conceptual Overview: A floating platform is used to harvest seaweed and/or kelp, which is then turned into mash and distilled to make ethanol. The ethanol is burned in turbines which power the platform, farming vessels, and a small bulk carrier. The used mash is dried into powdered seaweed/kelp, loaded onto the small bulk carrier, and sold in bulk at a nearby port.

Harvesting one acre per day will produce just over 2400 gallons of ethanol, half of which is used to create a minimum of 30 MW and a maximum of 70 MW of power for the platform. One of the daily byproducts is roughly 40,000 lbs of seaweed/kelp powder and, if sold for $1/lb, translates into $40k/day income, or $14.6 million per year. There is one last byproduct, the seawater drained from the seaweed/kelp is filtered to make fresh water and stored.​

You have to handle it three times, right? Once to harvest it from the sea, once to process it for ethanol, and once to load it to ship it. Thats 60,000 pounds you are wrestling with every single day, Thats the equivalent of 50 of those huge round bales we see out in the hay fields. Thats going to pretty well take up your whole day.

 

[GenSeneca]

You have to handle it three times, right?.

The raw material is manually loaded onto the platform and placed in the hopper, from there the machinery does the rest of the handling.