The nutrient problem

Algae are not the root problem. They are responding to nutrients in the wrong place.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are indispensable to food and life. After they pass through people and industries into wastewater, their productive purpose is often lost—but they remain available to support growth.

Aircraft-level view of a harmful algal bloom across western Lake Erie in 2018 — Harmful algal bloom across western Lake Erie, July 9, 2018 — Aerial Associates Photography, Inc., Zachary Haslick / NOAA GLERL — public domain — source/license

The unfinished cycle

Essential treatment protects public health—but does not always put nutrients back to work.

Existing wastewater infrastructure performs indispensable work. Much of it was designed to move, transform, remove, or discharge nutrients—not to cultivate and harvest an industrial biomass resource.

Nitrogen and phosphorus that remain in discharged water stay biologically available to algae and other organisms downstream.

The nutrients do not disappear.

If they remain in the final discharge, they continue downstream as available inputs for growth in places where it is uncontrolled and damaging.

Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, Washington, D.C., circa 2016 — U.S. EPA — public domain — source/license

Algae are not the root problem. They are organisms responding to available nutrients.

Algal bloom formation

Nature makes the nutrient load visible.

Nutrients are a controllable input to bloom formation. Removing nitrogen and phosphorus before discharge reduces the mass available to contribute to eutrophication downstream.

Soil and fertilizer runoff from a farm field, Iowa, 1999 — Lynn Betts, USDA NRCS — public domain — source/license

Algal bloom in the Detroit River in 2005 — Algal bloom in the Detroit River, July 2, 2005 — NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory — public domain — source/license

Harmful algal bloom near a boat dock, Lake Erie — NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory — public domain — source/license

What blooms can put at risk

Environmental damage becomes economic damage.

Water is infrastructure for entire regional economies. The consequences of nutrient pollution can ripple through far more than ecology.

Drinking water

More complex monitoring and treatment, operational risk, and public concern.

Tourism and recreation

Advisories and visible blooms can reduce visitation, boating, swimming, and waterfront spending.

Fisheries and habitats

Low oxygen, toxins, and ecological change can affect aquatic communities and fishing economies.

Property and public budgets

Communities can face response costs, lost activity, and declining confidence in their most visible natural assets.

The practical response

Intercept it. Measure it. Harvest it.

AAC is designed to turn a diffuse downstream problem into a controlled treatment process before discharge.

Water enters with a nutrient load. Algae incorporate part of that load into biomass. Harvest removes the biomass—and the captured nutrients—from the treatment system.

Keep nutrients out of waterways. Put them back to work.

Aeroponic Algal Culture (AAC) is designed to cultivate and harvest attached algae before nutrients contribute to downstream harm.

See how AAC works