BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Brevard County officials unveiled a new tool Wednesday meant to help reduce harmful algae blooms in Florida by harvesting them.
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Harmful algae blooms not only make the waters unsightly, but they can also be unhealthy for humans and fatal for fish and manatees. However, there may be a new tool to fight them.
For seven years, AECOM has been developing technology to reduce algae blooms. Now, they’re partnering up with Brevard County and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to go after and harvest the blooms.
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The test pilot for the algae harvesting ship is the Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County. Waters in the lagoon can look clear and beautiful one moment, but in an instant, algae blooms can develop or drift in from elsewhere.
The blooms wreak havoc in the water, killing fish and sea grass, thereby eliminating food sources for aquatic animals like manatees.
“It is a huge problem,” AECOM algae practice founder Dan Levy said. “In 2020 we had harmful algal blooms, we had fish kills in the IRL that lasted for months...now we’re going to be actually hunting harmful algal blooms.”
According to Levy, the barge essentially hunts for the algae, using a 250-foot intake line like a lure.
Using surface skimmers, the barge draws water from the upper layers, where algae accumulates during the day, and sends it through two large tanks.
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“What we’re doing is adding a coagulant to it,” Levy explained. “That allows us to bind the algae together.”
The next step in the process bunches the microscopic algae together into a larger size to the point that’s it’s visible.
Finally, in a third tank, the clumps of algae are inundated with nano-bubbles of oxygen, lifting the algae to the surface and building a blanket of algae that can then be scraped from the surface and collected.
The whole process of separating the algae takes only 30 minutes. In 2018, the same process completely cleaned a residential canal in Lee County in a single day.
“Algae-prone states like Florida need to have the most advanced algae fighting capabilities,” Levy said. “This is just one tool that gives us us that capability.”
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While the crew was unable to track down an actual algae bloom during Wednesday’s demonstration, the harvester was able to collect some algae in the form of a slurry. If an algae bloom was present, the harvester could fill a 1000-gallon tank with algae slurry in eight hours.
Additionally, the algae slurry that’s pulled form the water isn’t thrown away. It’s eventually processed under heat and pressure until it’s transformed into a type of liquid crude oil, a form of clean energy.
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