ALGAE PLANT

For this project Freek was researching the domestic potential of algae. Algae produce about 60% of the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere. But these algae are a very abstract concept. Algae are now a days also produced on large scale for research of bio-fuel, feed for live stock and cosmetics. But these algae farms are expensive to build and the produced algae are still very expensive. That’s why Freek wanted to bring algae down to a smaller and more understandable scale. 

To do that, Freek started approaching the algae as a houseplant, because basically it is a plant. Algae plant has the freedom to be placed in the preferred place in the room, and is not fixed to one location as would happen with a home algae farm. In this way there is more connection to the plant. Algae Plant provides vast amounts of oxygen and controls the humidity in the air, which contributes to a healthy living environment. 

Algae plant grows on water, light and a bit of nutrition. It converts Co2 into oxygen and provides a healthy amount of moist in the air. Every day there is a different shade of green in the tank, because the algae multiply. This also means that when the water is getting too saturated. The algae need to be filtered. Because of the use of a closed system the water will stay in the tank during filtering this means that the excess algae stay behind in the filter and the water, with a few living algae will flow back into the tank. The living algae will start growing again and a new cycle has started. After filtering you can use the algae as nutrition for other plants or kitchen garden or even as a food supplement.