LIOS Public Disclosure November 3, 2022 USPTO # 63/593,985

Much like the process of growing microalgae in photobioreactors, the act of shining light in dark ocean water will initiate growth of ocean plant  biomass.  Simply turning off the light source will kill and sink the plants, resulting in carbon sequestration.  We will focus on deeper water that is normally out of reach of light and thus of photosynthesis.  Since the dark water covers 40% of earth and is dense with nutrients, the sequestration could potentially scale to gigatons, and permanence in the 1000-year range.

The biggest benefit of this process is its inherent parsimony –  only a low-energy light source (laser or LED) needs to be transported into the sequestration location, and support structures can be engineered to match the scale of desired carbon absorption. 

We refer to the volume lit up as a natural “bioreactor.” Isolation of the bioreactor volume from surrounding water (inside a long tube, for example) can pull carbon from the surface (atmosphere) once available dissolved carbon is concentrated into biomass. In essence, dissolved carbon is sunk with biomass, and the atmosphere supplies replacement carbon to the inside of the bioreactor tube. A large bioreactor (tens of sq km) need not be isolated, as CO2 diffusion from the surface will pull CO2 directly from the atmosphere. [Nov 3, 2022, Amal Bhattarai, Altadena, CA, USA

WHITEPAPER LINK: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E70NRx4O1SQiMTd87vhGLwD6HidBv2fW/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108049935942722229143&rtpof=true&sd=true