I build a prototype algae panel to experiment with before making bunch more. Help me make videos by donating here: / codyslab Follow me on Facebook: / codydonreeder SubReddit: / codyslab Twitter: / codyslab
The main problem with algae is the entire system can become infected and kill all the algae or poison you if you are consuming it. You might consider separating the algae generator into multiple discrete units to allow for direct comparisons to ensure safety and redundancy as well as protection from accidental contamination.
It is a great environment to grow bacteria and mold too. For non-food use the risk of legionella is greatest problem, but for food use there are a large number of organisms that could be dangerous.
If you separate it you could also use it to select for more effective strains. Like as select for carbs if you want ethanol or select for lipids if you want oils.
@@dmarsub You are assuming that the closed system was 100% sterile before it was closed. Very hard to do even when you are trying really hard to clean everything.
I cant get over him eating the algae powder at 0:43 and then coughing up a green cloud right after. Hilarious. Keep up the great work though, Awesome content.
it reminds me of what happens when my mother takes cinnamon capsules - they dissolve in her throat and she'll cough a brown cloud a little bit later lol
When my favorite youtubers talk to each other, it makes me soooooo happy. Ive been watching you both for YEARS now. I have been wanting to start my own channel for as long as I can remember and youll see me soon, hopefully I will be able to collab with you guys both in the future.
Hey Cody, I just want to say thank you. I’m so glad you didn’t decide to leave RU-vid. The wholesomeness you bring to people is something to never be understated and seeing all your cool experiments are a joy.
You should grow botryococcus! it is similar to chlorella, but the difference is that it doesn't make edible fats - it makes diesel fuel! it makes C34 hydrocarbons in its extracellular matrix, and that lets it float on water. It outproduces almost all other algae in terms of biofuels. I have been doing biology research on both of these algaes for the past couple years, so it's exciting to see someone else as enthusiastic as I've been!
@@toddberkely6791 this was a long time ago, and i moved away from that research because i finished undergrad. Now i’m doing analytical chemistry at a pharmaceuticals plant! haven’t kept up with the literature since i left unfortunately
When Cody came into frame for the first time I thought he had a guest. It never ceases to amaze me how much a hair cut changes someone, and I'm a barber lol
Week later: cody update: Hi guys, I'm in hospital with a fungal lung infection, but I'll be back with more videos in two weeks time, see you then *thumb up - wave*
I’d recommend having the air in/out connected to your mushroom growing area as they also use oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. The require oxygen to fruit!
The memory I had of you was during a rough patch years ago. It broke my heart. I’m so happy to see that you’re back up on your feet and you look healthy and bright! Keep going man!
@De paus van de Lilith Kerk how? That’s not really political, if anything, it’s cool to see how much CO2 a person gives off. I totally thought that algae would’ve offset more
Cody's that one guy who put his points into every stat. Mining, chemistry, metallurgy, electronics, mechanics, woodcrafting, farming etc. Lets hope he's on our side 😳
Chemist here: I would recommend not to use vinyl or pvc for food usage. They can leetch phatalates. Expeacially the soft tubing is full of softeners. It is good for testing, but not for final product. Phatalates are known to be bioactive and harmful.
@@imbrudedsoul Acryllic polymers or borosilicate glass are viable FDA-approved options for a project like this. He could use regular glass tubes but they wouldn't be as sturdy as lab grade borosilicates. Another plastic option would be clarified polyethylene, like clear or nearly-clear HDPE. I disagree with napiton, PVC is generally recognised to be safe for human biological use. Millions of miles of PVC pipe are used to transport water to the homes of many industrialized countries. My only issue with PVC is that it will itself degrade with exposure to UV and become malleable, potentially causing leaks in a system like this. Concerning the toxicity of the degradation, I would argue evidence is largely unavailable to support a claim like that.
@@zachalexander963 I definitely agree with the PVC comment, PVC would be a MASSIVE improvement on the lead lined plumbing all over the United States. Thanks for the info!
Cody, you're a legend. I also started watching you when you were doing mining, and the level of the stuff you're doing now is mind-boggling. Great stuff!
man I'm back to watch this video again!!! I'm inspired to start cultivating it myself and want to offer my observation, your temps began to fall sharply when your water began sucking all that air from outside into it which then looked like it ran to your reservoir, if you could build a cap with a small hole to act as a restriction to limit the amount of air introduced into the system and still easily remove it to add water, awesome project :D
Way to go! The man behind my favourite astronomy channel is here too. 👍 I love to hear those reassuring words "hello wonderful person!" Greetings from Australia. 🇦🇺
I think my most favorite part was the paper of algae directed into the mouth, followed by a cough that expelled a green mist, followed by a choking/gagging sound, followed by GREEN teeth. I was laughing so hard after that that I don't remember how the rest of it went! Nice one, Cody! Oh, I'm guessing this isn't going to be on the list for steak substitutes? 😂
It's been a minute since I've seen Cody with short hair. He looks like a different person. Cody. If you read this at any point I hope whatever prompted this change has set a positive spin on your life. I know you've had some rocky bits these past few years so again. I hope whatever made want to change up your look is a good thing. You look happier and I hope that happiness lasts!
I love this so much. How did you learn to do this? You are literally that guy that could be placed almost anywhere, in any point, at time and survive. The mad scientist
Wow, when you jumped into frame i immediately thought, someone is looking fresh. Looking good Cody! haven't been on your channel for like 4 months or so. i'm liking the project, something i might have to use in my food science degree i'm starting now :D
This is the only channel where the creator clearly cares for content more then being famous. Just about every channel out there that gets to this size pivots in a poor way. Except for Cody whos been a true dedicated dude since day one. Cheers, hope he keeps the show going for the next 50 years.
It's great idea man. Im building a pond on my property for similar reasons. Will grow algae, duckweed and fish. Carp fish last all winter and if you clear the water, algae can grow under the ice even in winter. As long as you stir and airate the water somehow. Using windmill and solarpanel should work most of the year. Collect some staple food before harsh winter tho as here where I live, wintertime has 24h darkness cycle. No light, no life. It's stagnated at least. For about 1 month it's total darkness, then it's doable again. So food for at least 1 month prior is essential. Unless you have land to hunt for gain or dig for food in tunnels under the frostline.
I find this absolutely fascinating I'm going to see about starting to experiment with this and using the algae for biofuel to power a more economically sustainable coffee shop
I've wanted to grow blue algea(spirena(sp)), it is just slightly better in food value, but more important, it grows in a high PH so little other life could ever invade the medium, making raising it to eat much safer. Still, best to view under a scope from time to time.
@@awesomestuff9715 By siphoning water out for cleaning. Getting a little water in your mouth is kind of typical when doing that. Or, more realistically, by simply assuming you know what it'll taste like based on the smell.
Last time I watched a Cody video, he looked exactly like the kind of prospector that would dig around in the mines he always used to make videos about. At the risk of sounding shallow, Cody has made immense progress on his appearance and looks fantastic. I almost didn't recognize him!
Oh wow it's been a couple months since I've watched Cody regularly. When did he get absolutely YOLKED??? Dude is built like a boulder now. That algae must be treating him right!
nice to see you look energized and happy cody. the past year or two might've had some bumps and life wasn't all that nice to you sometimes, but it's always darkest before dawn and eternal happiness is not natural. i want you to remember all the people you have influenced for good and have changed their lives drastically (including me), it hurt to see you in sorrow and am sure me and an insurmountable amount of people out there would help you in time of need. you are the best person on this platform and i don't say that lightly, please keep on being passionate and being you
I feel like you're going to want to be more careful about sealing the holes in your system - especially the algae tub. You do have bugs in your greenhouse, and if there's one thing I know about bugs, it's that they love to get into open water sources. Dead bugs aren't something you want floating around in a food source. Also some way to avoid any spores or microbes from creeping in through the air intake. Like with mushrooms, you're going to want the system to be sterile and sealed to avoid contamination. Might also want to look into ways to isolate the starter algae culture from any contaminants too.
Using clear PVC pipe for the panel, tubing and even large diameter like 12" for the reservoir would keep the entire system sealed. Air intakes could use bacteria viral (BV) filters like the ones used on medical ventilators would keep the air supply clean. I also wonder if there is some antiseptic that could be kept in the algae solution without killing it to prevent microbes from colonizing.
Drilling holes, the exact size of the tubing, then using silicon sealant should fix most of the algae tub issues. As for contamination, he could honestly take one of the filters from the mushroom grow bags and put it over the air intake and that would keep most stuff out. One other improvement I think Cody should do is take a cap from one of the water bottles, and glue it into some tubing and drill a hole in it for sealed water input and output by screwing on bottles. When not in use, to keep it sealed just leave empty bottles on it.
Cody glad to see you recycle plastic bottles and great idea, another solution is to drill a hole slightly smaller than the bottle screw neck in the bottom of the bottle then glue the screw neck and screw it into the bottom of the other bottle done this and no leaks it also creates eddy currents in the bottles. Also those plastic bottles works great in ceilings
He’s looking super healthy, took a break on yt for about 4 months and wow does he look like he may be in a better place mentally etc! Love the content! Catch up for me
I'm using an aquarium air pump to move air through. I haven't filtered the air coming in, but I'm keeping other contamination out by positive air displacement and my container is a 30 gallon poly barrel with a pair of aquarium grow lights strapped together and weighted down in the center
@@vladimirvikentije5202 LARPing is short for Live Action Roleplaying, which is basically like a tabletop RPG (e.g. dungeons and dragons) without the, uh, table
I'm glad to see you're still around, youtube would be a pretty boring place without you :) I know this past year was a tough one for you but you're looking much more healthy and happy lately, whatever you've been doing it's definitely working! Keep up the great work, Cody, and stay awesome! ❤️
@@slaytronic His neck is huge compared to his arms.. wonder if he hoped on TRT… bout the age and circumstances where it’d be one or the other… or both.
I enjoyed this very much and excited to see where this goes. Would love to follow in your footsteps if this ends up being a great success. Which I believe it will.
If these were set up vertically along the northern wall of a greenhouse, they'd be useful for doing double duty as a thermal stabilizer for the internal air temperature!
and as a bonus you could use IBC totes for the storage, of both heat and algae. Though you would have to have it set up to limit the amount of heat gain while maintaining the light it receives to keep it alive.
The "which I've kind of been planning on doing" at 19:39 made me chuckle. I admire your drive to try new things. You are an example for all scientists. I wish you the best.
Maybe you could try running the algae through Twinwall Polycarbonate Sheet? It's available in large panels. Not sure how practical eating the algae directly would be, but you could use it to feed shrimps, snails or as an addition to the diet of chickens.
You can use volume to your advantage here. Building a 10m2 panel 50 cm thick will be cheaper than building 20m2 at 25cm. Obviusly its not endless but in the ocean sunlight doesnt realy deminish untill like 50 meters. You can also add a mirror underneath to have the sun pass through the mix twice. I would also recomend a head exchanger both to cool the selution and to heat it if it gets too cold. If you collect enough heat of it you could heat a shower with it. Or atleast your greenhouses.
In the Gulf of Mexico it's more like 8 feet... but the mirror idea is good. It doesn't have to be a smooth specular reflector, but something vaguely reflective, or very, very white, would get more light to the algae, assuming that much light makes it through. It's also a thermal management issue. You might want more of the light to be used for heat in the winter, and during summer bounce it back. Of course with adequate power production you could rely on the active heating in the tank. I'm kinda thinking the ideal system would have the thickness of the pipe based on the occlusion of light at the bottom, and in that case, there wouldn't be enough light to worry about reflecting. How dark is the water going to get at full saturation before you harvest it? It would be interesting to see how industrial algae farms do it though.
I remember back in the 70s when this idea was first taking off (Prevention and Organic Farm and Garden magazines talked abut this back then, around 1974, I believe) and a friend and I tried growing and processing this algae that we then made muffins with and it was ok. As you said, not gourmet. But, edible. I later tried it in some borsht as the beets would over power the flavor of the algae and it worked nicely. Now that you have rekindled my thinking on this and the need for self sufficiencey, I will set up my system again. We used a waterfall runway to our fish pond and that produced a fair amount of algae. Since we were not planning on eating it raw but only in cooked foods, it did not bother us that it was fed fish waste. So, the algae grew very fast and very thick. Since the spill way was of hard wood, it clung to the wood and was easy to scrape off. Now, I will build several so when one is off to dry, the others are still going. Maximise my production and harvest ability.
This is awesome, love your videos man! I have one suggestion, you could coat the perspex with a hydrophobic spray which would prevent water droplets from forming during the night/winter, this would prevent the screen from becoming coated in frost which could affect the amount of light being absorbed.
Cody is looking SVELT. Crazy how you’ve changed over the years, I remember the 480p days before even the lapel mic. Keep it going, my favorite channel.
You can replace the bottles with lengths of that same tubing you used elsewhere. It's easier to build, more flexible, but more expensive. We created a setup similar in my old lab using large diameter tubing
Hi Cody, Keeping ur water temp near ideal growing conditions (21C +-3C) is challenging and appears to be your determinant growth variable. Its a common issue with outdoor bioreactors. I'd suggest putting the tubes indoors and submerged in a clear thermally stable liquid (or just water) to maintain a relatively constant temp. I know that doesn't fit your theme. You could eventually use solar panels/cells/battery/LED grow lights to maintain 24hr growing and stable growing temps/conditions. Yes, that's pricy. With stable temps, You should be able to max-out your bio-reactor within 5 days. Please check your algae variety often, like daily, and have backup virgin species on hand to start new clean reactors as needed. Back in the 2000's, when I was looking at this (for biodiesel/coal flu gas treatment/food/cattle feed source, etc), foreign or 'local' algae would be take over the bioreactor within 90 days. We simply just don't have a filter capable of 100% contaminant prevention... maybe we do now, or you could invent one? Safety tip: The foreign algae can be toxic to humans/animals. It can kill you, or destroy your kidneys, liver, ect. Also, I strongly suggest that every part of your bioreactor that is exposed to algae (storage basin/tubes/hoses/fittings) be easy to access for cleaning. Because of the foreign Algae introductions, you can expect prolonged contamination issues. The predominant joke at the time was that anyone that could run a stable independent bioreactor for longer than 4 months would become a billionaire. I was inspired by a guy named Isaac Berzin out of MIT. His research papers are a great place to start for info on the topic. I think he ended up being funded to do a full scale project in South Africa or somewhere, I don't know him personally and it was along time ago. Any hoo, Looking good so far. I used T12 lightbulb covers from H.D. as a cheap tubes. However flexible clear PVC (UV stable) tubing's now the more common (used for product packaging) and dominant tubing material. I lost interest and stopped all this after a pear reviewed paper definitively showed all diesel fuel including biodiesel & its exhaust were carcinogenic. Hope that helps, Good luck :)
Hey, just in case you are interested, in Spain there's a research facility that uses microalgae as a way to treat waste water, use algae as an edible product and as fertilizer for crops. It uses a local strand so that they don't have to fight it and they produce an economically viable product. The algae just grows thanks to the great amount of sunny days they have. If the algae is consumed by humans they have it in tubes, but if it's to feed insects or to be used as fertilizer they can get away with open-aired containers.
Also, Solar Foods is a startup that's making the most sustainable food using algae... I guess they use a completely closed system and advanced air filters to prevent foreign algae contamination that you pointed out... Also, the fact that burning the oil it produces is carcinogenic shouldn't dampen your interest in it, after all, even without the oil it has so many other use-cases such as making food and even bio-degradable manufacturing materials (for instance, there's one company that's making flip-flops out of them).
@@woosix7735 true, but pure algae contain way too much vitamin A and other substances to live off directly. Also the Feed Rate Conversion for shrimp really isnt bad, so even if it was just because shrimp taste good, it might still be worth jt.
I worked with diatoms in university and it's fascinating what kind of stuff you can get them to produce. In the future they could be grown in similar tanks as yours and become a replacement for yeast that doesn't need sugar
nicely done! Many, many years ago, I did a science fair project that looked at algae production, using a photo-metric approach. easy to do, no spinning down the samples - just measuring turbidity changes. You might give that a try.
😬 I couldn't stop staring at that crack the whole video thinking the same thing. Maybe he could find a way to live off of consuming the mold in his basement. ;)
Very nice! You should have the insulated tank inside with a circulation unit that can be switched by valve to the outside. With grow lights and a solar system that can manage the system inside. You could have all the oxygen you need and enough for fuel.
I haven't seen a Cody's Lab video in a long time, since around the start of the pandemic... and I'm just astounded by how different he looks now. To be clear I'm not saying he looks better/worse, just different. I thought for sure it was a completely different person. Love that the videos are still going strong.
In terms of processing the algae into fuel, I'm curious what a fractional distillation would produce. You'd want quite a lot of it to start so you can have long enough fractions to isolate. Since it hasn't had a chance to be processed with all the heat and pressure underground, it would likely be mostly smaller chains equivalent to Naphtha, Kerosene and Propane.
Biodiesel is basically produced just by mechanically compressing the algae mush through a filter to separate oils from the solids. Some filtering and chemical processing is done to make it more suitable to engines. Distillation takes far too much energy and destroys some of the product.
@@BTheHeretic Biodiesel is not suitable for ALL applications, though. Kerosene is jet fuel. It can burn well in low oxygen, has a higher freeze point and burns cleanly in a lantern. Biodiesel can gel in cold temps and produces much more soot. The only advantages of a biodiesel are cost and lubricity. Kerosene just can't compete with diesel when it comes to lubricating cylinder walls and valves.
Throw an aquarium heater in the cooler set at 17c. Inkbird sells a controller on Amazon that is pretty tough and could keep things warm. I know it’s not as sustainable or easy, but it may help in the winter months
Rather than having tubes, I would suggest using two panes of glass (or acrylic, plexi, etc) sandwiched together with a bead of silicone around the edges, with an inlet and outlet port for the media to flow through. This way, the algae can spread out through the large surface area, fill it up to the top, and then outflow back into the tank. That would greatly reduce the amount of time and energy spent on building each panel.
Checked in to see if there was anything new I'd missed after a month or two, saw someone claiming he was sick or something so I checked his Twitter, and watched the new post appear as I was looking at the algae progress. Couldn't have been more wonderful timing.
I'd love to see an algae cooking video some day. The first thing that comes to my mind would be combining it with flour, to make something like algae bread, for example. Maybe replace the spinach in green pasta with algae? Or put some algae in pesto, or use it as a base for a soup? Or just hot water + algae to get algae tea?
@@trollmcclure1884 A lot of ingredients taste bad by themselves but can be made delicious with a little trial and error. I imagine it would be a pretty good investment of time if you plan on having that be your primary source of calories for the rest of your life.
I've been thinking about doing something similar in the future: living off of algae, but I've been running into some problems regarding hypervitaminosis. Especially with chlorella, living off of algae alone can actually be dangerous because the vitamin and mineral content in it is so high. Just the vitamin A content in chlorella, using conservative estimates, is ten times higher than the absolute maximum considered to be safe by most medical professionals (assuming 2000 calories worth of it per day). That's not even considering how much iron, zinc, and other vitamins are in it. The effects of this can be more severe than you might think, especially if you plan to take this much daily, so I would definitely talk to a dietician or substitute caloric intake with less nutrient-dense food or algae before actually moving on with this plan.
