Source: Milenio Diario

Sargassum is a set of seaweeds that live mainly in the Atlantic Ocean, and a new area, the north of the terrestrial equator, where they are accumulated off the coast of Brazil to enter the Caribbean, however, in recent years they have had a rapid growth and have spread, hitting the coasts of many countries in West Africa and the Gulf of Mexico.

The negative impact that this natural phenomenon has produced can be seen in the health of the local ecosystem as well as in the economy of the affected regions. The problem began to worsen during 2011 and prevails until the present.

In fact, the arrival of more than five thousand tons of sargassum per month, which stagnates on the Mexican beaches of the Caribbean, led maritime specialists to consider the macroalgae as one of the natural pandemics of the time.

Under this panorama, there are mitigation projects that incur the use of sargassum as fertilizer, in addition to other alternatives that implement methodologies to transform this environmental conflict into biofuels.

Such is the case of the Mexican company Nopalimex, which after several investigations managed to convert sargassum into renewable fuel, whose development is pending a patent before the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI). The project is ready to begin implementation in the Riviera Maya, and they assure that their operation will be able to reduce the accumulation of algae on land.

In this context, Miguel Aké Madera, technical director of the aforementioned company, explained in an interview that the biogas is obtained through an anaerobic process to which the sargassum is subjected, but before that, pretreatment is carried out by the cleaning of the sand and the high amount of salt it brings.

To produce electricity, it goes to another phase, where it is cleaned again so that the methane content is at least 75% and thus prevents it from damaging the motor of the electric generator; in the last phase is the process of greater cleaning of the sargassum (97%) and with it, the vehicular biofuel is generated

Finally, it should be noted that among the advantages of vegetable fuel are the reduction of some polluting effects since it eliminates CO2 emissions by 100% and reduces soot production by between 40% and 60%.