Nutrient Value of Algae

Algae are highly nutritious and certain species (e.g. spirulina) can even be used as human food, let alone fertilizer. Still, having said that, you should also take note of the fact that algae often grows in highly polluted water and may have absorbed toxic contaminants from the water. Without seeing your schematic diagram nobody can comment on whether it will work or not, but to answer the question of whether your idea is economically feasible or not, the best advice I can give you is to obtain samples of the algae and send them for laboratory analysis. If nothing toxic is found, your plan will be feasible.

Ohio State University is doing some work on Algae based Bio Fuel near here, but I am looking at the other possibility.

These marshes, etc sustain a large population of fishes, turtles, geese, ducks, and the like.

They are heavily fished by humans also.

Sounds good but nonetheless get your sample tested anyway. The reason is because of bioaccumulation i.e. small amount of contaminants being consumed continually eventually results in a large accumulation in the body.

While species such as spirulina and nostoc are edible, certain species such as oscillatoria give out toxic substances. For that reason, ensure that your algae is absolutely safe before doing this; the last thing you want is to get into trouble because people fell sick from eating produce grown in your organic fertilizer due to the toxic algae present in it.

Algae...water hyacinth...let's hear it for Kudzu Power!

lol, so much of that around here,

water hyacinth?

need to find a pic of that

Might be more commercially viable as speciality products:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nori

Or as coloring (cover) for production of Soylent Green crackers

Emmett

Algae intended for human or animal consumption needs a controlled environment because of the presence of toxic species in nature, and the difficulty of removing environmental contaminants from it. You can't scrub algae with a vegetable brush.

Although "red tides" are noteworthy events because of the problems they cause for ocean fish and marine animals and birds, there are also toxic freshwater species.

http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/A-Bi/Algal-Blooms-in-Fresh-Water.html

There is equipment available for both small-scale and commercial algae culture. If you want to do-it-youself, you can probably get plans online. Harvesting wild algae is likely to be more trouble than it's worth, even for fertilizer. If you dry it in the open air, flies will come and the neighbors will complain. It would certainly be unwise to add this material to animal feed, although a known edible species like Spirulina would probably benefit your cows and chickens, and maybe yourself.

http://www.daenvis.org/technology/Spirulina.htm

They're doing it in India, why not here?

Here is a link that might of interest: http://www.oilgae.com/

Less chance of poisoning someone or some animal by producing energy rather than a food source. I would also think that there would be less odor involved if you're putting in some form of a "digester" and keeping it in liquid form without O2 being present. The off gas is probably methane which could be burned to warm up the additions or make up water to speed up the process or even mixed with the natural gas since it is mostly methane anyway.

I think you will find there are many different species of algae, which will make it difficult to make harvesting commercially viable

Thanks everyone, I will be perusing some information from OSU and will post anything interesting.