Define: Climate change affects us all, with our earth heating up and melting the ice glaciers in Antarctica and the arctic to turn wildfires around the world. Climate change raises a huge problem for wildlife and the environment. One major factor in the climate change problem is the amount of methanal emissions from cows or other livestock. Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. At least 25% of today’s warming is driven by methane from human actions. Methane primarily leaves the atmosphere through oxidization, forming water vapor and carbon dioxide. So, not only does methane contribute to global warming directly but also indirectly through the release of carbon dioxide.
Discover
With all the information we researched in mind, the problem we would like to solve is the climate crisis plaguing the earth. We studied the main contributing factors to global warming; greenhouse gases are a huge reason the earth is heating up today. Furthermore, Methanal emissions cause the earth to heat up quicker than anything seen before. The main cause of these methanal emissions is livestock that humans keep eating. Therefore, we decided to investigate ways to help, eradicate or severely decrease the amount of methane emissions. After some throughout research we have found out that just replacing 3% of livestock’s main dietary meal. Could decrease methane emissions by 80%, seaweed is a fast-growing plant and would be easy to implement into the meals of all livestock, so me and my partner tried to make machine that would optimize production of seaweed and allow us to mass produce it without much cost and be able to manufacture all livestock food with a bit of seaweed.
Deliver
This is our seaweed producer that runs on solar panels, it charges during the day, allowing seaweed to grow and harvests during the night.
Debrief
Overall I think we did pretty well on finding a solution and delivering it, we’re just not sure on the material cost the actually build the prototype in real life. But it seems like a simple machine and one that can be used for a while. One problem that we did realize later on is that cutting the seaweed doesn’t automatically bring the seaweed back. the seaweed will just float on the ocean. A solution we came up with was to put a big net on the machine, because even if the net doesn’t get all of the seaweed since the machine is constantly moving forward parts that are not within net range will follow through into the net.