Vietnam to convert seaweed into protein

The refinery is part of a bio-economy demonstration that is also enhancing shrimp quality and yield by co-cropping naturally-occurring aquatic plants as bio-chemical feedstock. The project is a collaboration between the Viet Nam Academy of Science and Technology’s Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB) and the US based international project developer Algen Sustainables.

It will be funded in part by grants from the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands with additional research support from labs in the US and China. The project sponsors are looking for an industrial partner that can help scale up the technologies to serve the regional chemicals market, says an ITB press release.

There are over 350,000 hectares of brackish water ponds in the Mekong Delta, most of which are owned by subsistence farmers who use no energy, nutrient, or probiotic inputs. The survival rate of shrimp fry is typically less than 10%. The project team discovered that certain seaweed varieties appear naturally in the ponds and serve as a food source for shrimp while also clarifying the water.

But with growth rates reaching 15 % per day during the peak winter season, farmers were concerned that the plants could rapidly cover a pond and pollute it after dying. The project team began teaching the farmers how to manage the seaweed as a crop, including thinning it when appropriate to maintain rapid but controlled growth. The excess seaweed is now collected by the farmer, dried, and used to make industrial products.

Dr Hoang Nghia Son, Director of ITB, said the project highlights the quality and flexibility of research capability in Viet Nam.  “We are developing entirely new industrial biomass sources, and finding sustainable uses for material others consider waste. Farmers participating in our pilot project are enthusiastic about the potential,” he said.

Consultants from Biomass Technology Group (BTG) of the Netherlands and ProForest of the UK evaluated the seaweed-to-ethanol pathway in November 2012 as part of developing a draft aquatic biofuel standard.

The study concluded that scaling it up could offer substantial socio-economic benefits to the communities involved.

Martijn Vis of BTG said: “Viet Nam has demonstrated the principle of a novel sustainable bio-refinery pathway for aquatic biomass, which is a pioneering work that contributes to the emerging global bio-economy.”