A robot can clean oceans by dropping harmful seaweed below the surface.
Yet in Brasil, a research team has found a new use for sargassum, a rapidly-spread brown algae that stinks out beaches.
The team mixed the seaweed with clay, using 20% sargassum in one batch and 40% in the other. These samples were compressed at temperatures of 800-1.000°C in both normal and microwave ovens.
When sintered in a microwave oven, the resulting clay met strength requirements and would be a suitable alternative to traditional fired clay. Sargassum ashes, moreover, could replace 100% of the limestone in fibre cement tiles.
A CO2-neutral cement alternative made using microalgae already exists, while the aquatic plants make fire retardants more sustainable too.
