Environment & Energy
Related: About this forum'Magic soil': a green solution to red tide
10:03, 11-Jan-2020
A "magic soil" made out of modified clays has been proved effective in fighting red tide along China's coastal waters and introduced to other countries like Chile, the United States and Peru.
The "magic soil" won second prize of China's State Technological Invention Award that was presented Friday in Beijing for its breakthrough in eliminating the threat of red tide, a harmful algal bloom (HAB) causing damage to marine aquaculture.
The modified clays are sprayed onto the red tide using a special apparatus aboard vessels, and can take the majority of algae down to the seabed through flocculation and inhibit the growth of residual algae, said Yu Zhiming, chief scientist for the "magical soil" program at the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Science (IOCAS).
Yu's team has developed and upgraded the technology since 1993. The synthetic material was first applied in Xuanwu Lake in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province in 2005, to mitigate harmful algae bloom.
More:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-01-11/-Magic-soil-a-green-solution-to-red-tide-N9VUVr0rPG/index.html
msongs
(67,198 posts)stopdiggin
(11,095 posts)sort of like magnetizing a piece of steel? thinking that the charged particles of soil probably aren't going to remain in that state for very long?
eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)what's the modification ? They're not clear about that, and give no references.
Apparently, according to other sources, it's "aluminum chloride hydrate", or "polyaluminum chloride" (a horribly misleading name, not part of any systematic chemical nomenclature). As it turns out, this compound, found in most antiperspirants, has been used in water treatment for a long time. Apparently combining it with clays is what's new. Clays are mostly silicate minerals. I would guess the treatment transforms them to aluminosilicates, a very broad class of compounds, many of which are naturally occurring minerals.
The second link is to a US lab doing research in this area.