Terra-reforming requires fresh water which is a scarce commodity in desert regions. With a combination of careful husbandry of existing supplies, re-use of grey water, use of water recovered from sewage, and some desalination in the early stages, it is possible to transform all but the driest of these regions into sustainably productive, and bio-diverse land. By cutting evaporation, and retaining water within the soil structure, the amount of water required is surprisingly low. C-Questor utilises marine algal biomass to produce gels and fertilizers which both retain water within the soil, and enable plants to access essential nutrients, using fertilisers (Agrenew) in combination with efficient irrigation (Aquacycle), and desalination (Heliocycle), we intend to restore land to productivity.
‘Climate change is removing land from productive agricultural use at the same time as world population is increasing. C-Questor’s Terra-Reforming technology can start to reverse this land loss.’
We intend to grow marine algae in specially designed covered Ponds in which sea water will be encouraged to evaporate, allowing fresh water to be condensed. We intend to use much of the ‘greened’ land for the production of high value plants of use in pharmaceuticals (mediplants), health food products, herbal remedies etc. and to produce bioenergy from any residual material (C-Green Fuels). Together these products will ensure the viability of the project. In the desert evaporation and drainage rates can be very high. Evaporation losses can be minimised by supplying the crops with humid air from our Heliocycle while drainage losses can be can be kept to a minimum by creating a subsurface layer of gel extracted from marine algae.
Terrestrial Technical Overview
There are a great many areas of degraded or underutilised land that with a combination of measures aimed at managing water more effectively, at building back the structure and biodiversity of the soils, at removing toxic contamination, and at appropriate selection of crops can be made productive. By making dry land productive, CO2 will be removed from the air, and food supplies will be made more secure.
‘C-Questor is dedicated to ensuring that it restores as much desertified, arid or semi-arid land to productive use for bio-mass growth as possible by means of its Terra-Reforming technology’
Our methods are primarily biological, utilising gels derived from algae to hold water in the soil, and various algal, bacterial, and fungal cultures to enhance and decontaminate soils. Once the soil has been improved, and appropriate perennial vegetation is established, only a very small amount of water is required to maintain the restored land, and available desalinated water can then be utilised in expanding the restored area, for growing irrigated annual crops under the shade of the perennial vegetation, and for meeting the other needs of the local population.
We intend to use renewable energy to supply a certain amount of desalinated water. We will provide this through an active humidification - dehumidification cycle replicating in miniature the hydrological cycle. The desalination will involve a sea water pond - also used for algal cultivation, covered by a greenhouse or polytunnel and a solar heating system to heat the pond - an aeration system to both facilitate algal growth and increase evaporation, and a cooling system to condense out the evaporated water. We hope to produce very significant amounts of water in this way, sufficient to both meet the day to day needs of local people, and provide for a useful degree of irrigation. In areas which are not arid, we hope to use similar technology to decontaminate contaminated industrial land, so making it safe and available for a wide range of uses including agriculture and housing. The annual global budget for cleaning contaminated land runs to many billions of dollars.