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Pelagic Sargassum spp. capture CO2 and produce calcite

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Abstract

Pelagic Sargassum is considered an ecological plague that is causing adverse economic impacts to the tourist and fishing industries in the Caribbean. However, its proliferation might be playing an important role to reduce global warming, as it removes a high content of CO2 from the atmosphere and transforms it into calcium carbonate, in its calcite phase, producing sediment after it dies. We quantified the amount of calcite in Sargassum samples collected from the Mexican Caribbean coast in 2019. Samples were divided into three parts: vesicles, thallus, and leaves. In each part, the amount of carbon, oxygen, and calcium was determined by means of X-ray energy dispersion to confirm the existence of a calcite crystalline phase. Imaging methodologies and IR spectroscopy complemented the structural studies. The thermogravimetric analysis determined that approximately 5% of the CO2 captured by the Sargassum was converted into calcite. Thus, by extrapolation, the Atlantic Sargasso Belt retained approximately 19.3 million tons of CO2 from 2011 to 2019.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank and acknowledge L. de La Torre for his technical analysis. Thanks to K. Campos and E. Lestarjette for their help with SEM and XRD data acquisition, Nanotech National Laboratory and COLCIENCIAS (Administrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation) Colombia. Thanks to Fabiola Paraguay-Ureta for manuscript review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados SC (CIMAV), Av. Miguel de Cervantes 120. Complejo Industrial Chihuahua, C.P. 31136, Chihuahua, CHIH, Mexico

    Francisco Paraguay-Delgado, Caleb Carreño-Gallardo, Ivanovich Estrada-Guel, Harby Alexander Martinez-Rodriguez & Daniel Lardizábal-Gutierrez

  2. Tecnológico de Chetumal, Av. Insurgentes 330, 17 de octubre, C.P. 77013, Chetumal, Q.R, Mexico

    Alberto Zabala-Arceo

  3. Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Manizales, Grupo de Propiedades térmicas, dieléctricas de compositos, Km 7 vía al aeropuerto, Campus la Nubia, Manizales, Caldas, Colombia

    Harby Alexander Martinez-Rodriguez

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  1. Francisco Paraguay-Delgado
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  2. Caleb Carreño-Gallardo
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Correspondence to Daniel Lardizábal-Gutierrez.

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Paraguay-Delgado, F., Carreño-Gallardo, C., Estrada-Guel, I. et al. Pelagic Sargassum spp. capture CO2 and produce calcite. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 25794–25800 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08969-w

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