INTEC supports the proposal to create a public-private fund to face sargassum
SANTO DOMINGO. The rector of Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Julio Sanchez Marinez, supported the proposal to create a public-private fund for the permanent search for solutions to sargassum, raised by the vice president of the Punta Cana Group Foundation, Jake Kheel.
Through a statement, the university proposed that the public-private fund be with low interest rates, or without them, as seed capital, and that it be used in five fundamental lines: containment, collection and disposal, applications and uses, monitoring and prediction. , optimize the collection systems in the sand and safe systems for the final disposal of the sargassum, that collect the acid leachate and that minimize and take advantage of the gases from the degradation process.
Through an audiovisual posted on the social networks of the Fundación Grupo Punta Cana, Kheel proposed the installation of the public-private fund after assessing that the country needs an urgent response from the Government and greater support from international donors. He described the situation sargasso "a unprecedented challenge for the tourism industry".
In the line of containment and collection, INTEC proposes the development and establishment of barriers and means of collection in the sea, before they reach the coastal systems. In addition, optimizing the existing barriers and the development of other self-cleaning ones. In this regard, the university proposes contemplating the development of high volume processing automated collection systems and the development of collection and pre-processing systems at sea.
In the area of applications and uses, advance and conclude research associated with the use of sargassum as a biofuel, high added value product, liquid biofertilizer, activated carbon, paper, materials from fiber for wood substitute covers. In the area of monitoring and prediction, INTEC suggests the creation of models and prediction systems for sargassum influxes into the country and collection organization systems based on prediction models.
Finally, INTEC proposed to foresee the approach of productive systems that can use dry sargassum to work all year round, or that can process other biomasses in the same facilities, will allow the development of sargassum mining.
INTEC has dedicated itself to the investigation of sargassum inflows arriving on the island's shores since 2016 and has a Interdisciplinary Group of Researchers in Sargasso dedicated to the subject, who work on a dozen projects for the monitoring, collection and use of algae.