CC05 Chrondus Crispus (Carrageenan)
Note: The discarded seaweed in this recipe is used in CC06, so you may want to save it.
Similar to CCO4, but I am applying heat to the seaweed for an extended time via a coffee mug heater to extract all the carrageenan that I can. I also tried adding glycerol to make it more flexible.
Ingredients:
Water (125 mL, goes down to 100 mL bc evaporation)
Whole leaf dried Chrondus crispus (2g)
Glycerol (3g)
Procedure:
Soak the seaweed in just below boiling water for 2 1/2 hours. Apply heat continually either by using a hot plate, coffee mug heater, or stove. Your heating apparatus should be able to supply somewhere in the ballpark of 65 C.
After 2 1/2 hours, pour the goop and the seaweed from the beaker into a mesh strainer.
Capture the goop from the strainer. At this point, you can discard the seaweed or keep it to get more goop out. You can also try casting the seaweed, too, as this makes for an interesting formation. Save the seaweed if you want to try to make CC06.
Cast the goop into a mold. I cast the goop into a thin film on a glass sheet and into a silicone ice mold. For the ice cube mold, I had varying levels of casting thickness - thin, normal, and thick - to see what would happen.
Let dry for 5 days (or more if needed).
Done!
Note: I didn't cast the entire 100 mL of goop. Some of it stuck to the seaweed. I also cooked off some of the goop to create a giant silicone-like blob.
Before drying:
Note: seaweed fronds were not pictured on the drying plate.
Ice cube tray before drying:
After drying:
Ice cube tray after drying:
Results:
I would call this a success. This is mainly because I managed to boil down some of the extracted seaweed juice to create a lump of seaweed rubber. This seaweed rubber is, well, very rubbery, and feels similar to a stiff silicone. It is very cool and definitely a success. I can't say that about the Saran wrap, though. The seaweed wrap turned out to be WAY too thin and to have practically no strength. It is VERY good at sticking to itself and seemingly curling up in a ball and disappearing. The seaweed fronds turned out to be strong but hard to get off the glass plate. Lastly, the bioplastic cast into the ice cube tray made some very good material. The thin one, the one where I put the least amount of seaweed goop in the mold, makes a nice film that's thin, elastic, and somewhat strong. I could imagine the thin one being used as Saran wrap. The thicker ones are just stronger and thicker versions of the thinner ones. It has a very good feel and is very smooth. They aren't very transparent, though, and they aren't nearly as strong as a piece of agar bioplastic with the same thickness. I'm working on it though!
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