[permaculture] Tiny super-plant can clean up animal waste and be used for ethanol production

Brandy Davis brandydavis at bellsouth.net
Thu Apr 9 20:46:04 EDT 2009


BUT, BUT do we want to continue having large areas of animal waste  
water?!

On Apr 9, 2009, at 4:30 PM, mIEKAL aND wrote:

> Tiny super-plant can clean up animal waste and be used for ethanol  
> production
>
> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/ncsu-tsc040709.php
>
> Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that a tiny
> aquatic plant can be used to clean up animal waste at industrial hog
> farms and potentially be part of the answer for the global energy
> crisis. Their research shows that growing duckweed on hog wastewater
> can produce five to six times more starch per acre than corn,
> according to researcher Dr. Jay Cheng. This means that ethanol
> production using duckweed could be "faster and cheaper than from
> corn," says fellow researcher Dr. Anne-Marie Stomp.
>
> "We can kill two birds – biofuel production and wastewater treatment –
> with one stone – duckweed," Cheng says. Starch from duckweed can be
> readily converted into ethanol using the same facilities currently
> used for corn, Cheng adds.
>
> Corn is currently the primary crop used for ethanol production in the
> United States. However, its use has come under fire in recent years
> because of concerns about the amount of energy used to grow corn and
> commodity price disruptions resulting from competition for corn
> between ethanol manufacturers and the food and feed industries.
> Duckweed presents an attractive, non-food alternative that has the
> potential to produce significantly more ethanol feedstock per acre
> than corn; exploit existing corn-based ethanol production processes
> for faster scale-up; and turn pollutants into a fuel production
> system. The duckweed system consists of shallow ponds that can be
> built on land unsuitable for conventional crops, and is so efficient
> it generates water clean enough for re-use. The technology can utilize
> any nutrient-rich wastewater, from livestock production to municipal
> wastewater.
>
>
> Large-scale hog farms manage their animal waste by storing it in large
> "lagoons" for biological treatment. Duckweed utilizes the nutrients in
> the wastewater for growth, thus capturing these nutrients and
> preventing their release into the environment. In other words, Cheng
> says, "Duckweed could be an environmentally friendly, economically
> viable feedstock for ethanol."
>
> "There's a bias in agriculture that all the crops that could be
> discovered have been discovered," Stomp says, "but duckweed could be
> the first of the new, 21st century crops. In the spirit of George
> Washington Carver, who turned peanuts into a major crop, Jay and I are
> on a mission to turn duckweed into a new industrial crop, providing an
> innovative approach to alternative fuel production."
>
> Cheng, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering,
> co-authored the research with Stomp, associate professor of forestry,
> and post-doctoral research associate, Mike Yablonski. The research,
> which is funded by the North Carolina Biofuels Center, was presented
> March 21 at the annual conference of the Institute of Biological
> Engineering in Santa Carla, Calif.
>
> Cheng and Stomp are currently establishing a pilot-scale project to
> further investigate the best way to establish a large-scale system for
> growing duckweed on animal wastewater, and then harvesting and drying
> the duckweed.
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Google command to search archives:
> site:http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture searchstring
>
>



More information about the permaculture mailing list