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

lbsaltzman at aol.com lbsaltzman at aol.com
Fri Apr 10 00:05:33 EDT 2009


And the answer is emphatically not!  These are tortured animals living in disgusting conditions and the people who attend them are exposed to filth and disease as well.


-----Original Message-----
From: Brandy Davis <brandydavis at bellsouth.net>
To: permaculture <permaculture at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 5:46 pm
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Tiny super-plant can clean up animal waste and be used for ethanol production



BUT, BUT do we want to continue having large areas of animal waste  
ater?!
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=2
0used 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


_______________________________________________
ermaculture mailing list
ermaculture at lists.ibiblio.org
ubscribe or unsubscribe here:
ttp://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
oogle command to search archives:
ite:http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture searchstring



More information about the permaculture mailing list