[GSAS-Member] Duckweed is actually useful!!

[Bryan Nichols <nicholsbryan@gmail.com>]

Turns out duckweed is actually useful for something other than covering my
tank and clogging my filter :)

Tiny Flower Turns Pig Poop into Fuel | Wired Science from
Wired.com<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/doubleduckweed.html>
    *Tiny Flower Turns Pig Poop into Fuel* *By Brandon Keim [image:
Email]<brandon@earthlab.net>April
08, 2009 | 5:06:55 PMCategories: Clean
Tech<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/clean_tech/index.html>,
Energy <http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/energy/index.html>,
Environment<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/environment/index.html>
*

[image: 
Duckweed]<http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2009/04/08/duckweed.jpg>

*The tiniest flowering plant could prove well-suited to two very big jobs:
cleaning industrial animal pollution and providing clean biofuel. *

*Able to thrive on nutrients in animal waste,
duckweed<http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/duckweed.htm>produces
far more starch per acre than corn, say researchers. It could be an
alternative to corn-based ethanol biofuel, which is disfavored by
environmentalists because of waste generated in farming it. *

[image: 
Hoglagoon]<http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2009/04/08/hoglagoon.jpg>
* "Based on our laboratory studies, we can produce five to six times more
starch per unit of footage," said Jay
Cheng<http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/people/faculty/jcheng3/>,
a biological engineer at North Carolina State University.*

*More than a decade ago, Cheng and fellow NC State forestry professor
Anne-Marie Stomp wondered whether fast-growing duckweed, commonly seen in
shallow ponds, might remediate animal waste. Excrement from the billions of
animals raised every year in America's factory farms has fouled watersheds,
especially in the South, and fed oxygen-gobbling algae blooms responsible
for rapidly-spreading coastal dead
zones<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/ocean-dead-zone.html>.
*

*Duckweed, they discovered, has an appetite for animal waste, quickly
converting it to leafy starch that can then be converted into ethanol. The
current source for most U.S. ethanol is industrial-scale corn farming, which
requires large amounts of toxic pesticides and dead
zone-feeding<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/corn-based-biof.html>,
fuel-intensive 
fertilizers<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/we-go-exploring.html>.
When the costs are added up, corn-based ethanol may prove little cleaner
than gasoline. *

*Duckweed could help solve both problems at once. *

*"We did small-scale tests in the laboratory to convert duckweed starch to
ethanol using the same technologies as the fuel industry currently uses in
corn," said Cheng. "With the same technology, we can easily convert it."*

*Duckweed consumes nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium and iron, making it a
potential source of remediation not only for the lagoons in which farm waste
accumulates, but any type of wastewater. *

* Because duckweed is found in all but the coldest climates, there's little
chance of it causing problems as an invasive species, said Cheng. The
researchers have moved from the laboratory to a pilot-scale operation on a
commercial farm.*

* "Now that the concept is proven, we're trying to scale up, testing
harvesting systems and doing some economic analyses," said Cheng. "The
production rate is higher than corn starch, but to do it commercially, the
economics will determine if it's feasible." *
-Bryan
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