Friday, April 10, 2009

Ethanol from Duckweed

This "duckweed" is a fast-growing aquatic weed that would grow in wastewater. It would clean up the water from municipal wate treatment or livestock production. At the same timw, researchers say it would produce more starch per acre than corn. The starch could be a feedstock for ethanol in existing biorefineries.
GRAINNET News and Information for the Grain, Milling, Feed, Seed and BioFuels Industry: "North Carolina State University Researchers Find High-Starch Duckweed Could Be Utilized to Produce Ethanol More Quickly and Efficiently Than Corn"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an exciting breakthrough. It has direct applications to cleaning up the lakes in Canada, the USA, and around the globe, which are infested with water weeds; and are turning into swamps.

Jeff Goettemoeller said...

If they can find enough of these weeds in one spot, it might be viable to use a wild harvest for ethanol. Cattails would work too. They also have lots of starch.