In creating fuels
from agricultural waste and other biomass, water slows a solid acid catalyst's ability to get the job done, costing time and energy.
But when it comes to the hot prospect of turning trees and
agricultural waste into an energy source for cars and trucks, wood gets in the way.
Therefore there should be more on efficient use of waste streams, such
as agricultural waste as an alternative energy stream.
There are efforts to
use agricultural waste for a number of applications, but discarded shells are a whole different animal, so to speak.
Why it's noteworthy: Because the material is renewable and it helps create a new use
for agricultural waste, it's environmentally friendly on two accounts.
Today we are witnessing idle production capacities in processing industries despite the crucial role they play in boosting value added and food exports, while
decreasing agricultural waste.
In addition to tree leaves, the team and others have successfully converted potato waste, corn straw, pine wood, rice straw and
other agricultural wastes into carbon electrode materials.
There are also proposals to bury charcoal not liquid C02 or to put
agricultural waste in the desert or deep Ocean.
Green architects and designers are constantly striving to find a harmonious balance between man - made shelter and nature, and this ongoing process has generated all kinds of intriguing iterations of what could be called «living architecture,» ranging from futuristic, interactive bio-digital architecture to more modern - primitive examples like compostable towers made out of fungal and
agricultural waste material.
This 2,000 year - old practice
converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer that can hold carbon, boost food security, and increase soil biodiversity, and discourage deforestation.
Woodland Biofuels creates cellulosic ethanol from wood chips and other types of forestry and
agricultural waste at half the cost of producing the gasoline its biofuel replaces.
Chemists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are closing in on cheap ways to make cellulosic ethanol, a form of ethanol derived from
agricultural waste rather than food crops like soybeans or corn.
Iogen Corporation has furthered this technology by developing enzymes to convert tough, sugar - bearing cellulose in inexpensively
produced agricultural waste into ethanol (opposite page, top).
For the packaging materials, the manufacturing process involves combining the early - stage mushrooms
with agricultural waste, such as corn stalks, and placing the mixture into moulds of various shapes and sizes that are left in a dark space for a couple of days.
«The socio - economic and environmental objectives are to set up a stakeholder knowledge platform by implementing an extensive process of knowledge exchange in the
whole agricultural waste production and consumption cycle,» said Gontard.
The $ 10.5 million energy and
agricultural waste management project was funded by local, state and federal taxpayer dollars, including about $ 1.5 million that came directly from Cayuga County government's savings accounts.
Just converting all the
U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually.
Keasling's method
feeds agricultural waste such as cornstalks and wheat straw to E. coli bacteria engineered to break down the sugars and produce biologically synthesized hydrocarbons that burn and function just like those in fossil fuels.
The figure below shows the performance of a xylose utilizing yeast biocatalyst for fermenting a xylose under two conditions: 1) a condition where xylose is the primary sugar present (in this case hemicellulose isolated from pretreated hardwood, and 2) a condition where xylose and glucose are present at approximately equal levels (in this case a hydrolysate generated from a
pretreated agricultural waste).
Waste - to - hydrogen conversion: We are exploring the feasibility of using hyperthermophilic heterotrophs to
treat agricultural waste and produce hydrogen as a bioenergy product.
You might encounter meat from rendering plants,
agricultural waste declared unfit for human consumption, chemical additives like preservatives and artificial coloring.
One particularly fascinating material was the particle board made from
agricultural waste designed by Charles Job of Bern University of Applied Arts in collaboration with Ahmadu Bello University, the University of Nigeria and Patrick Kaiser.
Biomass (
often agricultural waste) is heated to high temperatures and the oxygen supply closed off so that the biomass's carbon content can not combust and is instead safely stored as charcoal.
So I think that here there is a price at
which agricultural waste would be turned into biochar and added to soil or dumped in a ship and then dumped in the ocean.
Sponge city technologies, groundwater remediation, air purification and cleaning as well as further topics like water and recycling services, control and laboratory technology, biogas,
agricultural waste treatment will be featured in the exhibition sector.
Advanced biofuels from diverse sources such as grasses and
agricultural waste hold the promise of sustainably reducing U.S. oil dependence and global warming emissions.
Utilization of biomass not only could provide a use for
many agricultural wastes, but also could encourage tree plantings which would help provide relief for areas experiencing erosion.
The company's first product, copy paper Step Forward Paper, is made of 80
percent agricultural waste wheat straw and 20 percent Forest Stewardship Council certified wood fiber, and is bleached using an elemental chlorine - free sequence.
The report also suggests the causes of the miasma: «The haze is the result of forest fires, the burning
of agricultural wastes, dramatic increases in the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, industries, and power stations, and emissions from millions of inefficient cookers burning wood, cow dung, and other «bio fuels,»» says Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP.
When composting crop residues, manures or
other agricultural wastes, it's necessary to achieve temperatures above 131 °F for a defined period of time in order to kill weed seeds and human pathogens.
We also looked at
agricultural waste burning, which relates to seasonal clearing of the fields common in many countries in Africa and South America.
Biochar is a 2,000 - year - old practice that
converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer that can hold carbon, boost food security and discourage deforestation.
Giant kilns would
take agricultural waste and dead trees and, using a process called pyrolysis, burn them without using oxygen.