Kudzu could be the next biofuel

[Fledermaus]

Canada and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture say the invasive kudzu vine could be an important new source of bioethanol.

Their findings come at a time when experts are rethinking whether corn is best suited for ethanol production as a biofuel alternative to gasoline. The rise in ethanol demand has prompted concerns over food supply shortages, which in turn have contributed to considerable spikes in food prices worldwide.

Rowan Sage, one of eight authors whose study was published recently in Biomass & Bioenergy.

The plant is a fast-growing, woody vine that can grow up to 60 feet in one season. Its underground roots, around the diameter of an adult forearm, store plenty of starch essential for ethanol production. Kudzu exists mostly in the southeast but is native to China and Japan, where the starchy roots have long been used for cooking and thickening sauces.

In the U.S., especially in the southeast where it grows rampantly, the plant is considered a nuisance.

"You may have heard of it as 'the plant that ate the South,'" said Sage, who teaches botany and ecology. "It takes over fields, covers trees and houses and causes a lot of economic damage."

Sage and his research team gathered samples of kudzu throughout the South, including in Statesboro, Ga. They found the plant stores the most carbohydrates in its roots; these carbohydrates can be converted into ethanol with yeast.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/06/19/KUDZU_biofuel_ethanol.html

[angrycarpenter]

1. Question 1

how would you farm it?

Question 2

How would you stop farming it? The stuff is impossible to kill off.

[eleny]

5. Pay people bothered by it to harvest and it'll be a sight to behold

[angrycarpenter]

8. When I was 14

I went to church a lot. Our youth group decided to clear a Kudzu patch behind the church and grow a garden. We worked at it with zeal for 2 months and made little headway. The garden idea was a terrible failure with nothing to show for our labor.

Kudzu kept the south from washing away after they cut all of the trees off of the slopes, but at what price?

[izquierdista]

12. I don't want to belittle your work

But you were in over your head. A herd of hungry goats though, they could have made short work of it. It's a wonder that Southerners haven't figured that out yet. To damn stuck in their ways to switch from pigs to goats for their barbecue, I guess.

[Initech]

2. OMG!!! Dont post this in the lounge!

:popcorn:

[deadmessengers]

3. They can start in my neighborhood

Harvest away, folks - I can direct you to ACRES of the shit.

[emilyg]

13. Fellow Georgian.

Yes - start in Georgia.

[whistle]

4. Does kudzu work as a bio-fuel? Where is the science that demonstrates

...it's effectiveness as a bio-fuel?

[deadmessengers]

6. Here's the science:

Or, at least where you might find it if you were so inclined. From the quoted article:

owan Sage, one of eight authors whose study was published recently in Biomass & Bioenergy.

So, find Biomass and Bionergy (I googled it - first link) and you'll have your study.

[seriousstan]

9. Biomass & Bioenergy appears to be a respectable, peer review publication.

According to the admirable source you google directed us to.

BUT, the devil is in the details. You need the root. See post #10.

[seriousstan]

10. Here is the info and history

http://www.physorg.com/news101569567.html
Published: 14:46 EST, June 20, 2007

This month the Sage lab was awarded a special “accelerator” grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, a funding top-up aimed at researchers deemed to be “on the verge of a breakthrough.” Future research will see tests developed to predict the movement of kudzu used to predict the range movements of other plants.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2008/jul/06/vine-your-gas-tank/?local
Sunday, July 6, 2008

“If all that carbohydrate could be extracted into ethanol, then we estimate you could get about as much out of an infested field of kudzu as you could from an intensively managed field of corn,” said Dr. Sage, a professor at the University of Toronto.

“The difference is that the field of kudzu is there for the taking, while the field of corn has to be planted and maintained,” he said.

Dr. Sage is careful to point out that his theory has been only tentatively tested. However, with U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers in Maryland and Auburn, Ala., Dr. Sage found that kudzu roots, which are sometimes as thick as a human leg, produced 900 to 2,500 liters of biofuel per 2.4 acres. That compares to 2,000 to 3,000 liters of biofuel per 2.4 acres planted and maintained of corn.

“It’s not going to compete with corn, but it could be a valuable supplement,” Dr. Sage said. “The big question is how much it would cost to pull the kudzu roots out of the ground.”

Ray Burden, the Hamilton County Extension Service director, isn’t sold on the idea. First, he thinks farmers would burn up manpower and diesel fuel trying to pull up the massive kudzu tubers.


The kudzu vine, also known as "the plant that ate the South," was brought from eastern Asia in 1876 and can grow more than 6.5 feet a week. Its starchy roots plunge deep into the soil, and just a fragment of the plant remaining in the ground is enough to allow it to come back next season.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/16/kudzu-biofuel-ethanol.html

June 16, 2008

"Kudzu is just a large amount of carbohydrate sitting below ground waiting for anyone to come along and dig it up," Sage said. "The question is, is it worthwhile to dig it up?"

---cut---

The roots were by far the largest source of carbohydrate in the plant: up to 68 percent carbohydrate by dry weight, compared to a few percent in leaves and vines.

The researchers estimate that kudzu could produce 2.2 to 5.3 tons of carbohydrate per acre in much of the South, or about 270 gallons per acre of ethanol, which is comparable to the yield for corn of 210 to 320 gallons per acre. They recently published their findings in Biomass and Bioenergy.

[BlueJazz]

7. It's certainly going places.

[izquierdista]

11. Economic damage, hmmmpf!

Only for fat-asses like Larry the Cable Guy, who are too lazy to get out there and cut it for animal fodder. It is on a par with alfalfa as far as nutrition goes, but it never caught on, because you can't just sit your fat ass on a tractor and mow it.

Maybe if they would get off their fat asses and actually get out and cut the kudzu, the exercise would do them some good.

[losthills]

14. Whatever, dude... ... .........

[DCKit]

15. Harvest the tops for cattle fodder and produce methane from cow pies.

I like goat meat too, and they'll eat anything. Further, if the roots are really so chock-full of carbs, then I see no reason pigs wouldn't do a hell of a job of rooting them out after the goats cleared the tops - without any expensive equipment or diesel for fuel. Talk about a renewable resource!!!

We're pretty much guaranteed further insane increases in the cost of petroleum based products - diesel, fertilizer and other farm chemicals - so we'd better find some new, low tech substitutions for the things we're doing now.

For meat and biomass production, this is a one-stop proposition.