Biofuels Prospect "Duckweed" Doubles Biomass in 48 hours

Duckweed produces a enormous amount of starch-rich biomass every 48 hours. Scientists are studying the plant to convert it into a bio-manufacturing platform, for the production of polymers, proteins, and high value small molecule chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Other scientists -- biofuels specialists -- are attempting to transfer genes from algae to duckweed in an effort to teach the rapid-growing plant to produce oils for biofuels.

"We’re interested in using or optimizing duckweed for use as a biomass bio fuel based on its ability to grow on waste water and water in places which you would never imagine crops would grow," Martienssen tells Big Think.

In other words, Martienssen calls duckweed "an exciting prospect" because it can kill two birds with one stone. "It can convert high nitrogen and high phosphorus water into much cleaner water and at the same time massively increase in biomass," Martienssen says. Duckweed doubles in size every two [days __ ed.], generating a huge amount of biomass in a short amount of time, and is an amazing producer of starch.

Therefore, using pathways and genes from algae, Martienssen says he is looking to "persuade" duckweed "to make oil instead of starch."

...How exactly is Martienssen hoping to 'persuade' duckweed to produce oil? He is looking at the phenotype, or the properties of the plant over generations, to which Martienssen has applied his groundbreaking research on transposons or "jumping genes."

Transposons were discovered in plants about sixty years ago by Martienssen's Cold Spring Harbor Lab colleague Barbara McClintock who won the Nobel Prize for this discovery. According to Martienssen, "transposons are pieces of DNA that can move around the genome and cause genetic as well as epigenetic changes without having to go through a sexual cross and so many of the changes we see that happen in clones occur due to the activity of transposable elements." _BigThink

Most energy specialists underestimate biomass fuels, because their thinking is years or decades old. The potential for production of sheer biomass by duckweed and rapid-growing micro- and macro-algae has barely begun to be tapped.

Using the tools of genetic and epi-genetic modification, rapid-growing plants are likely to stand in for the mythical "nanotech assembler" for manufacturing a wide range of products -- at least for the next few decades until nanotech molecular assemblers can be perfected. Fuels and high value chemicals are likely to be two of the product categories which fast growing plants will be persuaded to make.

This is a biological planet. The biological plant life of this planet thrives on high CO2 levels -- up to 3X to 4X higher than at present.

CO2 is essential to photosynthesis and thus it must be present in the air at least in at least 300 ppm in order for plants to grow properly. When CO2 is deficient in the air plants simply do not grow, their growth is very slow and stunted. It is also actually possible to speed plant growth up by increasing CO2 levels in the air. The simple addition of CO2 to the air is as good as adding fertilizer to your plants. Most plants grow with a yield increase of ten to thirty percent when the CO2 levels are between 1,200 to 1,500 parts per million. _Source

If, on the other hand, atmospheric levels of CO2 were reduced by half, large numbers of species of plants would die, and the food chain would be severely disrupted. Billions of humans would be in danger of starving.

Clearly, humans will not replace hydrocarbon fuels with biofuels -- and there is no need to even try. But biomass can be grown virtually anywhere there is energy, nutrients, and CO2 -- and be converted to biofuels. That advantage of local and regional production virtually anywhere in the inner solar system, is something that no other fuel can match.

Using the Full Range of Aquatic Plants for Energy

PetroAlgae is now reporting that, in its 5000-hectare system, it can produce 9-10 metric tons of purified high-value proteins per acre per year, plus 4700-6000 gallons of biofuels (plus biochar) per acre per year. This pencils out to up to 125,000 tons of protein per year, plus 75 Mgy of renewable fuels, for the full system.

“The future is not years away but here today,” noted Executive VP Business development Harold Gubnitsky at the Florida Farm to Fuel Summit last week in Orlando. The PetroAlgae system costs, “several hundred million dollars,” according to the company, but has payback within three years, making the investment not for the faint of heart, but potentially lucrative. _BiofuelsDigest

We know about the promise of energy from algae and diatoms. But the full range of aquatic plants that could be used to produce abundant energy is far wider than most of us realise. Besides producing biofuels, aquatic systems can produce high value proteins and other nutrients and high value chemicals. The additional high value products provide for higher profits and more rapid payback of investment.

The first public hint that new breakthroughs were on the horizon arrived in early April, when a research team at North Carolina State University reported that it has realized up to six times the average corn starch yield by growing duckweed, a microscopic aquatic plant, using hog farm waste water. The researchers concluded that the process cleans up waste water and produces a high-yield biofuel, and the duckweed starch can be converted to ethanol at existing corn ethanol processors.

One of the advantages of the tiny aquatic plants is that so little of their biomass is needed to support their structure, since they float on water instead of standing freely in the air. As little as five percent of some species is fiber - with the rest an attractive mix of proteins, carbs and lipids.

The researchers said at the time that their process will work on any type of nutrient-rich wastewater, including municipal wastewater. However, the team was not far advanced in developing a large-scale system, indicating that they were in the process of establishing a pilot-scale demonstration of their system for growing, harvesting and drying duckweed.

Later in the spring, PetroAlgae was evolving its message to emphasize “microcrops” over “microalgae”, signaling that it was working on several different aquatic plant platforms.

Last week, Joule Biotechnologies made a cryptic announcement of a novel biofuel production system using a modified and otherwise mysterious aquatic, photosynthetic microorganism that, housed in a closed photobioreactor replete with brackish water, would use CO2 and sunlight as sources of reproductive energy. Lipids and fuels would be continuously harvested without destroying the micro-organisms. _BiofuelsDigest

These aquatic systems can be genetically tweaked and selected for optimal growth and targeted production, using high speed genetic screening and modification techniques as described by Brian Westenhaus.

The world of biological production of fuels, chemicals, and other high value products is just beginning. Stay tuned.

Duckweed: 6 Times More Starch Than Maize

A tiny aquatic plant named "duckweed" can produce more than 6 tames the starch per acre as maize! That should shift the economics of bio-ethanol just a tad.

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. _PO

And honestly, the pigs don't mind at all! In the quest for bioenergy, there is no more patriotic animal than the pig.