|
Duckweed has the remarkable ability to grow on wastewater streams all over the world. As the fastest growing flowering plants in the world, these tiny aquatic species has the potential to be the feedstock-of-choice to economically produce biomass via sunlight and wastewater, while minimal impact on land use will be expected. Working with two wastewater sources in New Jersey, a nursery and a municipal wastewater treatment plan, we aim to create a demonstration pipeline to produce biofuels from duckweed grown on wastewater at these sites in NJ. This project will systematically examine about 10 candidate strains that have been shown to grow rapidly on standard synthetic growth media in the laboratory as well as producing relatively high levels of starch. Wastewater samples from the two NJ sites will be used to compare the growth of these duckweed strains in an effort to directly compare their growth rates on these waste streams. In addition to these laboratory strains, we will also compare the two endemic strains of duckweed that our laboratory has isolated from these two local NJ sites. The results from this work will thus provide the necessary data to determine the most optimal strain(s) of duckweed for deployment at these two wastewater sites in order to maximize the yield of biomass production.
|
Sign in
to view more information about this project.
