Arundo Donax Also Known As "Giant Reed"

"....In soil contaminated with arsenic, cadmium and lead, giant reed was found to grow rapidly, showing a strong metal-tolerance with a limited metal translocation from roots to shoots.^[11] In this study it is underlined that accumulation of As, Cd and Pb in shoots of giant reed is low while metal concentration in roots is high,...."

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So it sounds like if we harvest from the right areas and are sure to burn the roots as well, we can replace some of the things burning coal currently brings us.

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Heavy (metal) humor aside..... what did you have in mind?

It has potential as biofuel, too.

Arundo Donax, Or 'Giant Reed,' Could Be The Next Miracle For ...

An Oregon power plant is looking at it as a potential substitute for coal, and North Carolina boosters are salivating over the prospect of an ethanol bio-refinery that would bring millions of dollars in investment and dozens of high-paying jobs to hog country.

I wouldn't hold my breath, there is too much environmental opposition....

Like most others. Lay them down over many hundreds of years, cover them with a massive overburden and compress the lot for several tens of millions of years...

In the seventies the USDA supplied my uncle with Sudex seed to try as forage grass for his dairy herd. I was very surprised at the rate of growth. As a feed we would green chop it. Don't want the main stalk to get hard and woody. Cows won't eat it. The 40 acres planted were hard to keep up with as it grew that fast.

All I've read on this Arumdo Donax is yields of fields that have matured. There is where most the problem is. If cut before it's gone to seed then we limit the possibility of another evasive species. Just like any grass it grows back up. The plant they are using is a hybrid and the seed is suppose to be sterile. Just as Sudex is and we don't hear about it. It is one of the plants they use for bio matter now.

While we put restrictions on the plant for agricultural use. Any one address the possibility that the problem may lay in gardening and ordimental plants.

Let's crunch the numbers:

Assumptions:

Biomass: 8 million BTUs/ton (wood)

Yield: 10-20 tons/acre (per year?)

Harvest Cost: $25,000/acre (I pulled this from the article... Who knows?)

Therefore, this plant could maybe yield 80-160 million BTUs/acre at a cost of $25,000 = $150-$300 per million BTUs

Coal: 25 million BTUs/ton at $50/ton = $2 per million BTUs

Fuel Oil: 5.8 million BTUs/barrel (42 gal) at $120/barrel = $21 per million BTUs

Natural Gas: $4.60 per million BTUs

http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/34854/1/sp07bu07.pdf

This research on the cost of harvest one ha was $1,197. $484 an acre. Yields differed from areas grown. Still came up with 12 to 4 dollars a million BTU's

After my previous post, I began to wonder about the heats of combustion for other common fuels (BTUs/gallon):

Ethanol 76,000 BTU/gal

Gasoline 116,000

#2 Diesel 129,000

Liquid Propane 84,500

To compare equivalent energy costs for each ($/BTU), divide the fuel cost ($/gal) by the heat content (BTU/gal). At $4/gallon, gasoline costs $34.50 per million BTUs.

I hope they can find a way to utilize the WEED--Here, in parts of So. California, it clogs the river bottoms, spreads like wildfire, thrives, as mentioned, where no other grasses grow, clogs water ways, and is generally a nuisance. The amount of ater it consumes is staggering and that is water that other native plants are denied. The Environmentalists (Patagonia, Nature Conservancy, etc.) spend a lot of time trying to remove it, and as mentioned before, the roots MUST be removed. I think they have even considered, God-forbid, using herbicides, but without total root removal, it is not effective.

No.

too invasive.

Water Hyacinth is better. Grows faster, and takes pollution out of the water.

Unlike the arundo Donax, water hyacinth is controlled by depth of bed of the waterways it happily grows in. People hate it because they can't rocket through the water weeds with their stupid high powered boats. So they pay a fortune to remove it. All they would have had to do was dredge a lane or two and no problem. Or change to a weed resistant prop.

Water Hyacinth is also known as water lilies. They proliferated a couple of decades ago because of all the detergent in the water which boosted the growth. Its not quite as bad now.

Back in the 60's, the Don River in Toronto was so polluted it caught fire. They planted water hyacinth in it, and the water coming out of the 100 yard water lily beds is clean enough to drink. (Not so the water which went into the beds.) They thrived on the pollution, and the boaters moaned. I believe the project was canned when they could not find a buyer for the hyacinth they would drag out every couple of days. I mean, you can WATCH it grow! ....it had too much heavy metals and pollution in it to be serviceable for cattle feed. By the time the Univerity at Peterboro had a bio plant in place, the project was defunct. The pollution now flows into Lake Ontario where it feeds Zebra Mussels.

Now if you can figure out a bio fuel use for Zebra Mussels...you will get a medal and probably some gov-in-mint funding.

Interesting...Maybe they could build bypass canals , and fill them with the hyacinth, run the water through them , filter it, and return it to the waterway ??

That was my idea. The only problem is the sheer amount of water weeds you have to cut and drag out.Or else it clogs the system up.

Often the hyacinth is already native to the habitat. But, like all species, make sure it is not invasive.