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ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



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Noxious Weed 2
#27857391 - 07/10/22 01:51 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Aound the U.S. and the world, some of the most destructive invasive weeds are floating aquatic plants like hyacinth, water lettuce, and giant salvinia. These plants are able to utilize nutrient pollution to rapidly reproduce faster than they can be mechanically removed from waterways. They block light from reaching other plants and algae in the water below and cause the water to become anaerobic as these plants and algae die and decay. Tons of money is spent around the world each year on various eradication efforts that include mechanical, chemical and biological methods. For the most part, mechanical methods consist of manually removing the plant mass from the water and in most places is considered too expensive to be practical. Chemical methods general consist of herbicides that also have negative effects on the environments they are used in and also have been implicated in human health issues. Biological methods are akin to swallowing the spider to catch the fly and so on. These have had some success but also an inherent risk of introducing yet more invasives to already impacted ecosystems.
What if there were a way to convert these invasive aquatic plants from a liability to an asset?
I think there is. The biomass can be converted fairly easily to energy resources that are carbon neutral. Along large waterways a series of capture and conversion plants can be constructed in partnership with local energy providers. These would essentially just be catchment basins that allow water and the debris floating upon it to flow by gravity into the basin, mechanical conveyor systems to remove the plants from the water surface in the basin and pumps to return the water to the river, lake or lagoon it came from. The conveyor would move the weeds into a 2-stage digestion system which converts the biomass into biogas and nutrient solution. The gas can be used on-site to run turbines to power the equipment and the nutrient solution is a sustainable source of phosphates, nitrates, etc. If located downstream from major nutrient polluters like sugar plantations and the like, this method could mitigate the damage of harmful dinoflagellate blooms (red tide) and provide a way to recycle those lost nutrients. Phosphate is of particular concern because unlike nitrogen or carbon, there really isn't any good way for it to cycle back to land once it reaches the ocean. Additionally, many of the challenges with regard to methane storage, transport, etc. may soon be a thing of the past with new technologies and techniques being developed currently to cheaply convert methane to methanol.
It's time to stop treating these invasive aquatic plants as an expensive chore and start treating them as a valuable and renewable resource for generating energy and cleaning up pollution.
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Lynnch
Strangerer



Registered: 04/29/09
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Neat idea. The problem with every smart solution is that the dumb solution is cheaper. You can recycle old fabric waste into new blankets, but it's cheaper for a factory to pump out new ones. Biomass power generation sounds cool, but hey we've got all of this fossil fuel infrastructure already laying around so lets just keep burning that shit. 
Anyway.. maybe this could be integrated into other systems.. use that fuel to power desalination plants
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ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



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Re: Noxious Weed [Re: Lynnch]
#27857446 - 07/10/22 02:37 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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It can be integrated. As long as it is connected to an existing power grid the energy can be used for whatever. Naturally, from a pure energy production standpoint the process is likely less cost effective than fossil fuels but the other benefits may outweigh the additional costs in places like Florida where tourism is a major component of the economy and beautiful beaches etc. are a major component of the tourism trade. I'm certain that constantly closing the beaches because of algae blooms caused by agricultural run-off is detrimental to the industry. Additionally, the recovered nutrients can be shipping or pumped the relatively short distances back to the locations that emitted them in the first place cheaper than fertilizer salts shipped around the globe and aren't subject to the same sort of supply chain restrictions that have plagued the agriculture industry worldwide since covid.
The way to get it done (as much as I hate the concept) is to have the government pay for most of the up-front infrastructure costs and then let some private corporation run the thing and take the profits.
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psi
TOAST N' JAM


Registered: 09/05/99
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My feeling is that it's generally pretty futile to try to stop the spread of invasive species once the cat's out of the bag. Life, uh, finds a way.
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ballsalsa
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Re: Noxious Weed [Re: psi] 1
#27857480 - 07/10/22 03:09 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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It's more about control than eradication and getting some benefit rather than fighting a losing battle for no reason.
If you can't beat 'em, make use of 'em, amirite?
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koods
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Registered: 05/26/11
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Hydrilla in the creeks along the Potomac. Habitat of the Northern Snakehead. Invasive but it does provide a good habitat for crabs and other creatures
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Edited by koods (07/10/22 03:20 PM)
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ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



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Re: Noxious Weed [Re: koods]
#27857746 - 07/10/22 06:05 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Snakeheads are invasive too. Hydrilla is a problem but it roots and so doesn't lend itself well to this solution, unfortunately.
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r3volution.gurl



Registered: 10/20/21
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How would this biomass be converted to energy exactly? Digestion is vague.
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PatrickKn


Registered: 07/10/11
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Conversion to ethanol usually.
Main issue I see is having a working business model to convert plant into energy predictably. Eventually you're in the business of converting invasive plants into energy, and you have either run out of plants to convert or are actively feeding colonies to keep them growing.
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ballsalsa
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it isn't vague. Google biogas digestion. The process is used to process dairy farm waste to produce electricity as well as elsewehere. All the equipment is off-the-shelf stuff.
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ballsalsa
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conversion to methane and eventually (when the tech scales) methanol.
In this case, the predictability comes from the predictability of agricultural fertilizer use and the fact that the invasives I'm discussing already reproduce faster than they can be removed, even with the use of disgusting herbicides. The business isn't energy production, it's energy production, pollution reduction, and control of invasive aquatic plants in a single process.
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r3volution.gurl



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Quote:
ballsalsa said: it isn't vague. Google biogas digestion. The process is used to process dairy farm waste to produce electricity as well as elsewehere. All the equipment is off-the-shelf stuff.
So what you mean is anaerobic digestion.
There is biomass that is burned so yeah, it was pretty vague, at least for me and what I already know about biogas.
I can't imagine the odor being safe, but it's still better than the alternative(s).
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  "Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don’t leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies: it’s all one. It’s one energy." -Ram Dass
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ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



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What biomass do you think needs to be burned, exactly?
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r3volution.gurl



Registered: 10/20/21
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Quote:
ballsalsa said: What biomass do you think needs to be burned, exactly?
It's not what I think. Google it.
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  "Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don’t leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies: it’s all one. It’s one energy." -Ram Dass
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The Blind Ass
Bodhi


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Oo! ….Question 🙋♀️
How would said plant matter fare in a “salad”?
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ballsalsa
Universally Loathed and Reviled



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Wait, weren't you the one who thought you could build your own fuel-ethanol production facility off the grid? Maybe you're thinking of wood/coal gasification (syngas production)
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ballsalsa
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water hyacinth is edible, including the flowers, iirc.
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Asante
Mage


Registered: 02/06/02
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Water hyacinth is being considered as a fuel biomass species, still, greater hope is on algi. Not just do certain algi produce lots of fats super efficiently, a large portion of it is omega-3 suitable for eating.
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ballsalsa
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Re: Noxious Weed [Re: Asante]
#27858261 - 07/11/22 06:39 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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yes, algae is being cultivated for fuel and hyacinth probably can't match the energy density of some algae but, again, the process I've described has secondary and tertiary benefits such as pollution reduction and remediation of harmful invasives.
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Asante
Mage


Registered: 02/06/02
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a floating version of a combine would be nice, harvesting the water hyacinth and compacting it to bales to be sundried and used as biomass plant fuel pellets
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