"It's not going to solve anybody's energy crisis, but it would be a useful supplement," Sage said. "You could use it to get rid of the kudzu," he said, "or, alternatively, you could let it regenerate naturally, and just walk away and then come back and do it again in a few years." "There is a conundrum there," said Irwin Forseth of the University of Maryland in College Park. "Unless you're going to let it come back and devote some land to cultivating it, it wouldn't form a stable source. You wouldn't want to put in a stable infrastructure and work out how to extract it from roots to have it go away after three years." However, if existing corn ethanol manufacturing plants could be used to process kudzu, too, then the approach might be feasible, Forseth said. Bob Tanner of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., proposed using kudzu for energy in the energy crisis of the 1970s, but he now suggests that the starch, which is used as a gelling product in food in Japan, carries a higher value as a food product. He advocates using the starch for food and converting the cellulose -- the woody, fibrous carbohydrate that gives structure to the stems and leaves -- into ethanol once processes under development are commercially available. The fibers also make fine textiles, Tanner said. "My suggestion is, be creative. Don't cuss at it. Use it creatively." Related Links: Jessica Marshall's blog: EnvironMental Case |
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