The quest for construction materials with low environmental impact is leading product developers to new pastures. Literally, in the case of Noble Environmental Technologies Corporation, whose ECORE line of bio-based panels are made from cow poop. American farms produce an estimated 2 trillion pounds of manure each year (comparable stats for Middle East ranchers not readily available).

The smartest way to turn a buck is to convert a problem into a solution that gets you paid both coming and going: get paid to collect a waste (or buy it at deep discount over alternative raw material), and then convert that waste into a resale product.

Methane and nitrous oxide, major greenhouse gases (GHG), are offshoots from livestock manure.  Linking manure to a reuse that economically satisfies a developing market need is the best pairing of disparate elements since the invention of the peanut butter cup.

This company’s line of wall boards and panels are made from a blend of cellulose sources including plant fiber, recycled cardboard, old newsprint, and a not-so-secret ingredient: bovine processed fibers (BPFs).  BPFs are fibers leftover from anaerobic digestion tanks used to harvest methane from cow manure.  This secondary waste product (from the primary manure waste) contains lignin and proteins that make it prime feedstock for a variety of bio-based applications.

BPFs and other cellulose fibers can be blended with water into a sludge that’s formable in molds bespoke to each end product, using low energy processing techniques. ECOR® panels can be painted, veneered, and laminated or used as a sandwich core for added structure to construct furniture and cabinetry.  It can be molded into almost limitless shapes and used as interior surface finishes, signs, displays and decorations.

Watch their snappy video to better understand the manufacturing potential of the stuff:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/zp__59Abrhs[/youtube]

These highly versatile, three-dimensional engineered molded fiber (3dEMF) panel products are ideally manufactured near the source of low-cost and underutilized raw materials.

Manure is a  waste product readily available throughout the developing world: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has a strong animal population. The livestock sector, specifically sheep, goats and camels, plays an important role in national economies, and the poultry sector is growing exponentially.

Animal waste is also a valuable source of nutrients and renewable energy (biogas) on a community level, however, most of the waste is collected in lagoons or left to decompose in open air, presenting sizable environmental hazard.

If a larger market for BPFs is created, sale of manure could someday represent a supplemental revenue stream for farmers.  Potentially a triple-bottom-line darling: establishing processing plants close to manure sources would create jobs, expand availability of the green building material, and be part of a larger strategy to reduce GHG emissions.  Calling all  investors: contact Noble Environmental Technologies Corporation for consultation or partnership in opening MENA’s first poop panel factory.

Image of a cow pie by Shutterstock

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Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad was the winner of the 2011 European Union Contest for Young Scientists for finding a new way of turning plastic into biofuel.

A sixteen-year-old Egyptian student, Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad from the Zahran Language School in Alexandria has identified a new low-cost catalyst which can generate biofuel by breaking down plastic waste.

The idea of breaking down plastic polymers into fuel feedstocks, the bulk raw material used for producing biofuel , is not a new idea. But Faiad has found a high yield catalyst, aluminosilicate catalyst, that breaks down plastic waste producing gaseous products like methane, propane and ethane, which are then converted into ethanol to use as biofuel.

Faiad and her mentors propose using this discovery to exploit Egypt’s high plastic consumption, which is estimated to amount to one million tons per year, and make money from recycled plastic! She calculates that this technology “can provide an economically efficient method for production of hydrocarbon fuel namely: cracked naphtha of about 40,000 tons per year and hydrocarbon gases of about 138,000 tons per year equivalent to $78 million.”

As we know plastic waste is a huge problem in the Middle East and for our oceans, but hopefully this idea will help convert the problem into a solution.

For her findings, Faiad was presented with the European Fusion Development Agreement award at the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists — involving 130 competitors from 37 countries — held in Finland last year from 23t o 28 September.

Faiad  is now looking to get her findings patented this year through the Egyptian Patent Office and scaling up the idea so that it can become a tangible project on the ground.

She has already garnered interests from the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute.

Out of the six projects in the environmental section of the contest, three came from Egypt.

Digesting paper with termites?

Aside from Faiad, two other young Egyptian scientists Hassan Ahmed and Yomna Yasser Mohamed, proposed interesting solutions to environmental issues. Hassan Ahmed  looked at managing  paper product waste through termite digestion; the paper is digested by the termites which then enrich the soil with potassium, phosphor and nitrogen  and can be used as fertilizers, the termites also  produce  hydrogen which can be used as a renewable source of energy.

Jatropha plants for biofuel

Yasser Mohamed’s project instead looked at producing a clean and green source of energy that could be manufactured locally in poor rural areas in Egypt. The project selected a plant which is not linked to the food chain , the jatropha plant, to investigate whether it’s oil, methanol, and KOH, which are blended to make bio-diesel, could be produced using different parts of the plant.

Will young Egyptian scientists continue to be at the forefront of environmental solutions? Let’s hope so.

Image via European Commission Research; Image of jatropha plant from Shutterstock

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Processors have made ethanol from cornstarch and sugar for decades, but using food products to make biofuel raises demand for staple commodities like corn and seed oils with disastrous impact to the food chain.

So let’s try again, back things up a step. Start with cellulose, not sugar. Add some enzymes that convert the cellulose into sugar. Next ferment the sugar into alcohol. Then distill the alcohol into fuel. Four simple steps and we’re juicing our cars with sawdust and coconut shells instead of Middle East oil.  Scientists know how to turn plants into fuel, but doing it profitably is another thing: Cellulose is the problem.

Found in the walls of plant cells, cellulose is the most abundant naturally occurring organic molecule on the planet. These tough fibers, indigestible to humans,  protect plants from predators.  And they’re hard to break down.

Some animals have evolved elegant ways to do the chemistry. Cow, camel and goat guts host microbes which produce cellulose-chomping enzymes to get the job done.  Called cellulase, these enzymes can be lab-produced, but they aren’t cheap: processors often rely on government subsidies to offset costs. For an academic researcher, trying to convert cellulose into fuel, in a lab, on a budget, hasn’t been easy.

It’s all happening at the zoo.

Maybe professor of microbiology, Dr. David A. Mullin is a Simon & Garfunkel fan, or it’s simply serendipitous that his Tulane University lab is near New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo.

His exploration to discover a microbe that could produce a biofuel straight from cellulose began inside the animal cages.  Braving odors and muck, he and his grad students collected manure from all sorts of exotic vegetarians. Then the  team cultured 40 different bacteria colonies from the Audubon droppings.  When fed cellulose, over a dozen of these strains made butanol. Holy cow!

Butanol, with four carbon atoms, has twice the kick of ethanol and only slightly less energy-potential than gasoline. It can be used straight-up (needs no blending with traditional fossil fuels), and can be transported via existing oil/gas infrastructure (tanker trucks, ships and pipelines).

Due to these commercially-friendly characteristics, this class of biofuel holds potential to lead the pack of alternative fuels.

Mullin’s team experimented to find butanol-producing strains that could work in open air (not in vacuum-sealed animal bellies) and at temperatures easily replicated in a lab.

Bacteria from African Zebra droppings earned their stripes by hitting all the targets. His tests now focus on TU-103, the name of the magical zebra-poop microbe.  Experiments combine TU-103 with a variety of high-fiber meals, and measure chemical output.  Mullin has demonstrated that, in addition to butanol, TU-103 converts cellulose into acetone and hydrogen (both with commercial value) and carbon dioxide.

OK, so not completely net-zero, but very close. The team is now working to minimize the time for fermentation and demonstrate that the enzyme can consistently convert an array of biomass waste feedstock.

Environmental push-back against biofuel targets competition with food sources; stresses on water supply; and negative impact to biodiversity since it encourages farmers to dedicate large tracts of  arable land to single-crop production.

“We don’t want to create new monocultures,” said Sheila Karpf,  policy analyst for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington.

Biofuels created from industrial and agricultural bio-waste neatly sidesteps these issues: this Green Prophet advises.

Image via loveisnotabvictorymarch

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