The research on duckweed as a cost-competitive raw material for biofuel production has been highlighted in the American Chemical Society(ACS) news service which was collaborated by Christodoulos Floudas, Stephen C. Macaleer’63 Professor of Princeton University and Professor XIAO Xin, Professor LI Jie and Professor Cao Hongbin of the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences(IPE-CAS), and Associate Professor MA Jiong of Peking University, and Dr. QIAO Yong, Professor HU Xuteng from PetroChina Company Limited and other colleagues.

The research has demonstrated that duckweed, an aquatic plant that floats on or near the surface of still or slow-moving freshwater, is ideal as a raw material for biofuel production. It grows fast, thrives in wastewater that has no other use, does not impact the food supply and can be harvested more easily than algae and other aquatic plants.

A paper published recently in the journal “Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research” describes four scenarios for duckweed refineries that use proven existing technology to produce gasoline, diesel and kerosene. The results show that small-scale duckweed refineries could produce cost-competitive fuel when the price of oil reaches $100 per barrel, and larger-scale duckweed refineries would be cost-competitive at an oil price of $72 per barrel. The research is supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), PetroChina Company Limited and National Science Foundation.

For more information, please visit the link below.

http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=223&content_id=CNBP_032316&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=965cbf65-e884-4322-9c98-f7cdbf00e983

Full Paper: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/abs/10.1021/ie3034703