Duckweed is a tiny aquatic plant that is highly efficient in utilizing soluble nutrients found in livestock or municipal wastewater. Researchers at NC State University have demonstrated that, when grown on the nutrient-rich effluent from hog production, duckweed can be manipulated to produce large amounts of biomass that has either high protein content or high starch content. This research indicates that duckweed has the potential to be a viable, renewable energy crop for ethanol production.

An added benefit of duckweed is its ability to remove nutrients from agricultural and municipal wastewater. The Biofuels Center is funding continuing duckweed research conducted at a hog farm near Zebulon, North Carolina.  For more on this grant-funded research and an interview with the researcher, click here. 

Other collaborators include Aeroglide (sharing in the cost of drying equipment) and Novozymes (providing enzymes for fermenting duckweed to ethanol). Tasks of this project include: 

• Creating a scaled-up version of the duckweed cropping system
• Developing a post-harvest handling procedure
• Determining the ethanol yield from dry duckweed biomass
• Performing an economic analysis of the overall process

The goal of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of using duckweed biomass to support yeast fermentation to ethanol for biofuels production.