Water Purification to Duckweed Biofuel

Em[POWER] nonprofit 501c3 is supporting the exploration of new innovations related to Duckweed, identifying new international/national locations for duckweed growth/harvesting, along with working to establish collaborations to expand the project’s potential locally in the US and abroad. In general we are pursuing the developing of the “Water Purification to Energy” strategy for deployment internationally and to be tested locally. Water Purification to Energy is growing duckweed for biofuel. It is a process that makes use of the synergy (interdependence) between a community in need of clean water and distributed sustainable energy, with systems enabling economic growth and environmental improvement. “Water Purification to Energy” is based on the idea of capturing an unused resource that is a byproduct of a critical process, specifically being water treatment. Ideally the energy or resources captured that were previously wasted can be used to improve social and economic situations for communities near waste water ponds, living in impoverished conditions. Access to clean water and a sanitary environment could be enhanced by this process, which would directly improve public health. In the United States, the opportunity resides initially with reducing the sediment in retention ponds, which is a potential cost savings for water treatment centers in regards to dredging and burning the sediment. Additionally the continual removal of duckweed helps purify the waste water. The duckweed itself can feed an ethanol or potentially a biodiesel production system, all as a parasitic process using existing waste water infrastructure for harvesting the duckweed.

For more information: please see project page