Potential of Water Hyacinth for Biomass Refining

Potential of Water Hyacinth for Biomass Refining

Lealon Martin, Henry R. Bungay, and Joel Plawsky

Howard P. Isermann Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, NY 12180-3590

Water hyacinth is a pest throughout the world in hot or warm climates because it forms dense mats that interfere with navigation, recreation, irrigation, and power generation. These mats competitively exclude native submersed and floating-leaved plants. Oxygen is depleted beneath water hyacinth mats and the dense floating mats impede water flow and create good breeding conditions for mosquitoes. As with most feedstocks for biomass refining, cultivation and collection are key economic factors. Water hyacinth is already available as an invasive, nuisance plant and if desired, can be grown on existing ponds used for waste treatment and on waters with unattractive alternate uses. This presentation addresses the collection process that proved to be a major expense in our previous analysis of water hyacinth economics. A preliminary examination of costs shows that using gravel barges that are widely available and relatively low in cost to preprocess, store, and transport the harvested material, can improve overall economics such that water hyacinth is competitive with any other biomass source and might even become the biomass feedstock of choice.