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    Pollute The Air Contaminates Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans

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    Alvin
    America has a large problem with cow manure pollution. A team of scientists has developed a simple process to extract cellulose fibers from manure to produce paper. Their method involves heating, mixing with chemicals, and filtering manure to isolate the cellulose. They have produced paper samples from elephant manure and are now testing cow and horse manure. Converting manure into a usable product like paper could help farmers generate revenue from their waste and reduce pollution.

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    Pollute The Air Contaminates Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans

    Uploaded by

    Alvin
    40 views3 pages
    America has a large problem with cow manure pollution. A team of scientists has developed a simple process to extract cellulose fibers from manure to produce paper. Their method involves heating, mixing with chemicals, and filtering manure to isolate the cellulose. They have produced paper samples from elephant manure and are now testing cow and horse manure. Converting manure into a usable product like paper could help farmers generate revenue from their waste and reduce pollution.

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    hththghg

    Original Title

    Poop Paper

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    America has a large problem with cow manure pollution. A team of scientists has developed a simple process to extract cellulose fibers from manure to produce paper. Their method involves heating, mixing with chemicals, and filtering manure to isolate the cellulose. They have produced paper samples from elephant manure and are now testing cow and horse manure. Converting manure into a usable product like paper could help farmers generate revenue from their waste and reduce pollution.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    40 views3 pages

    Pollute The Air Contaminates Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans

    Uploaded by

    Alvin
    America has a large problem with cow manure pollution. A team of scientists has developed a simple process to extract cellulose fibers from manure to produce paper. Their method involves heating, mixing with chemicals, and filtering manure to isolate the cellulose. They have produced paper samples from elephant manure and are now testing cow and horse manure. Converting manure into a usable product like paper could help farmers generate revenue from their waste and reduce pollution.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    America has a problem with its cow poop.

    With 94 million head of cattle, farmers face a staggering 2 billion tons of manure a
    year. Methane and ammonia gases pollute the air, and phosphorous and nitrogen
    runoff contaminates rivers, lakes, and oceans.

    A team of scientists from the University of Vienna, however, thinks that poop can be
    turned into paper. Their process, which involves extracting grass and hay fibers,
    called cellulose, from manure is simple, inexpensive, and uses less energy and fewer
    chemicals than the top-down method of grinding wood into pulp.

    The dung-derived fibers could be fashioned into revenue-generating products such as


    wastewater treatment filters, writing paper, or as fillers to reinforce polymer
    composites. Not only that, the team is also in the early stages of developing a two-step
    process that would capture methane from the manure to generate electricity and then
    use the remains to produce paper.

    After collecting a fresh sample of manure, the researchers heated it in an oven for two
    hours at 120 degrees Celsius (248 degrees Fahrenheit) to kill any pathogens. Next,
    they mixed the sterilized manure with a solution of water and sodium hydroxide to
    remove animal matter, such as dead cells and tissue. They then purified it using
    common bleach and mixed it in a common household blender. (In a larger-scale paper
    production facility, active oxygen would be used because it’s chlorine-free and
    environmentally friendly.) Lastly, they poured the suspension through a filter to
    remove any excess water.
    Paper (top) can be made from cellulose derived from elephant manure (bottom).
    |Kathrin Weiland
    The result was a gel-like substance of pure cellulose. After spreading the substance
    flat onto a mold, they pressed it with a weight and left it to dry.

    The result: paper.

    “The beauty of this is that the animals eat low-grade biomass such as grass and hay.
    Out of this low-grade biomass, we’re not only growing animals but utilizing the
    cellulose that comes back out of the animals in an easy-to-process way,” said
    Alexander Bismarck, a professor of polymers at the university. Bismarck and his team
    presented their research March 21 at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in
    New Orleans.

    Much of work they’ve completed so far has been done on elephant manure acquired
    from a local zoo. Because elephants have just one stomach, as opposed to the four
    stomachs in a cow, the cellulose in their poop is less digested.

    “Every manure is different, that’s a funny thing about it,” said team member Kathrin
    Weiland, a graduate student at the university.
    RELATED: Giant Larvaceans Sweep Up and Poop Out Plastic Waste in the Oceans

    Bismarck points out that although the accumulation of elephant poop is not a major
    problem in Europe or the United States, there is plenty of it in Africa. The researchers
    have been working with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South
    Africa to not only develop high-performance products such as industrial filters and
    fillers to reinforce polymer composites, but also on making paper from elephant poop
    to ultimately raise funds and awareness for elephant conservation.

    But the scientists are also applying what they’ve learned from elephant manure to
    cows. Weiland along with graduate student Nurul Ain Kamal and postdoctoral fellow,
    Andreas Mautner, are running tests to understand what chemical composition works
    best for cow and horse manure, so they can extract the most cellulose from each.

    The ability to turn manure into a marketable product could offer livestock farmers
    another source of revenue from the abundant heaps of waste they must deal with on a
    regular basis. As the researchers refine their papermaking process, they’re also
    working to develop a two-step system that captures methane from manure in a
    bioreactor and then converts what remains into paper.

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