A blog from University of Borås

Monday, November 28, 2011

Biorefining with water hyacinth in China

Taihu lake with 2250 km2 is the third largest lake in China. This lake is located in west of Shanghai in an agriculatural province named Jiangsu. It is a very beautiful lake with many islands and also a local tourist attraction. We visited this lake last week. The wastes and wastewater from agriculture, industries and also municipal of the huge population who live around the lake, result in dramatic pollution of the water in the lake. It means the nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphates, etc. in the water is quite high. It is most likely difficult to stop draining of the wastewater into the lake, and it result in growth of algae, so the water becomes green. Therefore, the Chinese authorities decided to cultivate Water Hyacinth in the lake in order to clean the water and reduce the algae blooming. They planted more than 400 ha water hyacinth in the lake. As I saw the results, it had a great impact on water quality. However, the question is now what to do with this 200,000 tons water hyacinth per year. Let's hope our collaboration result in great improvement of the environment in that region.


(Algae blooming in Taihu lake in Chaina)


(Plantation of water hyacinth in the lake)


(Harvesting water hyacinth last week)

1 comment:

  1. Please keep us all posted. I expect that the best results will come from digestion into methane, and the Chinese already have skill in that. This problem is worldwide, and we will be watching for good solutions, specifically from China.

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