Manure Algae Plastic

I don’t know why I was so heavily impacted by the work of Dr. Erik Coats, University of Idaho Associate Professor of Civil Engineering who has discussed at length a technology that enables him to transform manure into biodegradable plastic. One of the overreaching implications is that it is possible to think about eliminating lagoons in large cattle operations. Furthermore, there is some potential for treating human waste. But in a discussion with him, he brought up using cow manure to produce algae and I jumped on that. “There is a lot of science that says algae could be the next great oil boom. Yes. I have a colleague at Boise State University that I collaborate with and his name is Kevin Ferris, easy algae expert in the group. It is a nice collaboration that has come together through the Center for Advanced Energy Studies. we have two avenues we are considering there. One is simply to capture CO2 and nutrients such as carbohydrates and recycle these back into the bio plastic digestive system and two, the other Avenue is producing lipids which could potentially be recovered for biofuels.”