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« bambooisgrass wrote on Sunday, Aug 01 at 12:59 AM »
It is great to see the work that is going on at Auburn with bio waste to fuel conversion. It is ironic to note that the University has ignored it's own past research with Bamboo; that proved that bamboo is 5x more productive for paper than pine. The University stopped that research in the early 1960's, due to pressure from the timber, cotton, and corn lobbyists, who all felt threatened by the possibilities that the Grasses present, as substitutes for those entrenched industries. The bamboo has been ignored at the Camden Field Station, since then, and is now slated for removal, because the U wants to build an "eco demonstration project", just as we are discovering that Bamboo may be the material of choice for a whole range of technical applications that are much more "Eco friendly" than most of the products and processes that it could replace.

Here are some of them:

The market for clean water technology will continue to grow at an ever increasing rate, as population growth and climate change converge. The economic "meltdown" is an opportunity for big industry to consolidate the world's resources into fewer hands. "Privatization" of water is an example of this development. We foresee the need for small water purification plants that will be able to sustain small populations with water from various sources. Bamboo Charcoal is being studied for fresh and waste water treatment. We are certain that it will be possible to produce small amounts of clean water from rain runoff, streams, and puddles, with passive Charcoal filters that are low cost and locally produced. We intend to start production of these small systems and use the knowledge gained to perfect larger systems. We expect to use a combination of passive and pressurized filters to clean up small water companies, and rural water Coops. Thousands of these small purveyors are being forced out of business and into the hands of large operators because the cost of upgrades is prohibitive. We see this as an opportunity to develop low cost systems that can be customized to address local conditions. Successive filters can be designed to remove contaminants and maintain adequate rates of flow. This market is large and the competition for it is fragmented. We may be able to capture market share on the basis of cost. We will develop a new system of solar charcoal production that is able to capture volatile by products that can be used to make valuable products that can help lower operating costs.

The building materials market is very large, and cost conscious. We can demonstrate the advantages of higher strength, and lower cost "Bamply", for all sorts of uses. Bamboo flooring has been successfully marketed at several price points, and similar results shall pertain to many other products now in development. We are proposing several building panels that can be factory built and finished, by established manufacturers. We will start in foreign markets where local building authorities are not restrained by over regulation, and build a record of performance that can be used for testing and eventual ICBO certification. To date, there is one certified Bamboo building component, and it is of limited impact. The company that produces it has built about 200 structures for the Tourist industry, where it has survived extreme wind loads with out failure. The company was recently approached by a larger builder with a buy out offer of $20,000,000, which was refused.

In the US, the market for “Green” products is the fastest growing segment of the building industry, and bamboo has been publicized as “sustainable”. This has caused Chinese manufacturers to create more bamboo products, which has begun to have an adverse effect on the supply of natural bamboo. Even though China has more bamboo than any other country, there are few managed plantations. Recent over cutting has lead to numerous land slides, and flooding. China can not afford to use its precious farm land for Bamboo plantations, and will sometime in the future, rely upon imported sources.

The US has abundant land that is presently used for Cotton; and which will soon be available for other uses. We hope to partner with large landholders and begin small test plots of diverse bamboo types. This would serve as the basis for basic research and drive development of larger plantation scale operations as cotton is phased out. It is in the national interest to develop alternative materials that are less reliant upon chemicals and annual planting. Bamboo is a natural substitute that can rebuild soils damaged by cotton. It is much more valuable as a multi use material, and it effectively stops erosion….The famous USDA Bamboo researcher, F.A. McClure first studied bamboo for erosion control. He foretold the serious erosion that farming the Great Plains would engender, and was basically ignored. Since that time, annual planting has caused about 10’ of lost topsoil in Kansas, to be flushed into the rivers, and along with pesticide runoff, has contributed to the deterioration of fish population and “dead zones” in the ocean. Bamboo can help alleviate this problem, and we can lead the way, with site specific planting programs. Bamboo building materials will be successful if the cost is low and performance is high. We are working with Zhejiang Forestry College to test and develop many products that can exceed the performance of wood and steel, and have confidence that they can achieve cost savings over those materials.

The market for food is always expanding, and the profit margin is relatively low. During economic contractions, inexpensive food is the strongest segment. Bamboo derived foods can be formulated with high amino acid content, and low production cost. We are working with Researchers at Kunming University to create new Bamboo foods and extracts that can be added to rice bran to fortify the basic dietary needs of half the world population. This is a very promising potential market that could be developed quickly.

Bamboo flavanoids are being researched and have limited market share in China, and that is where we expect to have our earliest food related success.

Recent scandals over toxic additives in food originating in China will require us to produce our products locally. We will start producing value added food products from domestic crops within the next ten years. We will be producing food in other countries before we have sufficient biomass in the US, and that will give us time to develop a line of food products that will provide low cost high quality healthy alternatives. We are confident that bamboo can become as popular in the western diet as it is in the Orient, where it is the most valuable segment of the entire Bamboo product chain.

Composite technology is a new area that is driving the demand for lighter and stronger vehicles. Fuel efficiency is most easily achieved through weight savings. Bamboo reinforced structures have advantages over metal and silicon (fiber glass) through out the manufacturing process. The demand for low cost high performance components will allow us to design vehicles that have bamboo composite bodies, coated with bamboo nano films, and possibly running on bamboo fuel. That is a market goal that we expect to meet within 20 years, and the market for such vehicles could be huge and world wide.



The market for carbon credits is about $100,000,000 in 2010. The extent of market penetration that Bamboo Hydrogen could eventually capture is incalculable in any meaningful way, the variables are unknown.

There could be regional markets for locally grown Credits and we are working in California, and Yunnan, to produce credits that will help offset local emissions. We would like to work with refiners, power producers, and mine operators to grow sequestrating biomass, close to emission sources, for a more direct accounting of the effect upon the immediate area. We foresee the use of Bamboo along freeways, and surrounding power plants as an effort to capture CO2, before it rises to the stratosphere, where it is out of the reach of any recovery technology yet proposed. We will try ducting and buried pipe to concentrate CO2 in the fields, to see if that will increase the rate of sequestration, while trying to increase the value of the Carbon Credits, based upon bacterial conversion of biomass to Hydrogen...an exciting emerging process.

Auburn is uniquely endowed with a large amount of bamboo that could provide the basis for much research. We at Bambooisgrass.com would like to work with anyone there who is interested in developing new "green" technologies and job development...please let us know how we can work together. reply to: bambooisgrass@yahoo.com
« augrad wrote on Monday, Jul 19 at 11:56 AM »
Nice job--good article. A perspective on AU football I hadn't seen before.