Straw wealth

with the development of a new process, straw will be used to make substances that will result in a variety of fuels, chemicals, fertilisers and glues. This would be of immense benefit to the industries based on horticulture and agriculture as it would provide a sustainable way of not only utilising agricultural waste but of obtaining a valuable, slow-release fertiliser that will be environmentally sound. The possibilities are tremendous in light of the fact that the uk produces about 14 million tonnes of straw as by-product of cereal crops each year, only half of which has commercial value. The rest is destroyed.

Now, a team led by Tony Bridgwater, professor of Aston University's Bio-energy Research Group in the uk, has come up with a new process to utilise the straw. It is based on fast pyrolysis, a high-temperature process in which biomass is rapidly heated up to 500C in the absence of oxygen. After decomposing and cooling, the biomass condenses into a dark brown liquid.

Their research has just won them a grant of 1.55 million (about us $2.5 million) from the European Union (eu). The grant is for three years. It is expected that by the end of this term, the process will be developed for commercial production of the "green" fertiliser from straw. The research on fast pyrolysis is expected to have wider implications. In 1998, the eu gave the team at Aston University a grant of 2 million (us $3.3 million) for developing a fuel from this technology that would be environmentally friendly. The result of that was the "bio-oil" plant, the first of its kind in the uk, which is about to begin operation. The aim is to produce green fuel in commercial amounts to be used at power stations.