CBS4′s
Kathy Walsh was at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society for
all the fuss about panda feces. It turns out panda droppings could solve one of
the major hurdles to producing biofuels.
They
are adorable and endangered. Every giant panda birth is a worldwide wonder.
“It’s
probably the most pleasant fecal material to actually work with,” Dr. Ashli Brown said.
Brown
and grad student Candace Williams discovered something amazing in panda
excrement. They analyzed the fresh feces of bamboo-eating pandas at the Memphis
Zoo. They found microbes in panda droppings break down super-tough plant
materials — grasses, corn stalks and wood chips.
“Once
you have the bacteria you can grow them outside of the intestinal track of the
panda,” Brown said.
Eventually the scientists want to try engineering the digestive
enzymes on a large scale so plant waste could be used to make biofuels, instead of relying on food crops like corn.
“Being
able to produce a biofuel from two waste products is pretty incredible,”
Williams said.
Recycling
animal feces is not a new phenomenon. Statues have been made from panda poop
and there are elephant dung paper products and compost.
At
the Denver Zoo they’re hoping to use thousands of pounds of animal waste with
thousands of pounds of human garbage to power 20 percent of their energy needs.
It’s called gasification. A special machine will turn the trash and poop into
power.
“There
is a future in feces. As you know a lot of animals produce a lot of waste and
taking that resource and putting it in something to create a clean renewable
energy is an exciting process,” Jennifer Hale with the Denver Zoo said.
The
beauty of panda waste is that it could make biofuels
cheaper to produce. That could expand their use and help cut dependency on
foreign oil. Commercial production is probably years away.