We wrote in the beginning of September about a professor at Michigan State University, Kurt Thelen, who was working on a project that grows crops on old industrial waste sites (known as brownfields) and then using those crops to make biofuels. The benefits including the plants sucking up some of the toxins in the soil, using "waste" land and creating more biomass for fuel. In an update from DaimlerChrysler, one of Thelen's partner on the site, the crops - sunflowers, corn, soybeans and more - have been harvested and will soon be tested as biomass for biofuels. Thelen's project, located in Rose Township, was endorsed by the EPA and could (fingers crossed here) lead to growing biofuels crops on hundreds of brownfields across the country.

The Rose Township site was once filled with more than 5,000 drums of illegally dumped oils, paint sledges and solvents. DC says in a press release that, "While DaimlerChrysler wasn't responsible for all the pollution at the Rose Township site, an agreement was reached between all responsible parties and the company took over the cleanup project in 1988." The EPA calls DC, "one of the primary parties responsible at the site." The mess was created mostly in the late '60s. High time it gets cleaned up.

Related:

• Turning brownfields green with biofuel crops

[Source: Chrysler Group, EPA]

Maybe finding those extra 10 million acres to grow America's biofuel crops won't be all that difficult. Not if the results of Michigan State University (MSU) professor Kurt Thelen's research come out right. Thelen is looking at ways to grow corn (for ethanol), soybean, sunflower and canola (for biodiesel) on brownfields, polluted former industrial sites. The possible ecological benefits are twofold, Thelen said. First, the crops are likely to be healthy enough to use as fuel and replace some fossil fuels. Second, the plants will clean up the polluted soil through bioremediation. This will make the grains and oil too toxic for humans to eat.

"Michigan, being an industrial state, unfortunately has a legacy of brownfields," Thelen told the Lansing State Journal. "So we thought, here's an opportunity to take a negative and turn it into a positive, to grow something productive on an area that's really a wasteland."

Related:

• Growing corn for ethanol will require 10 million more acres

[Source: Lansing State Journal, Renewable Energy Access]