USask researchers shed light on phosphorus fertilizer ckom.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ckom.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Tumpa Sarker, a PhD candidate in USask’s department of chemical and biological engineering, has found that heating canola meal, canola hull, and oat hull before compressing it yields a higher quality pellet with lower moisture content and volume, and higher energy content and density. The resulting product has a heating value similar to coal, Sarker found. “We have all this carbon stored in forests, and plant and agricultural residue,” said Sarker. “We are looking at how to use it in place of fossil fuels to generate energy” Many farming byproducts are currently left in the field to rot. The resulting methane releases large amounts of greenhouse gas. Compacting plant material into small pellets increases its density up to 10 times, making it much more economical to transport and store.
Countries in Europe and Asia are increasingly relying on biofuel – products made from wood and plant residue – as an alternative to fossil fuels in power
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IMAGE: Molecular neurochemist Darrell Mousseau is a professor in USask s Department of Psychiatry and head of the Cell Signalling Laboratory. view more
Credit: University of Saskatchewan
Findings from a new study on Alzheimer s disease (AD), led by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), could eventually help clinicians identify people at highest risk for developing the irreversible, progressive brain disorder and pave the way for treatments that slow or prevent its onset.
The research, published in the journal
Scientific Reports in early January, has demonstrated that a shorter form of the protein peptide believed responsible for causing AD (beta-amyloid 42, or Aβ42) halts the damage-causing mechanism of its longer counterpart.