But instead of removing something from the earth, he’ll put something back.
Freedman, an assistant professor of environmental microbiology in the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design said Miscanthus X giganteus, a biomass plant with an especially deep and substantial root structure, can regenerate the damaged acreage, soaking up carbon from the atmosphere and returning it to the soil.
Power plants across the country utilize more than four times as much water as all U.S. homes and account for 41 percent of total water withdrawals, according to federal data.
Now, with the aid of a $400,000-Department of Energy grant, West Virginia University researchers are seeking ways to quench the thirst of the nation’s power plants in a more cost-effective, environmentally-friendly fashion.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Micheal Smyth, interim director of the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium at West Virginia University, will be featured on a national broadcast of ”Motorweek” this weekend. Smyth will discuss electric vehicle maintenance with master mechanic and show host Pat Goss in the “Goss’ Garage” segment of the show.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Yesterday (May 14), Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the Water Research Institute at West Virginia University’s Energy Institute, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on recent research advances on the development of a domestic source of rare earth elements.
RREs, the minerals that make electronic devices work, are essential to the economy and national security. Currently, the primary source of these minerals worldwide is China.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Researchers from West Virginia University are preserving the memories of a coal community through oral history and photography.
Supported by a grant from the WVU Humanities Center, the research team used historical images from the West Virginia and Regional History Center’s online photographs database, West Virginia History OnView, to document the history of the Scott’s Run community in Monongalia County.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A West Virginia University graduate student is investigating how soils store carbon in ecosystems around the world to understand the impact of climate change.
Biology Ph.D. student Nanette Raczka’s summer research efforts will begin in a seasonally dry tropical forest in Gaunacaste, Costa Rica. Raczka received a grant from the Explorers Club Washington Group to study how microbes in the soil cycle carbon under periods of drought.
John Deskins, director of WVU’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, adds that for several years now, economic evidence has dominated the conversation in West Virginia that a booming natural gas industry has a great potential to spur the resurgence of the state’s manufacturing sector. Downstream manufacturing from a natural gas cracker plant in Pennsylvania and the operation of a highly discussed natural gas storage facility in the state could certainly change the economic landscape.
“A real, transformative opportunity lies in downstream activity,” said Deskins, who is also an associate professor of economics at WVU’s John Chambers College of Business and Economics. “And this is manufacturing opportunity, not extraction. We’ve been talking about this for several years. But just because there’s potential here, we can’t just assume it’s going to happen. It’s competitive out there and we need to be very aggressive in making this happen. The natural gas industry could be game-changing for West Virginia’s economy — without question.”