04/21/2008
by Gary Truitt
Tuesday is Earth Day so there will be lots of talk about the saving the environment. What you may not hear a lot about is how agriculture is saving the planet. With funding from Indiana soybean farmers, student researchers at Purdue have come up with new products that will help save our planet. John Mullen was part of a team that invented a biodegradable clay pigeon, “We developed a shooting target made from soybean meal.” He explained to HAT that most shooting targets on the market take hundreds of years to decompose in the soil. The Eco Disc takes only 60 days to decompose. With over a half a billion discs used annually, this represents a significant improvement to the environment.
The student team that created the Eco Disc a soy clay pigeon - was one of two teams that took top honors in the Indiana Soybean Alliance’s 2008 Student Soybean Product Innovation Competition at Purdue University. Team members included Ben Hall, a senior in agricultural and biological engineering from Merritt Island, FL.; David Conway, a senior in agricultural and biological engineering from Highland Park, IL.; John Mullen, a senior in health science from Dayton, OH; and Adrian Boeh, a sophomore in management from Lebanon, IN. The team earned $7,500 for their efforts.
“It came to the point where we were just going through hobbies we had and seeing if we could apply them to soybeans," Conway said. "On a wild tangent I started thinking about the old game Duck Hunt, and we came up with the idea of soy shooting targets." With that, team EcoDisc began working. After months of market research and product development, the team developed an original product. Because EcoDisc is formed using biodegradable soy products in place of the petroleum products currently used in clay pigeons, the discs are environmentally friendly.
Another product from the competition takes the waste products of two energy sources and creates a new energy source.
Kyle Propst was part of a team that created a new energy sourc3e using coal ash, a waste product from coal burning power plants, “They usually just dump this ash in the environment but by finding a use for it we can reuse it and thus improve the earth,” he told HAT.
The coal ash is when combined with crude glycerin, a by-product of soy-biodiesel production, to form brickettes that are can then be burned to produce electricity in power stations. Finding a use for the crude glycerin improves the efficiency of soy-biodiesel production.
The student team that created Gly Coal Solutions - a soy-based coal replacement - placed in Tier 2 in the Indiana Soybean Alliance’s 2008 Student Soybean Product Innovation Competition. taking home $4,500 for their efforts. Team members include Kyle Probst, a senior in food science from Bloomington, IN.; and Barry Siqueira, a senior in management from Mishawaka, IN.
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