Mexican Student Develops Process to Produce Bioethanol from Water Hyacinth

An engineering student, José Alberto Espejel, from La Salle University in Mexico City has developed a way to create ethanol from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes). His project will be presented to the Nobel Prize laureates in Sweden this December.

Considered an invasive species outside the Amazon basin range, the water hyacinth is a serious problem in small bodies of water. A school project challenged Espejel to convert the plant into a useful product. He first wanted to produce biodegradable plastic from the plant before choosing to extract fermentable sugars from the plant and convert it into ethanol.

The proposed process is said to be capable of producing about 20ml of bioethanol per kilogram of water hyacinth. Espejel and his faculty advisor, chemical engineer Norma del Rocío Mireles, are currently working on improving the efficiency of the process.