Tyler Johnson, Utah Valley University
Phragmites are a fast growing, invasive, plant spreading at rapid rates in and around Utah Lake. They were recently added to Utah County list of a noxious weeds. The purpose of this project, led by Dr. Shurtleff and performed by his undergraduate research students at Utah Valley University is to develop an effective, low cost, method of harvesting the phragmites to make a renewable, carbon-neutral biofuel. Our plan is to modify an old cutter/bailer farm machine that can be pulled by the Land Tamer 8x8 HD vehicle owned by the Utah Lake Commisions. Currently the phragmites are killed by aerial spraying of glycophase. The dead phragmites are then crushed with the Land Tamer to promote decomposition. However, this process kills all plants in the sprayed region. It also returns the nutrients taken-up by the phragmites back into the lake. As an alternative, we want to cut and harvest the phragmities to make a carbon-neutral biofuel and. We plan use the amphibious land Tamer to pull our modified harvesting equipment, which will cut and stack the phragmitites. To the best of our knowledge, no such machine is currently available that can both cut and bail at the same time, so we may have to cut the phragmities with one machine and then bale with another machine. We need to make the cutting and baling machines functional on land and in water. We are investigating different options for doing this. After harvesting and drying the phragmites, we will use them to fuel a GEK gasifier/generator system from All Power Labs.