I came across this article in New Scientist about using Prickly Pear for water purification.
Basically, the cactus' mucilage causes the sediment and bacteria in water to join together and settle to the bottom. This promises to be a cheap and simple way to purify water in the developing world. 19th century Mexican communities used it this way.
We have prickly pear plants on our property and I mostly consider them a nuisance, just behind the Ashe Junipers, in terms of undesirability. I appreciate the reminder that what I consider to be a nuisance is mostly a human concept and that it all depends on your perspective. All plants are good and potentially useful. We just need to keep an open mind and appreciate all life.
In fact, Prickly Pear are also edible, both the pads (nopalitos) and the fruit (pears). It also has medicinal uses and can be used as an intoxicant.
When I get a chance, I'm going to conduct my own experiment and see how well it works.
I wonder if there's anyway to apply this strategy to the oil spill. It's probably not practical given the size of the thing and the number of cacti you would need (assuming it would even work on that type of a liquid). But it kind of reminded me of the farmers who discussed using hay.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SxX2EntEo
Rizzo, that's a good point. People are also talking about using hair and Kevin Costner has a centrifugal oil/water separator.
ReplyDeleteI know they've been using dispersants and that's the opposite idea. There are also naturally-occurring bacteria that eat the oil and I bet eventually we can genetically engineer some that do it better.