"For more than half a century, International Molasses Corp. has sold its product to bakeries and manufacturers that use the sticky syrup in cookies and candy. But recently, the Saddle Brook company found a new and unexpected market — at contaminated industrial sites, where the molasses literally gets pumped into the soil."
I"t turns out that molasses can be used to clean up cancer-causing solvents.
A 6,000-gallon tanker truck filled with diluted molasses recently pulled into the parking lot of the 25-acre campus of Kearfott Guidance and Navigation Corp. in Woodland Park. Workers attached hoses from the truck to several injection wells, and the molasses flowed silently into the ground under the facility's parking lot to help rid groundwater of high levels of contamination that seeped into the soil decades ago.
In a relatively new process called enhanced anaerobic bioremediation, the diluted molasses provides a food source for microbes that occur naturally in the soil. The microbes multiply, then use the solvents the way humans use oxygen, breaking them down into non-toxic byproducts, such as carbon dioxide."
James M. O'Neill reports for the North Jersey Herald News October 11, 2011.
