Posted on 09/29/2011 10:33:09 AM PDT by Red Badger
Iowa State University's Robert C. Brown keeps a small vial of brown, sweet-smelling liquid on his office table.
"It looks like something you could pour on your pancakes," he said. "In many respects, it is similar to molasses."
Brown, in fact, calls it "pyrolytic molasses."
That's because it was produced by the fast pyrolysis of biomass such as corn stalks or wood chips. Fast pyrolysis involves quickly heating the biomass without oxygen to produce liquid or gas products.
"We think this is a new way to make inexpensive sugars from biomass," said Brown, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, the Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering and the Iowa Farm Bureau Director of Iowa State's Bioeconomy Institute.
That's a big deal because those sugars can be further processed into biofuels. Brown and other Iowa State researchers believe pyrolysis of lignocelluslosic biomass has the potential to be the cheapest way to produce biofuels or biorenewable chemicals.
Brown and Iowa State researchers will present their ideas and findings during tcbiomass2011, the International Conference on Thermochemical Conversion Science in Chicago Sept. 28-30. On Thursday, Sept, 29, Brown will address the conference with a plenary talk describing how large amounts of sugars can be produced from biomass by a simple pretreatment before pyrolysis. He'll also explain how these sugars can be economically recovered from the products of pyrolysis.
A poster session following Brown's talk will highlight thermochemical technologies developed by 19 Iowa State research teams, including processes that:
increase the yield of sugar from fast pyrolysis of biomass with a pretreatment that neutralizes naturally occurring alkali that otherwise interferes with the release of sugars prevent burning of sugar released during pyrolysis by rapidly transporting it out of the hot reaction zone recover sugar from the heavy end of bio-oil that has been separated into various fractions separate sugars from the heavy fractions of bio-oil using a simple water-washing process.
In addition to Brown, key contributors to the pyrolysis research at Iowa State include Brent Shanks, the Mike and Jean Steffenson Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals based at Iowa State; Christopher Williams, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering; Zhiyou Wen, associate professor of food science and human nutrition; Laura Jarboe, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering; Xianglan Bai, adjunct assistant professor of aerospace engineering; Marjorie Rover and Sunitha Sadula, research scientists at the Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies; Dustin Dalluge, a graduate student in mechanical engineering; and Najeeb Kuzhiyil, a former doctoral student who is now working for GE Transportation in Erie, Penn.
Their work has been supported by the eight-year, $22.5 million ConocoPhillips Biofuels Program at Iowa State. The program was launched in April 2007.
Brown said Iowa State will – literally – take a bus load of students and researchers to the Chicago conference to present their work on thermochemical technologies, including production of sugars from biomass.
"The Department of Energy has been working for 35 years to get sugar out of biomass," Brown said. "Most of the focus has been on use of enzymes, which remains extremely expensive. What we've developed is a simpler method based on the heating of biomass."
Let me get out my handy dandy “lefty communist to English” translation book... ah... here it is...
“Sustainable energy - those energy sources that are incapable of supporting a capitalist economy.”
-- Yo-Yo
She is fusion plus smoking ass hot. Who is that?
I remember how Cokes and Dr. Peppers tasted when I was a kid (in 12oz glass bottles), and they taste nothing like that now. It’s a shame....
Big Lots here sells Cokes made with real cane sugar, imported from Mexico. Mexico does not use corn sweetener because sugar is cheaper. They don’t have a sugar lobby that keeps prices artificially high like we do. If we paid the world price for sugar, Cokes would be a quarter and candy bars would be a dime. Plus, recent studies show that corn sweetener is what makes Americans obese. Our bodies don’t react the same to corn sweetener as they do to pure sugar. Sugar is burned almost immediately for energy, corn sweetener is stored as fat.......
Don’t get me started on subsidies, especially the sugar one! LOL
Biofool PING!.........
Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. If biofuels can be made economically and without disrupting the food supply, then I am all for it.
Biofuels can be made economically. And can be made without adverse affect it to the food supply. The problem is there just isn't enough land, even in marginal or non agricultural areas, to grow enough biological feedstock, whatever the type, to supply more than a small fraction of the fuel necessary to maintain our level of fuel consumption, much less a growing demand. At best, biofuel replacements will be a local, niche oriented source of fuels and always will be, unless the US driver is willing to give up their large, low mileage vehicles for small fuel efficient ones. Ethanol is not the panacea that everyone is looking for, unless we have engines that can run on 100% ethanol, it's the only fuel source available and have delivery and storage systems that will not degrade in prolonged contact with it, and we have mandatory 100% conversion of all applicable waste products in the US to ethanol. Add to that the built-in 20% less energy content in ethanol than in gasoline, so you would have to have larger tanks, etc. Biodiesels are in the same class. They are not compatible with modern piezoelectric fuel injectors, and will actually destroy them, voiding the warranty. Another great choice is butanol, another biofuel that is nearly equal to gasoline in energy content and is made in much the same process as ethanol, but the same restrictions on land and feedstocks apply. It will take a new technology of some sort that will eventually replace the drive mechanisms of our current automobiles and trucks to get us out of foreign dependence on oil. Even if we drilled all our own oil and replaced the foreign oil with domestic, it would eventually run out sometime in the future and we would be right back where we are now. Yes, we can make good fuels out of coal and that is a proven method, but given the current environmentality against any use of coal, it's not likely to happen soon.
Inexpensive? Compared to using enzymes, maybe. But how are you heating it?
But how are you heating it?
With petroleum?...........
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