Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

There is a push, worldwide, to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable sources such as biomass. Thermochemical processes, which use heat to break up the molecules of biomass into fragments that recombine to form liquid fuels and chemicals, are the preferred methods since they are cost-effective and can process agricultural and forestry residues, thus avoiding competition with food.

The general, long-term objective of this research is to develop better reactors for the thermal and catalytic cracking of solid feedstocks such as biomass and liquid feedstocks such as bio-oils and residual oils. The shorter term objectives are the better understanding of current reactors, their improvement through new technologies, and the development of new reactors or reactor configurations. Simpler and more versatile laboratory reactors will make it easier for academic researchers to develop processes to obtain bioproducts from renewable resources. Mobile, easy to operate pyrolyzers will allow for the economical production of bioproducts from renewable resources.

For example, corn stover is the residue left in the field after harvest. The bulkiness of the corn stover would make transportation to a large processing plant prohibitively expensive. Using a mobile pyrolyzer would nearly eliminate transportation costs, so that stover could transformed into biochar, which can be used as a soil amendment, and a bio-oil which can either be used as fuel or refined for applications such as natural pesticides. The bio-oil would substitute for fossil fuels while the biochar would permanently capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; both would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.