Chronicle Online e-News
Researcher to use $10 million grant to revamp Cornell labs to advance
cellulose-to-biofuel research
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan07/biofuel.grant.s
l.html
Jan. 18, 2007
By Susan Lang
ssl4@cornell.edu
To help advance technologies that convert perennial grasses and woody
biomass to ethanol, Cornell professor of biological and environmental
engineering Larry Walker will use a $10 million grant from the Empire
State Development Corp. to upgrade Cornell's industrial biotechnology
laboratories. He also will serve an official adviser to a new
biomass-to-ethanol demonstration facility in Rochester, N.Y.
The grant will be used to renovate laboratories in Riley Robb Hall
and to purchase fermenters, incubators and state-of-the-art
analytical equipment. It also will improve researchers' abilities to
overcome the physical, chemical and biological barriers to liberating
sugars from such energy crops as switchgrass, miscanthus and other
perennial grasses as well as woody biomass, and to biologically
convert these sugars into such biofuels as ethanol, butanol or
hydrogen.
"Although corn-based ethanol production is the current
state-of-the-art technology, the future development, success and
sustainability of the U.S. ethanol industry hinges on developing and
converting perennial grasses and woody biomass, cellulosic biomass,
to ethanol," he says. Walker is also director of the 14-state
Northeast Sun Grant Institute of Excellence, which researches the use
of plant biomass in energy and chemical production.
"Cellulosic ethanol production could be economically advantageous for
New York state because we know how to grow grasses and woody biomass,
and we know how to implement biotechnology. These activities are core
to the industrial biotechnology component to the evolving New York
biofuels sector," Walker says.
In a related initiative, Walker is collaborating with Mascoma Corp.
and Genencor to develop a $14 million cellulosic ethanol pilot-plant
in Rochester funded by New York State Department of Agriculture and
Markets and the New York State Energy Research and Development
Authority. The plant will convert such products as paper sludge, wood
chips, switchgrass and corn stover (the leaves and stalks that are
left in a field after harvest) to ethanol.
"Cornell shares Mascoma's objectives to demonstrate and refine the
cellulose-to-ethanol process and in determining the most appropriate
feedstock strategies to support viable and sustainable commercial
scale energy crop initiatives," says Walker. "By collaborating with
Mascoma, Cornell and its master of engineering students will gain key
insights into both the requirements and operation of a
demonstration-scale biofuels plant."
Working with Mascoma, Walker adds, also will allow Cornell
researchers to apply its research to so-called energy crops grown in
New York as well as to have access to vital operating data to use to
refine modeling techniques that are important for the growth of
agricultural-based bio-industries. The plant also will work with
International Paper, Clarkson University and the National Resources
Defense Council.
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