Chronicle Online e-News
$6 million research lab will produce ethanol and other biofuels from
grasses and biomass
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March08/biofuels.lab
.lm.html
March 6, 2008
By Linda McCandless
cunews@cornell.edu
A former agricultural engineering, power and machinery lab at Cornell
is being gutted to make way for a state-of-the art Biofuels Research
Lab that will convert perennial grasses and woody biomass into
ethanol and other biofuels and will occupy the entire east wing of
Riley Robb Hall by January 2009.
The $6 million lab is being constructed thanks to a $10 million grant
awarded to Larry Walker, Cornell professor of biological and
environmental engineering, from the Empire State Development Corp.,
and will include analytical equipment, incubators, fermenters and
other state-of-the-art biotechnology equipment.
"Biofuels is the emerging program for our department, if not for the
whole university," said Mike Walters, chairman of the Department of
Biological And Environmental Engineering (BEE) in the College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The department plans to offer a master's of engineering program
focused on biofuels in fall 2008 because demand for trained biofuel
engineers is skyrocketing, said Walters. The department has also just
hired Largus Agenent from Washington University as an associate
professor of engineering. His research focuses on biogas and fuel
cells.
The new lab will be shared by faculty and students across campus.
Faculty members expected to work in the laboratories include Larry
Walker, Beth Ahner, Norm Scott, David Wilson, Jim Gossett, Susan
Henry and Harold Craighead.
Five separate labs will be equipped to focus on different aspects of
biofuel research, including two growth chambers for specialty plants
-- "biomolecular farming," as the engineers call it -- that express
different proteins. Researchers are working to overcome the physical,
chemical and biological barriers to liberating sugars from such
alternative 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.
The facility has been designed so that feed stock materials -- the
plants -- will enter at the north end of the building to undergo
pretreatment, bioconversion and fermentation processes in an
integrated and engineered framework. State-of-the-art analytical
systems will allow the researchers to work at different scales,
ranging from understanding fundamental molecular mechanisms at the
nanoscale to larger scales with fermentation vessels up to 150 liters.
Programming in biofuels research at Cornell is primarily supported by
a $75,000 NYSTAR grant for biofuels research received by Walker in
2005, in addition to some monies from the Northeast Sun Grant
Initiative.
"One of our challenges is going to be finding additional programming
money," said Walters.
The architect for the project is SWBR Architects, from Rochester,
N.Y. LeChase Construction Services was recently awarded the
construction contract. The construction progress can be tracked
online at
<http://www.nesungrant.cornell.edu/cals/sungrant/insti
tute/index.cfm>.
--
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