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“Return of the Pyromaniax”: a round-up of 10 hot projects from Biofuels Digest
Elsewhere, the pyromaniax continue to rule. Here’s a round-up of the latest major pyrolysis breakthroughs and updates around the world, as part of the Digest’s special Focus issue, “Return of the Pyromaniax“.
19 research teams provide update
In September, Iowa State University’s Robert C. Brown and a team of researchers said that pyrolytic molasses, made via fast pyrolysis of feedstocks such as such as corn stalks or wood chips, has the potential to be the cheapest way to produce biofuels or biorenewable chemicals.
At tcbiomass2011, the International Conference on Thermochemical Conversion Science in Chicago Sept. 28-30, Brown highlighted 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, 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, and separate sugars from the heavy fractions of bio-oil using a simple water-washing process.
Iowa State Represented at tcbiomass Conference
Iowa State University sent sixteen representatives to the tcbiomass Conference in Chicago at the end of September. The tcbiomass conference is the second international conference on thermochemical (TC) biomass conversion science. Find out more information about the tcbiomass 2011 here.
tcbiomass2011 also hosted a competitive student poster contest to help connect today’s top engineering students with global bioenergy experts. We are very proud to announce this year’s winner was CSET’s Kaige Wang, with his poster on “Pyrolysis of Lipid-rich Biomass for Fuel and Chemical Production”.
