Workshop: Developing New Paradigms for Biofuel Separations to Enable an Alternative Fuels Future

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

1104933 Shantz There are many significant drivers for the United States to shift to alternative fuels. These range from reducing our dependency on foreign imports of oils, to the deleterious effects of climate change that are driven by fossil fuels utilization, to creating a new industrial sector (green energy) that will provide high quality jobs for the future work force. There are many routes being explored and touted as alternatives to fossil fuel, including wind, solar, hydrogen, and nuclear energy. One of the more promising possibilities is the development of biofuels from non-edible crops. It would appear that one of the key advantages of biofuels is that conversion of biomass is possible using known technologies such as pyrolysis, hydrolysis, fermentation etc. However, one of the key challenges in this area is that these processes on whole are nonselective. Thus, while the reactor technology for processing raw biomass into a base product feedstock is available, there will be considerable needs for the development of methods for upgrading the base product feedstock. The ability to selectively remove desirable components (e.g. sugars, furfurals) from streams produced by pyrolysis / hydrolysis would represent a simple route to either blending renewable feedstocks into existing fuel production schemes or lead to whole new routes for fuel production. The former represents a logical intermediate target that would be beneficial to the fuels industry meeting government-mandated targets for integration of renewable compounds into the fuel pool. The latter represents the ultimate goal of moving the country away from fossil fuels. Based on these points, it is believed that new separation schemes will be needed for biofuel utilization to reach its full potential. This workshop will have three major themes: 1. A discussion of the state of the art in feedstock processing, with an emphasis on the nature of the resulting bio-mixtures, particularly focused on properties of relevance for potential separations. 2. A discussion of the current state of liquid separations applied to biofuels processing. 3. A summary session outlining the key and unique challenges facing this area that will lay out a roadmap for future work and goals in the field.