Engineers study boosting production of cheaper biofuel using microwaves
A team of Engineering researchers has received a $440,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for research that will speed up the production of biofuels while slashing production costs. The research will focus on converting natural products, such as vegetable oil, wood and grasses, to liquid fuels.
“Production of biofuels must be a highly efficient process to be economically competitive with fossil fuels. Therefore, it is critical that conversion processes be developed that consume minimal amounts of energy,” says William Conner, a professor of Chemical Engineering and the principal investigator on the grant. “We expect some of the production processes we’re studying to be at least twice as efficient as current methods.”
Other researchers in the project include George Huber, Chemical Engineering, and K. Sigfrid Yngvesson, Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The grant will support a project called “Microwave Enhanced Catalytic Production of Biofuels,” which will study two key improvements in the process of making sustainable fuels. The first is microwave heating, which can potentially save approximately 80 percent of what it now costs to produce biofuels.
Microwave heating has been shown to be tremendously advantageous by decreasing the energy requirements for a number of reactions in the production of biofuels, and decreasing the time involved in the process.
The team will also study the use of a heterogeneous, or solid catalyst, which can potentially save about 50 percent of the current costs. “The idea is to make the process more efficient by using a heterogeneous catalyst, meaning you don’t have to neutralize the fuel to make it less corrosive, as you would normally have to do if you used a homogeneous catalyst,” says Conner. “It cuts out a big step in the process.”
The disadvantage of homogeneous catalysts, such as sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide, is that they add a big and expensive step to the production process because they are basic. The fuel must be neutralized before putting it in an engine or the metal will corrode.
The microwave-enhanced catalytic production of biofuels promises to repeat the energy revolution of the 1950s, when the “platforming” process was invented, which combines an acid-based catalyst and a platinum source. Heterogeneous zeolites were also introduced in that era as catalysts.
“Those two processes revolutionized the petroleum industry and made the process much more efficient,” says Conner. “Now we’re looking at using a different feedstock than petroleum. Just like the revolution that came before, we believe the heterogeneous catalysts are going to be the future of the biofuels industry. The other wrinkle is that we’re using the microwave reaction enhancement.”
Conner is also involved in acquiring a biodiesel pilot plant for the Amherst campus that would produce 600,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel per year from used vegetable oil recycled from institutional kitchens. Since vegetable oil is one of the feedstocks the research team will be studying, the pilot plant would become an integral part of the research. The pilot plant would also help to establish the campus as a center for studying renewable fuels. Some 20 researchers specialize in biofuels research on the campus.
“We will be applying some of the processes we’re studying within two to five years,” says Conner. “So this will happen relatively quickly.”
July 10, 2008.
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