Mississippi State University’s Sustainable Energy Research Center is combating rising energy demands with focused research in bio-oil and bio-crude fuel sources.
SERC co-director Gleen Steel said after two years of receiving an annual $10 million federal earmark, SERC research has moved from small-scale testing to near-commercial development and usage of bio-oil.
He said the center is actively looking for companies to provide funding for the next step of bio-oil production.
“If we can find companies now that are interested in investing in technology and building equipment necessary for production, we can work with them to overcome the technical, scientific and engineering barriers to make sure it works,” he said.
Currently, MSU researchers can produce an estimated liter of bio-oil per day, Steele said.
The SERC’s research into bio-oil utilizes one of Mississippi’s largest resources: trees.
“If you chip up the trees into small pieces, put them in a vessel and heat them up quickly, they vaporize,” he said. “Once it’s cooled quickly, the vapor turns into low-quality oil.”
Steele said SERC research has developed a process that stabilizes the bio-oil and allows the oil to be upgraded and refined into a product comparable to gasoline and diesel. These processes have the potential to create new industries in the state.
“What we see in bio-oil is a couple of industries – one that can use mobile units that go out to thinning forests and make the raw oil and another where regional upgrading facilities convert the bio-oil,” he said. “It can then be blended with gasoline or shipped to refineries and turned into green gasoline.”
Steele also said state power companies have expressed interest in using bio-oil technology to substitute coal and fuel oil.
While the SERC is seeking additional research support from corporations for its renewable energy sources, the center’s development of bio-crude fuels could also bring in support from municipal governments.
“We’ve had a lot of interest [in bio-crude research] from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation,” he said. “[Municipal wasste plants] need to be modified, upgraded or replaced. If this technology can work on a large scale, they can take something that’s a cost center and turn it around to a profit center.”
SERC bio-crude research focuses on microbes that decompose waste by targeting colonies that efficiently turn waste into oil and extracting glyceride material from the decomposition process.
“These microbes typically eat all of the crud in the sewage; we throw in extra biomass, and they eat it too,” Steele said. “We then extract this oil from the bugs . it’s just like crude oil that can be sent to bio-diesel or petroleum refineries and turned in to green fuel.”
Steele said industrial waste sources, such as paper mills, could impact the future production of bio-crude fuels in Mississippi due to their concentrated sources of biomass. He said the SERC’s bio-crude development and production is a couple years away from being level with the center’s breakthroughs with bio-oil.
SERC co-director William Batchelor said the $10 million earmark the SERC receives has allowed the program to develop to near-commercial stages of development that could not have been possible through competitive grants alone.
“A lot of grants can be $350,000 to $500,000 total over three years, and they’ve got to be multidisciplinary – you’re dividing the pot up then,” he said. “An earmark gives us an infusion of cash to build infrastructure and buy lab equipment that you could never buy on a competitive grant. It allows us to leapfrog technology.”
Kirk Schulz, vice president for Research and Economic Development, said the SERC’s work with renewable fuels helps to further promote the university’s vision of research for the future.
“As Mississippi’s largest research university, it is important that we [MSU] pursue projects which have a strong benefit to Mississippi,” he said. “Given our abundance of plant resources, bio-fuels are especially critical for Mississippi’s agricultural base.”
Schulz said continued governmental funding will help the SERC research breakthrough with larger-scale production of renewable fuels.
“It will be important for us to continue to garner funds from the federal government to sustain our research efforts,” he said. “We will need continued support to finish the job of taking laboratory-scale technologies and making them into industrial-scale reality.”
As uncertainty continues to loom over the supply and demand of oil, Batchelor said research in renewable fuels today will help lay the foundation of tomorrow’s energy sources.
“If you look at the history of society, now is the time to be looking for a solution that will impact us 100 years away,” he said.