A chemical engineer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been awarded a one-year, $80,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct basic research on the pyrolysis of wood.
The research, to be done by Paul J. Dauenhauer seeks to unlock the complex chemistry of the process. Heating woody biomass to high temperatures creates a brief liquid state before it turns to gas and that liquid state is of particular interest to scientists trying to produce the basic chemicals needed for biofuels. Dauenhauer says this liquefaction stage has been observed, but scientists don’t understand all of the chemical reactions they are seeing.
The grant award from the NSF says this research will help scientists better understand the pyrolysis process and find new ways to employ this technology on an industrial scale. The grant-funded work began in mid-January.
Dauenhauer’s research has uncovered other aspects of how pyrolysis can be used to create biofuels. Last year it was reported that he helped develop a new method of converting biomass feedstock into sustainable fuel with colleagues at the University of Minnesota. (Earlier post.) The gasification process developed by this team not only greatly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but doubles the amount of fuel that can be made from an acre of biomass feedstock, says Dauenhauer.