Cullinan to Lead Auburn's Biorefining Development
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On June 1, Dr. Harry Cullinan will assume the position of Director of Technology Deployment at Auburn University's Alabama Center for Paper and Bioresource Engineering, Auburn, Ala., USA. In this new role, Dr. Cullinan will focus on the commercialization of several biorefining technologies currently under development at Auburn.
The technologies of interest are variations of the thermochemical and biochemical platforms for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals in addition to the current pulp and paper outputs from existing mill operations. The emphasis is on utilization of waste materials as feedstock to produce additional revenue streams.
Targeted feedstock material includes waste wood and bark, paper mill sludges, and forest residue. Product choices include biogas, ethanol, butanol, FT liquids, waxes, and advanced "drop-in" fuels. Process options range from pre-treatment, hydrolysis, fermentation, and concentration to gasification, gas cleaning, gas phase, and liquid phase catalysis. Supercritical water processing is also being developed.
These technologies have been under development at Auburn for a number of years and are now ready to be commercialized. Dr. Cullinan's responsibilities involve technology transfer and the formation of partnerships leading to pilot and mill scale demonstrations, then ultimate, full commercialization.
"While we firmly believe that the best use of pulp wood is wood pulp, we see great opportunities for additional value creation, in the form of renewable fuels and chemicals, from materials currently considered as waste," Cullinan said. "I look forward to concentrating on realizing this enormous potential."
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