NCSU Receives $4 Million Biofuels Grant
 Print this article | Send to Colleague
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C., USA, will use a $4 million grant to study the most efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways of producing biofuels from trees and from forest harvesting residue. N.C. State's College of Natural Resources is part of the Southeast Partnership fro Integrated Biomass Supply Systems, a collaboration of several universities and industry partners who will work on all aspects of the "biofuels pipeline" between the forests where the trees – the biomass feedstock – are grown and the "biorefineries" where the biofuels are produced. The partnership is funded for five years with a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The research includes understanding the challenges of storing and transporting the biomass, and studying new developments in the production of biofuels. It also includes developing and deploying measures of the environmental and economic impacts of producing biofuel, says Dr. Steve Kelley, professor and head of N.C. State's Department of Forest Biomaterials and the principal investigator for the N.C. State portion of the grant. He adds that the entire biofuel production process must be efficient, scalable, and sustainable.
"The Southeast is a veritable ‘wood basket' that can produce much of the feedstock that shows great promise for production of biofuels," Kelley says. "Besides the obvious need for energy security, this project will develop economic and environmental measures that can inform the public discussion at the community level, and allow individual communities to evaluate their prospects for job creation and landowner income. We want to create the infrastructure capable of providing the backbone for increased biofuel capacity."
Joining Kelley as investigators on the grant are Drs. Robert Bardon, Vincent Chiang, Sudipta Dasmohapatra, Barry Goldfarb, Fikrit Isik, Hasan Jameel, Steve McKeand, Dan Robison, Sunkyu Park, Jose Stape, Richard Venditti, and Ross Whetten. In addition, students at the graduate and undergraduate levels also have research opportunities.
"In ever aspect of this project, there will be students involved," Robison said. "Primarily graduate students will be working on the detailed science, engineering and the public outreach, but there will also be opportunities for undergraduates to conduct research and for fieldwork public outreach."
|
|
