AU researchers making ethanol (fuel) from pulp mill waste

A group of AU researchers may not have found a solution to the United States energy crisis, but they believe their technologies could put a dent in the problem.

Dr. Harry Cullinan and his team may not have found a solution to the United States energy crisis.

But they believe their technologies could put a dent in the problem.
Cullinan, director of the Alabama Center for Paper and Bioresources Engineering, along with professor of chemical engineering Dr. Yoon Y. Lee, senior research fellow Dr. Sung-Hoon Yoon and several graduate students have partnered with Masada Resource Group to produce ethanol from the waste of pulp and paper mills.

Cullinan said the ethanol could be used as another revenue source for the plants.
“This project is part of an overall strategy where we’re using the existing asset base, the ability of the industry to grow, harvest and transport woody biomass into useful products,” Cullinan said. “They know how to do that very well. We want to take some of that biomass and produce something other than pulp and paper. And those products would be in the broad category of energy or fuels — liquid transportation fuels in particular, and, of course, a very popular alternative transportation fuel right now is ethanol.”

The researchers have developed a way to break down fiber found in wood to make ethanol.
“If you can break that fiber down into glucose, you’re off to the races,” said Cullinan. “You can ferment it to ethanol. And that’s essentially what we want to do. But we don’t want to make the ethanol from the sugars that are in the tree or in the wood chips because you can make more money making pulp and paper. (So) We’re making it from waste material ... That waste material is made up largely of cellulose fiber, stuff that can’t or won’t stay in the paper. And that’s called the ugly word — sludge.”

According to Cullinan, Auburn’s patent for the technologies to make the ethanol has three components:

- Extracting the hemicellulose (a fiber found in wood chips) from the wood using a simple hot water method.

- Combining those sugars with the sugars from the sludge to produce ethanol.

- And manufacturing the enzyme needed to do the fermentation to convert the hemicellulose into ethanol.

Cullinan said that if this technology was adopted in all the paper/pulp mills in the country, it had the potential to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol.

“That’s not going to make much difference in our need for liquid transportation fuels,” Cullinan said. “I mean, we burn that much in half a day in the United States. So we’re not solving the nation’s energy problems, but we’re making a dent in them at least. And we’re solving a waste issue for the mills. And providing a new revenue stream on top of that. So that’s what makes it very attractive.”

source: oanow