Purdue invites Brazilian energy ideas to campus

The Exponent Online (Purdue University)
Posted: Friday, May 20, 2011 10:00 am
BY TARA SIPPLES Summer Reporter Purdue Exponent

Each year for the past six years Purdue has hosted a symposium focusing on bioenergy production but this year’s was a bit different.

This week, Frontiers in Bioenergy: U.S.-Brazil Symposium on Sustainable Bioenergy focused on building strong collaborations toward creating sustainable energy.

“What’s different about this one is that we decided to make it an international meeting and invite Brazilian colleagues up,” Maureen McCann, director of the Energy Center in Discovery Park said. “Because Brazil has been this model of how to implement biofuels and give themselves energy independence.”

The symposium focused on the issues of sustainability in the production of biofuels, including sustainable farming, harvesting and pre-processing of crops. Purdue invited Brazil because it has managed to replace a significant amount of oil consumption by using ethanol as liquid transportation fuel, and the country is at a place with sustainability that the United States would like to catch up with, McCann said.

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