Scientist of the Week: Tom Welton

Laboratory Equipment

Every Thursday, Laboratory Equipment features a Scientist of the Week, chosen from the science industry’s latest headlines. This week’s scientist is Tom Welton from Imperial College. He and his team found that lubricating wood prior to grinding it saves energy in the production of biofuel.

Q: What made you interested in studying how lubricating wood could play a role in biofuel production?
A: We have a longstanding interest in the processing of biomass for chemicals and fuels production. We have had particular success with a delignification approach, which can withstand the somewhat messier conditions found when processing real wood than typically found with using model materials. This method is tolerant of water, which is ubiquitous in biomass. This in turn means that there is no need for expensive and energy wasteful predrying of the biomass before treating it with the ionic liquids.

Of course trees are pretty big objects and they need to be ground down to small particles for processing. The first step in this is likely to be the production of wood chips where the tree is harvested. These woodchips can then be transported. They then need to be ground to powder for the most effective subsequent processing. The question that we asked was is it best to grind the chips to powder and then add the ionic liquid, or to add the ionic liquid and then do the grinding. As it turned out, it is much better to add the ionic liquid first.

Read more