More efficient processing of straw and wood into chemicals

phys.org

May 30, 2014 by Olli Ernvall

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Improving biobutanol fermentation from barley straw

Biorefining
By USDA-ARS January 04, 2011

Chemical engineer Nasib Qureshi at the Agricultural Research Service’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill., has been leading a research team that says barley straw could be a viable feedstock for biobutanol.

Butanol burns cleaner than ethanol, can be transported in existing pipelines, is less corrosive and less prone to water contamination, and packs more energy per gallon than ethanol, according to Qureshi and his research teammates, Badak Saha, Bruce Dien, Ronald Hector and Michael Cotta.

Like other biomass feedstocks, barley straw must be physically broken down and then hydrolyzed with enzymes to release both its five-carbon and six-carbon plant sugars for fermentation into fuel.

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Researchers Study Benefits of Barley as a Biofuel Crop

USDA ARS
By Ann Perry
December 21, 2010

The benefits of using barley for bioenergy production don't stop at the gas pump, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) studies.

Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have found that barley grain can be used to produce ethanol, and the leftover byproducts-barley straw, hulls, and dried distillers grains (DDGS)-can be used to produce an energy-rich oil called bio-oil. The bio-oil could then be used either for transportation fuels or for producing heat and power needed for the grain-to-ethanol conversion. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and these results support the USDA priority of developing new sources of bioenergy.

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Researchers report fermentation breakthrough that unlocks winter barley potential

Biofuels Digest
April 30, 2010 Jim Lane

In Pennsylvania, researchers led by ARS chemical engineer John Nghiem identified a new fermentation process for ethanol using Thoroughbred, a high-yielding winter barley variant – solving a problem with beta-glucan conversion that had been hampering efforts to utilize barkley for fuel and dried distillers grains.

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Ethanol production from winter barley generates useful byproducts

Biomass Magazine November 2009
By Lisa Gibson
Posted November 24, 2009, at 12:43 p.m. CST

In the process of developing winter barley as an ethanol feedstock, the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Eastern Regional Research Center, Wyndmoor, Pa., and its partners realized that biomass byproducts generated in the process can be used to manufacture biomass-derived fuels and coproducts.

The resulting barley straw, hulls and the ethanol coproduct distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) can be used to make bio-oil and biochar through pyrolysis, according to Kevin Hicks, research leader at the Crop Conversion Science & Engineering Research Unit at the ERRC. The bio-oil can be used as boiler fuel today, and with some improvements, could someday be used by petroleum refineries to make drop-in transportation fuels such as green gasoline and diesel, according to Akwasi Boateng, ERRC pyrolysis team leader. Biochar is a carbon-rich product that can be used to improve soil fertility and to sequester carbon in the soil.

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