Ithaca, New York
March 6, 2008
A former agricultural engineering,
power and machinery lab at
Cornell University is being gutted to make way for a
state-of-the art Biofuels Research Lab that will convert
perennial grasses and woody biomass into ethanol and other
biofuels and will occupy the entire east wing of Riley Robb Hall
by January 2009.
The $6 million lab is being constructed thanks to a $10 million
grant awarded to Larry Walker, Cornell professor of biological
and environmental engineering, from the Empire State Development
Corp., and will include analytical equipment, incubators,
fermenters and other state-of-the-art biotechnology equipment.
"Biofuels is the emerging program for our department, if not for
the whole university," said Mike Walters, chairman of the
Department of Biological And Environmental Engineering (BEE) in
the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The department plans to offer a master's of engineering program
focused on biofuels in fall 2008 because demand for trained
biofuel engineers is skyrocketing, said Walters. The department
has also just hired Largus Agenent from Washington University as
an associate professor of engineering. His research focuses on
biogas and fuel cells.
The new lab will be shared by faculty and students across
campus.
Faculty members expected to work in the laboratories include
Larry Walker, Beth Ahner, Norm Scott, David Wilson, Jim Gossett,
Susan Henry and Harold Craighead.
Five separate labs will be equipped to focus on different
aspects of biofuel research, including two growth chambers for
specialty plants
-- "biomolecular farming," as the engineers call it -- that
express different proteins. Researchers are working to overcome
the physical, chemical and biological barriers to liberating
sugars from such alternative energy crops as switchgrass,
miscanthus and other perennial grasses as well as woody biomass,
and to biologically convert these sugars into such biofuels as
ethanol, butanol or hydrogen.
The facility has been designed so that feed stock materials --
the plants -- will enter at the north end of the building to
undergo pretreatment, bioconversion and fermentation processes
in an integrated and engineered framework. State-of-the-art
analytical systems will allow the researchers to work at
different scales, ranging from understanding fundamental
molecular mechanisms at the nanoscale to larger scales with
fermentation vessels up to 150 liters.
Programming in biofuels research at Cornell is primarily
supported by a $75,000 NYSTAR grant for biofuels research
received by Walker in 2005, in addition to some monies from the
Northeast Sun Grant Initiative.
"One of our challenges is going to be finding additional
programming money," said Walters.
The architect for the project is SWBR Architects, from
Rochester, N.Y. LeChase Construction Services was recently
awarded the construction contract. The construction progress can
be tracked online at <http://www.nesungrant.cornell.edu/cals/sungrant/institute/index.cfm> |
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