 |
| Birgitte K. Ahring, director of the WSU Center for Bioproducts and Bioenergy, explains the pretreatment system to CBB graduate students who are based at WSU Tri-Cities. |
Washington State University Tri-Cities has received a donation from Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms to work on ways to turn local agricultural waste into bioenergy, reported the Tricity Herald
Easterday donated $225,000 to support research being conducted in the university's Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory, (BSEL).
The university also unveiled new research equipment, which it claims will be the bridge needed to convert laboratory research into the basis for a local industry producing useful goods from waste.
"We expect from this we will grow a new industry in Richland," said Birgitte Ahring, director of the WSU Center for Bioproducts and Bioenergy.
BSEL opened in spring 2008 with staff from the university and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory conducting research and helping give students a hands-on education. A key part of the original vision for the lab has been to move research from the lab to commercial use.
To do that, the lab has needed a biomass pretreatment system to use as a pilot plant, Ahring said. She worked with other BSEL staff to design the $575,000 system, and it was assembled by Vista Engineering Technologies in Richland.
"This equipment allows us to vary the conditions and evaluate different biomass feedstocks, so we can find the optimal conditions for degrading the material into valuable products," said Birgitte K. Ahring, director of the WSU Center for Bioproducts and Bioenergy and the Battelle Distinguished Professor. "This advanced pretreatment process is more cost-efficient than traditional methods, making it more viable to use biomass to develop biofuels and bioproducts."
A range of agricultural waste from straw to wine byproducts, can be fed into a high-pressure vessel of the system to produce the precursors of new chemicals, fuel or other bioproducts. The pilot-scale equipment will provide the proof of concept for smaller scale laboratory research.
The donation, to be given over three years, will pay for an Easterday Graduate Research Fellow to focus on the anaerobic digestion of wastes such as those produced by Easterday's row crop and cattle feeding company: cattle manure and onion culls.
Washington State University approached Easterday to become a research sponsor and the family operation, which employs 300 people full time, signed up in part because of the "top-notch" people involved in the project, said Cody Easterday, president of Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms. "We want to be one of the leaders in environmentally sound food production,"
The corporation's goal is to be able to use its agricultural waste to produce fuel to replace the substantial amount of diesel and propane now used, added Easterday.
In addition to providing money, Easterday also will be providing waste to the university to use as biomass material.
|
Share |
||||
