Wood chips and chicken poop to fuel. Auburn Univ.

[Skydiver]

This is a copy and paste from A college beside where I live.

Published: May 30, 2008

Auburn University is getting closer to providing help in solving the nation’s energy crisis.

Larry Fillmer, director of the Natural Resource Management and Development Institute, said AU will take a big step toward that goal this fall when it opens two new labs on campus that will allow it to make power and gas on a much larger scale than ever before.

“This can bring the forester, agronomist and engineer together,” he said. “It is more than a lab. It will have large-scale applications.”

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was at the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences Friday for an update on the progress the university is making on energy research. As a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sessions is interested in Auburn’s work to produce synthetic gas and other forms of energy using wood chips, poultry litter and other agricultural and forestry by-products.

“Biomass is our strength,” said Dr. Steve Taylor, director of the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts.

If he was in Iowa, he said, corn would be the main source. In Alabama, items like wood chips, poultry litter and switchgrass are abundant, and can be used for fuel and energy production without disturbing the natural balance, he said.

University officials showed the senator Auburn’s mobile gasification unit, which Taylor said can be used to convert such products into electric power or fuel. Wood chips go in one end. With the right combination of heat and oxygen, they are broken down to form a synthetic gas that can power internal combustion engines, boilers, furnaces and gas turbines, and produce liquid fuel.

“We need to increase our supply of environmentally friendly fuel,” Sessions said. “I believe this process is very close.”

In Alabama alone, Fillmer said, there are 14.5 million tons of residue left on the forest floor, which can be converted into 2 billion gallons of ethanol, two-thirds of the state’s annual consumption.

Those tree tops and limbs are not being utilized now, Taylor said. Auburn’s challenge is to figure out a way to collect it in an economically feasible manner, he said.

He said Auburn created a mobile unit specifically to travel to the agricultural and forestry residue, because it’s not economical to bring the residue to Auburn. It also serves as an educational tool for Auburn students to see the process first-hand.

“There are a few hurdles (we have to overcome), but we are very close,” Taylor said.

Sessions said he considers Auburn the nation’s leader in this type of research.

“I think Auburn is going to play a crucial role in the future of energy,” he said

War Eagle.