8/11/2011
Five Engineering at Illinois undergraduate students received a $5,000 grant from British Petroleum to research the engineering properties of biomass.
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Five Engineering at Illinois undergraduate students received a $5,000 grant from British Petroleum to research the engineering properties of biomass.
The students wrote the grant to develop a virtual database that will tell end users the properties of different types of energy crops, such as sorghum, Miscanthus, switchgrass, willow and energy cane, and their value for energy production.
Su Jung Lee, Rachel Gross and Colleen Maloney, all agricultural and biological engineering students, began the project while working in the lab of Luis Rodriguez, an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Ian Moses, a junior in mechanical science and engineering with an avid interest in alternative fuels, joined the group, as did Kevin Today, a computer science major.
“I knew I wanted to learn more about alternative fuels,” said Moses, “so I decided to contact a professor working in that area to see if I could work with him. One of the professors I contacted was Dr. Rodriguez, and he eventually offered me a job.
“Dr. Rodriguez found the opportunity for this grant,” Moses continued, “and it had the kind of scope that we could deal with as undergraduates. Our different majors play a role in the work that we do. As a mechanical engineering major, I’ve designed some of the equipment that we’ll use for our testing, and Kevin has been very helpful with the computer programming we’ve had to do. But for the most part, the work is fairly interchangeable – you get assigned a certain task and you do it. In the next year, we hope to compile as many different engineering properties applicable to the process of energy production as we can.”
Some of the properties the students hope to evaluate in their research include moisture (if biomass takes moisture from the air, and if so, to what extent), the breaking point of each crop (if the material is hard and brittle or elastic and flexible), the compressibility of each crop, and the angle of repose (the angle at which the material falls naturally, which determines how much can be stored in a given area).
Rodriguez works closely with the students, and he said they anticipate that these properties will change, depending on the form the biomass is in.
“For example, how much moisture will biomass hold if you chop it into smaller and smaller pieces that have more surface area? Given a relative humidity, it might actually mean more moisture in the biomass. If that’s the case, some of the other engineering properties might change as well.”
The students hope the data they collect will provide researchers with the ability to design harvesting, chopping, and densification equipment by determining how much force is involved in each operation and what materials should be utilized. Transportation technology will be impacted by their study, and the data should also provide information that will aid in the design of facilities to store the biomass by determining how large facilities need to be and what types of air handling systems will be required.
“As all the different parts of the system are clarified, we can determine the best use for biomass,” Rodriguez said. “Should we focus on biomass to bioethanol, to bio-oil, or to biopower? Surely each potential biomass crop will be best suited to different processes and end uses as a result.”
“Research in the area of engineering properties of biomass is just beginning,” Rodriguez said. “The biomass we hope to use in ethanol or other alternative fuels is probably not going to be harvested with conventional technology. We don’t have all that much experience in harvesting biomass, transporting it, or storing it for long periods of time. Understanding the engineering properties of the biomass will allow us to determine how efficiently we can process it,” he concluded.
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Contact: Luis Rodriguez, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, 217/333-2694
Writer: Leanne Lucas, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, 217/244-2862.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.