Oklahoma State experiences days of future past with biofuels research
Friday, September 29, 2006
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By Donald Stotts
STILLWATER, Okla. – The Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station’s groundbreaking
research on turning grasses into energy has been receiving a lot of attention, from
Congress and the White House to the Governor’s Conference on Biofuels and beyond.
“We’ve been very popular with the media, political and commodity groups, and even
people sitting in coffee shops, and for a very good reason; turning biomass into biofuels
is not a fad with Oklahoma State University, we’ve been committed to these efforts
for a long time,” said Robert E. Whitson, vice president, dean and director of OSU’s
Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
The statewide Experiment Station system is part of the division, as are the Oklahoma
Cooperative Extension Service and College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
One of OSU’s earliest and most high-profile efforts – turning switchgrass into “grassohol”
– received increased public attention after President George Bush mentioned switchgrass
in his 2006 State of the Union address, as part of his setting a lofty goal for the
nation: Replace more than 75 percent of America’s oil exports from the Middle East
by 2025.
“The president’s mention of switchgrass put a new emphasis on renewable energy beyond
standard corn fermentation in providing ethanol to the liquid fuel offerings,” said
Ray Huhnke, OSU Cooperative Extension agricultural engineer and coordinator of the
university’s biofuels team.
OSU, in cooperation with the University of Oklahoma and Mississippi State University,
is working on a unique gasification-fermentation technology in which grasses are gasified
into carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and other components. The gases are
then bubbled through a bioreactor where a unique set of microorganisms converts them
into ethanol and other value-added products.
“The beauty of our system is that for every 1 unit of energy put into the ‘grassohol’
process, as much as 3 units of energy are returned,” Huhnke said. “Traditional corn-based
ethanol production provides 1.6 units of energy per 1 unit of energy input.”
Instead of looking solely at corn, OSU researchers are studying all types of perennial
grasses, including switchgrass.
Oklahoma has thousands of acres of marginal land that is not suited for producing
cultivated crops. Yet switchgrass is a resource that such land can and does produce
almost naturally. There is no real market for switchgrass in and of itself but turn
that product into enthanol, sell it as an alternative fuel and the potential is enormous.
“That type of major boost to the economy from a proven environmentally friendly product
would benefit Oklahoma, the region and the nation,” Whitson said.
Realizing that, division researchers spent years breeding switchgrass that can produce
greater yields. Charles Taliaferro, recently retired plant breeder and a longtime
Regents professor in the department of plant and soil sciences, used a grant from
the Lockheed-Martin Corporation to begin the process of switchgrass improvement in
the early 1990s.
The grant was part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Biofuels Feedstock
Development Program administered by Lockheed-Martin at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
in Tennessee.
From the start Taliaferro, nationally renowned in plant breeding circles, and his
fellow researchers such as Huhnke, Danielle Bellmer, Randy Lewis, Francis Epplin and
Ralph Tanner recognized the potential of switchgrass, a perennial plant that did not
require the amount of nurturing required with row crops. The switchgrass research
plots grown as part of Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station studies resulted in
improved varieties and germplasm used in subsequent plant breeding and other scientific
investigations.
Switchgrass is found in the central and eastern portion of the United States from
the Gulf Coast to Canada. Switchgrass grows on many different soil types, from bottomland
to less productive upland soils. The wide distribution of the species is a plus, because
strains can be found growing under a variety of environmental conditions, meaning
it can be widely planted and cultivated, with little by way of labor and upkeep relative
to other perennial grass species.
Still, that does not mean that OSU researchers are overlooking other potential prospects.
Different types of grasses must not only work well, they must be available in the
necessary volume throughout the year to ensure bioconversion is economically viable.
“Think of it as a continuation of the process started years ago,” Whitson said. “Our
OSU researchers didn’t overlook the potential of switchgrass then, which is a prime
reason why the science on a national level has developed to the point it has today.
Our current, interdisciplinary team of scientists is not overlooking the potential
of other biomass crops simply because switchgrass may be the hot topic of conversation
at the moment.”
Whitson said OSU’s Biofuels Team looks forward to enhancing the university’s working
relationship with OU, MSU, the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and Brigham Young University,
where chemical engineer Randy Lewis now resides while continuing to work on the OSU
biofuels project.
“Our biofuels research has always been a multi-college effort and now we’re increasingly
becoming multi-institutional,” Whitson said. “We in the division have long believed
and promoted that an interdisciplinary outlook is the best way to develop solutions
to the challenges facing society, and solving real-world issues is a vital part of
the land-grant mission and reason why OSU exists. It’s who we are at our core.”