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SUMMARY:Bio-mass Pyrolysis - a cog in the changing energy and chemicals ec
 onomy - Professor Joseph Biernacki from Tennessee Technological University
  (USA)
DTSTART:20130313T160000Z
DTEND:20130313T170000Z
UID:TALK43952@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Vanessa Blake
DESCRIPTION:Petroleum (crude oil) is the source of the majority of the Nat
 ion’s liquid fuels and chemicals.  Everything from gasoline to pharmaceu
 ticals contains carbon that originated in the ancient plant matter that ma
 ke-up crude oil.  As petroleum resources are depleted and as our Nation em
 braces policies to slowly wean us off of foreign sources of crude oil\, we
  must seek technologies that will enable a transition from a petroleum-bas
 ed to a bio-mass-based fuels and chemicals economy.  While natural gas and
  coal are tempting alternative sources of carbon\, the continued use of fo
 ssil carbon is not sustainable.  Bio-mass is the only alternative.  And\, 
 while we have an ethanol-centric fuels history\, production of ethanol fro
 m corn and grains appears to be equally unsustainable.  Furthermore\, the 
 US Government has recognized the need to force the issue by mandating that
  16 Bgal of renewable fuels be produced by 2020 of which none can come fro
 m corn or grains.  This presents the research community with the challenge
  of converting lignocellulosic bio-mass\, our only other tangible option\,
  into large volumes of fuels.  The bio-refinery and associated bio-chemica
 l complex of the near future will likely be driven by component processes 
 including enzymatic digestion and conversion of cellulose to ethanol and p
 yrolysis of whole\, separated or residual bio-mass streams.  Pyrolysis\, o
 f cellulose and its mechanistic steps are yet poorly characterized.  The c
 omplexity of the degradation process even for pure phase crystalline cellu
 lose is recognized in terms of a virtually unknown number of pyrolysis pro
 ducts likely numbering in the hundreds.  At this time a multi-scale approa
 ch involving computational and experimental strategies that range in lengt
 h- and time-scales from those governing molecular to macroscopic events ar
 e presently ongoing at TTU and in other research labs around the world.  T
 he TTU team has chosen to pursue a novel micro-scale reactor approach in c
 ombination with micro-characterization and meso- and molecular-scale model
 ing.
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre 1\, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotec
 hnology\, New Museums Site
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