Our nation’s need to move away from reliance on petroleum to other energy sources is well known. Ethanol generated from edible crops (like corn) is generally seen as one of our most viable options, but after commodity prices started rising we began to wonder if the potential flexibility in fuel options would be offset by increases in prices at the grocery store.
One of the graduate students in Dr. Phillip Savage’s group, Fernando Resende, is studying chemical reactions that generate fuels from renewable agricultural sources that employ not the edible product but the wastes (byproducts) of these products. Agricultural wastes (sugarcane bagasse, rice husk, or corn stover) have the potential to generate important fuel gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane through the thermochemical treatment known as gasification. Supercritical water (water above its critical point, 22 MPa and 374 ºC) can be used as a solvent for gasification reactions because at high temperature and high pressure, water becomes capable of dissolving organic compounds. Some of the main components in biomass, such as cellulose and lignin, can be dissolved in supercritical water, leading to homogeneous reaction conditions that favor formation of fuel gases as opposed to tar and char particulates, characteristic of the conventional thermal gasification. This supercritical water gasification technology is especially useful for processing wet biomass feedstocks (over 40% moisture) because when water is the solvent, the energy-consuming drying step required in conventional gasification is not necessary.
Fernando will be completing his doctoral studies this year and plans to continue this important research in academia, a natural career choice for Fernando, who is also enthusiastic about teaching. In fact, he was a winner of the Outstanding Student Instructor Award in 2007 for his work as an instructor for Material and Energy Balances (ChE 230). Having received a doctoral fellowship from his home country (Brazil), Fernando chose the University of Michigan over other highly rated schools because of its international reputation and the opportunity to carry out his research plans with reactions in supercritical water under the guidance of Dr. Phillip Savage.
