Biotech Updates

US$6 Million Research Lab for Ethanol and Other Biofuels from Grasses and Biomass

March 14, 2008

The Cornell University Campus will see a new biofuels facility in January 2009. The US$6 million laboratory is part of the US$10 million grant by the Empire State Development Corporation to Larry Walker, a Cornell professor of biological and environmental engineering. The facility will house teaching laboratory facilities to develop biofuel engineers and provide a venue to discover and pilot test new discoveries in biotechnology for the development of biofuels.

Some of the research concerns will be to overcome the physical, chemical and biological barriers to liberating sugars from such alternative energy crops as switchgrass, biomass sorghum and other perennial grasses as well as woody biomass; and to biologically convert these sugars into such biofuels as ethanol, butanol or hydrogen.

For details of the press release, see: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March08/biofuels.lab.lm.html