New Biofuel Labs Turns Bales into Barrels

At Cornell, a new $6 million Biofuels Resarch Laboratory (BRL) was recently built.  The 11,000-square-foot facility is being utilized to examine sustainable and economical biofuel production. "Under a single roof, we can perform all the major steps required to make biofuel," said Larry Walker, director of the Cornell-based Northeast Sun Grant Institute of Excellence. "Other schools have bits and pieces of the process or specialize in pretreatment, chemical conversion or cell wall analysis. In this lab, we can do it all."

Cellulosic ethanol derived from such nonfood crops as switchgrass, sorghum and willow,  has little effect on food prices. Feedstocks used in the biofuels lab can thrive on marginal lands that would go unused. Cellulosic ethanol, therefore, holds greater long-term promise than corn ethanol. Walker has no doubt that the technology already exists to turn a bale of switchgrass into a barrel of biofuel. But, he says, the challenge is to generate the fuel in a way that's efficient, cost-effective for producers and consumers, and sustainable. 

For details, see the press release at:  http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April09/biofuels.lab.tb.html