By Linda McCandless
The former agricultural engineering power and machinery lab at Cornell University is being gutted to make way for the state-of-the art Biofuels Research Laboratory that will occupy the entire east wing of Riley Robb Hall. Construction is slated for completion in December 2008, with occupancy in January 2009.
Linda McCandless
The former power and machinery lab on the east end of campus is being converted into a state-of-the-art Biofuels Research Laboratory.
The lab is being constructed thanks to a $10 million grant awarded to Larry Walker, professor of biological and environmental engineering, in January 2007. The grant from the Empire State Development Corporation will be used to advance technologies that convert perennial grasses and woody biomass into cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels. Roughly $4 million of the grant will be used to purchase analytical equipment, incubators, fermentors, and other state-of-the-art biotechnology equipment for the new facilities.
“Biofuels is the emerging program for our department, if not for the whole university,” said Mike Walter, chairman of the department of biological and environmental engineering.
The department plans to implement a master’s of engineering program focused on biofuels starting in fall 2008, because demand for trained biofuel engineers is skyrocketing. The department has also recently hired an associate professor of engineering, Largus Agenent, whose research focuses on biogas and fuel cells.
The new biofuels facility will be shared by faculty and students across campus. Faculty expected to work in the laboratories include Larry Walker, Beth Ahner, Norm Scott, David Wilson, Jim Gossett, Susan Henry, Harold Craighead, and other researchers involved in the biofuels research program at Cornell.
Five separate labs will be equipped to focus on different aspects of biofuels research, including two growth chambers for “biomolecular farming” of specialty plants that express different proteins. Researchers are working to overcome the physical, chemical, and biological barriers to liberating sugars from alternative energy crops such 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.
The new facility has been designed so that feedstock materials will enter at the north end of the building and then undergo pretreatment, bioconversion, and fermentation in an integrated and engineered framework. State-of-the-art analytical systems will allow the researchers to work at different scales ranging from understanding fundamental molecular mechanisms at the nanoscale to working with fermentation vessels that hold up to 150 liters.
Programming in biofuels research at Cornell is primarily supported by a $750,000 NYSTAR grant that Walker received in 2005, as well as by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which currently funds the Northeast Sun Grant Initiative. “One of our challenges is going to be finding additional programming money,” said Walter.
The architect for the project is SWBR Architects of Rochester, N.Y. LeChase Construction Services was recently awarded the construction bid. The construction progress can be tracked online at http://www.nesungrant.cornell.edu/cals/sungrant/institute/index.cfm