In recent years there has been growing interest in emerging bio-based products including biofuels, bioenergy, biochemicals and biopolymers, etc. This project aims to address the process and products engineering in the sustainable manufacturing of bioproducts. Effective raw material utilization, energy consumption, and minimization of environmental impacts are very critical for improving the global competitiveness of forest and other bio-based products industries. In-depth fundamental understanding of the scientific and engineering principles of the various unit operations in bioprocesses and bioproducts and their applications will enable us to develop and successfully implement sustainable biorefineries. For example, fundamental understanding of the role of the complex internal structure of paper and board in manufacturing processes and end-use applications will help optimize the energy and fiber utilization and engineer fibrous porous materials for a given end-use application. Multiple objectives under this project are tied together in developing technologies and improving the effectiveness of bio-based products manufacturing:
- Develop strategies to optimize fiber utilization at the same time achieving target end-use properties
- Design methods to minimize energy consumption during drying and water removal during manufacture
- Develop computational tools to optimize energy efficiency during drying, improve machine productivity, optimize fiber utilization, and predict end-use performance based on an analysis of transient pore structure
Although there has been considerable effort in developing biological, chemical, and biochemical approaches to converting lignocellulosic biomass to biofuels and bioproducts including addressing their inherent recalcitrance, the separation and purification of sugar feedstocks as well as other biomass components and products still remains a key impediment in the commercial implementation of these technologies. The key impact of this work is to remove this impediment and to develop novel separation and purification technologies and integrated bioprocessing solutions not only for removing the fermentation inhibitors but also for producing clean sugar feedstocks. In addition, the proposed activity targets the generation of clean streams of platform chemicals, such as acetic acid, succinic acid, and levulinic acid that can serve as renewable feedstock for a host of other chemicals and end use applications. This will help to significantly reduce the overall biofuel conversion process costs as well as make available non-food, renewable-resources based sugar and platform chemical feedstock that can be used in variety of value added chemical product applications.
Of the the key areas in this research is 3D Structure - Property Functional Relationships in Biomaterials. This research is an attempt to visualize and characterize the 3D bulk structure of biomaterials such as paper, board, biobased composites, and lignocellulosic biomass using non-intrusive techniques. The researchers have been working on developing a method using X-ray computed tomography and TEM-CT where sub-micron and nano-scale resolutions are now feasible. The overall goal of this work using MSI resources is to develop methods to visualize and characterize the 3D pore structure of materials; develop computational tools to predict the transport properties of porous materials using techniques such as molecular random walk simulations and lattice-Boltzman simulations; perform computational fluid dynamics simulation of transport processes through porous biomaterials; predict the elastic and viscoelastic material properties using finite element analysis; and predict transport and reaction kinetics in porous biomaterials.