Rakesh Agrawal - US grants

Abstract

PI Name: Rakesh Agrawal
Institution: Purdue University
Proposal Number: 0938033

EFRI-HyBi: Maximizing Conversion of Biomass Carbon to Liquid Fuel

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)

Intellectual Merit: To date, all biomass conversion processes are limited in the fraction of lignocellulosic-derived carbon that is converted to liquid fuel. Based on total lignocellulosic carbon mass and current conversion processes, the carbon recovery into fuel is limited to less than 40%. In order to minimize the land area needed to grow biomass to meet our nation?s liquid fuel demand for the transportation sector, it is essential that the efficiency of conversion of biomass carbon to liquid fuel be maximized. To this end the synergistic development of a thermal conversion process using catalysts is envisioned, with optimized structures and composition of lignocellulosic biomass, to yield directly high-energy density liquid fuels. If direct conversion cannot be optimized, oxygen removal from the biomass will be improved for a bio-crude that may be further refined. Preliminary data indicate a dependence on cell wall composition and structure for the reaction products of biomass in pyrolytic conditions. The basis for the work is the hypothesis that modification of key molecular bonds in wall architecture will reduce the temperature (energy input) required to produce a bio-oil and also change the distribution of molecular species released during hydropyrolysis at the new temperature. The intellectual merit of this proposal resides in the synergistic development of fundamental knowledge in each of the areas: (i) a chemical process using fast-hydropyrolysis along with in-situ hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) for biomass conversion, (ii) suitable catalyst development to enhance activity and selectivity of the thermal reactions; (iii) gene discovery for engineering of biomass tailored for its end-use in fast-hydropyrolysis/HDO, (iv) scientific and technical knowledge base to build small-scale distributed plants with low energy inputs and low supplemental hydrogen consumption, avoiding transportation of biomass over long distances. Study of all these aspects in parallel will reveal synergies for the production of energy-dense liquid fuel molecules that have not been seen before. The diverse team brings together experts in plant genomics, reaction engineering, catalysis, process systems analysis, chemistry and chemical engineering to create an interdisciplinary knowledge base that transforms the carbon and energy efficiencies of biofuels production.

Broader impact: The proposed research and resulting technologies will have impact at multiple levels. They will introduce new and transformative concepts in the conversion of the entire biomass carbon to liquid fuel and will create scientific knowledge linking the physical and chemical structure of biomass to the conversion process using fasthydropyrolysis/ HDO. The use of maize mutants, transgenic lines, and diversity lines and their recombinant inbreds will allow rapid identification of genes controlling desirable quality traits that impact conversion efficiency for future translation to a variety of energy crops. Successful outcomes from the project will lead to the development of small distributed scale plants that will have environmental, commercial and economic impact of global proportions. The research results will be disseminated through conferences, journal articles, and the internet and by their incorporation in various energy-related courses and lectures at Purdue. Research opportunities will be provided to undergraduate and graduate students, and provided through existing outreach programs at Purdue. The PIs will disseminate information to and engage with chemical and energy companies to facilitate future implementation and thereby accelerate economic impact.

The Solar Economy Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) project supports the development of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional graduate training program of education and research in a sustainable solar economy at the Purdue University in collaboration with University of Delaware, University of Texas at El Paso, Sandia National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy, Monash University and several industrial partners. We use the term "solar economy" to refer to a future state of affairs where nearly all the energy needed for electricity, transportation, heat, chemicals and food is based on sustainable supply of sunlight. To enable such a future state, this IGERT is primarily rooted in finding interdisciplinary technical solutions to the most important challenges of sun-to-electricity and sun-to-fuel within the context of harmonious coexistence with other uses of solar energy. In order to identify breakthrough technical solutions and gain a thorough insight into the complexity of a solar economy, a large number of interdisciplinary solutions will be generated and rapidly assessed for their system-wide impact. The IGERT establishes a new vision and program for integrating education and training that will reveal the complexity of this system to individuals from the diverse backgrounds necessary to address the future key energy challenges. The transition away from fossil fuels to a new solar economy necessitates major changes to the U.S. infrastructure and redefines the skill set required by our workforce. The IGERT program will address this need by developing lectures, course modules, training modules, and simulation tools that will define a new paradigm for interdisciplinary education and training in renewable energy. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.

DMREF: SusChEM: Rapid Design of Earth Abundant Inorganic Materials for Future PVs

Non-technical Description: Electricity is on of the fastest growing sectors in the U.S. and the worldwide demand for electricity is also on a rapid rise. For many countries, their economic growth is dependent on finding low-cost and readily available supply of electricity. Identification of new earth-abundant semiconductors along with their optoelectronic properties and low-cost processing technology in this project will influence how future thin-film photovoltaics (PV) are fabricated. The successful research outcome of the project will contrbute toward widespread use of PV as an abundant source of electricity for a sustainable energy economy in the U.S. as well as the rest of the world. The integrative nature of the research and education will train and co-mentor graduate and undergraduate students in cross-disciplinary skills that are essential for developing innovative solutions as they join the workplace and contribute to the U.S. leadership in the burgeoning field of energy.

Technical Description: This project will develop the fundamental scientific knowledge that will lead to the identification and large-scale use of new semiconducting materials composed of earth-abundant elements for photovoltaics (PV). The central aspect of the project is a close coupling among all three of its research thrusts to: (1) conduct rapid search and rational design of promising earth-abundant materials through computational screening using first principles calculations; (2) synthesize promising materials by solution phase providing exquisite control through chemistry and to measure their material and optoelectronic properties; and (3) fabricate functioning solar cells and develop scientific relationship between the properties estimated from the first principles and device performance contributing toward 'inverse designs' of material for electronic applications. An ongoing feedback among computational estimates and experimentally measured material and electronic properties will allow refinement of the methods in all three research thrusts leading to rapid screening of large number of materials from a vast search space. Project efforts will identify the most promising earth-abundant materials for high efficiency solar cells.

Large areas of land are needed to satisfy the food, energy, and water (FEW) needs of an increasingly populated earth. This can lead to challenging land use competition where local FEW needs cannot be met with current land use practice. For instance, in areas where solar energy is produced, standard solar panels can cast large ground shadows on agricultural land throughout the day, which greatly impedes crop growth. An urgent need exists to develop solutions for sustainable FEW systems (SFEWS) where food, energy, and water needs can be met using available land collaboratively rather than competitively. One approach could be to use the entire solar spectrum to maximize resource production from a given land area. Achieving such solutions requires effective interdisciplinary education and training to generate the resources and human capital for leadership for a sustainable solar economy. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to Purdue University and Florida A&M University will form an interdisciplinary traineeship program that will train graduate students in the skills needed to produce sustainable supplies of food, energy and water (FEW) for a more heavily populated earth. The project anticipates training 48 PhD students, including 24 funded trainees, from agronomy, agricultural and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, chemistry, and agricultural economics.

The SFEWS project aims to meet food, energy and water management needs locally with local solar energy. Achieving this state requires studying highly complex systems with previously unappreciated interdependencies and then developing innovative solutions by combining basic scientific and technical principles from the diverse fields of agriculture, engineering, and science. Out of many possibilities, solutions will be identified based on their system-wide simplicity, economic impact, and environmental footprint, in light of government policy and social impact. The SFEWS cohorts performing these studies will provide a workforce trained in interdisciplinary skills to identify underlying factors leading to competition for land, to suggest innovative solutions, and then lead in global implementation as researchers, business and industry leaders, policy makers, teachers and entrepreneurs. The new scientific and technical knowledge, unique systems analysis methods, and tools developed from this program will have impact well beyond the SFEWS NRT. This team will develop new interdisciplinary courses and training modules, globally disseminated through vehicles such as nanoHUB.org. Through well-planned diversity recruiting and engagement, the SFEWS NRT will help underrepresented and women students to help forge a sustainable FEW economy. Successful execution of this program will introduce a new paradigm where local FEW needs can increasingly be met with local solar energy for a highly resilient economy, with the U.S. serving as a world leader in sustainably meeting FEW needs.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Traineeship Track is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary research areas, through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.

This project is co-funded by the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program. The LSAMP program supports comprehensive, evidence-based, and sustained approaches to broadening participation of students from racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in STEM.

The United States proven reserves of natural gas have nearly doubled in the past 15 years as a result of technologies to extract gas from shale formations. A sizeable fraction of these reserves are located in remote areas. Currently, the infrastructure and economics are not favorable for transporting the Light Hydrocarbon (LHC) alkane constituents (methane, ethane, propane, and butanes) of this ?stranded? gas to centralized plants where they can be processed to valuable liquid fuels and chemical intermediates. The NSF Engineering Research Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources (CISTAR) aims to provide basic research understanding in the areas of catalysis, separations, and process design needed to develop small, modular, local, and highly-networked processing plants that will convert LHCs from remote shale resources to liquid chemicals and transportation fuels, thereby economically utilizing resources that would otherwise be underutilized. To this end, CISTAR?s overarching goal is to provide the technological innovation and a diverse highly-trained workforce to realize the potential of shale gas as a lower-carbon-footprint ?bridge fuel? to a future sustainable energy economy.

CISTAR is led by Purdue University, with partners at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Texas-Austin. CISTAR will take advantage of scientific and engineering discoveries in the areas of catalytic and membrane materials to enable the development of innovative process designs for economical production of liquid chemicals and transportation fuels by combining new catalytic alkane dehydrogenation and olefin oligomerization steps with novel separations. The overall process will operate with feedstocks (ethane and C2+), and at conversions and temperatures not possible with current commercial catalysts, to eliminate large capital and energy costs normally associated with olefin separation and purification. CISTAR will also explore new opportunities for the oxidative coupling of methane to ethylene, which can then be used as a feedstock for conversion to liquid fuels. Fundamental knowledge will be transferred to processes for chemicals and fuels using testbeds ranging from lab-scale up to a full-size pilot plant with economic evaluations using systems-level lifecycle and environmental impact analysis. An integrated plant design will be comprehensively optimized to meet local, state, and federal policies, as well as safety and environmental standards.

The CISTAR Innovation Ecosystem will bring together the key industrial partners and non-industrial stakeholders such as government agencies, regulators, NGOs, and consumers to commercialize the Center?s research discoveries and to maximize benefits to society. Strong research and education integration will be vital for launching the next-generation hydrocarbon workforce and petrochemical and energy industry leaders. CISTAR brings proven, field-shaping capabilities in university and precollege education to address a critical workforce void and develop diverse students with technical and professional skills to lead and innovate in the separations, reaction engineering, systems engineering, and catalysis communities. Outreach programs will be aimed at fostering public awareness of safe and environmentally responsible ways to use U.S. hydrocarbon resources as a bridge to a renewable energy future.