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SUMMER 2006
UGA Biorefinery and Carbon Cycling
by SV

Who would have thought we might be fueling our cars on poultry poop and sweet potatoes? UGA engineers and scientists have been looking at these and other biomass such as peanut hulls, pine tree cuttings, and waste flour for the campus fleet of cars, truck and buses. The UGA biorefinery and carbon cycling initiative is a research project that will produce ethanol and biodiesel and also capture carbon and return it to the ground so it won’t contribute to global warming.

The cycle begins in the fields and the forest, where the bulky biomass is transported to a nearby refinery. There it undergoes a process called pyrolysis — an old technique for manufacturing charcoal — that involves heating the biomass to more than 400 degree Centigrade in the absence of oxygen. In addition to charcoal, a bio-oil is produced that contains over 300 chemical compounds, which can be used for a variety of products such as flavorings and adhesives. Further processing results in hydrogen that can be used in fuel cell technology being developed by the UGA chemistry and physics departments. Charcoal can be engineered to remove sulfur, nitrogen and carbon dioxides from industrial smokestacks — contributors to global warming, acid rain and ground level ozone. When the charcoal is saturated with industrial emissions it can be worked into the soil as a fertilizer for the crops.