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Release date: March 2001
Trash-to-Treasure
by Dennis Stiles
manager of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's
Agriculture and Food Processing Technology programs
The popular saying that one person's trash is another's treasure is certainly true at the U. S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, where technology has been developed to convert waste materials such as byproducts from paper mills, food processing operations and other businesses into environmentally friendly treasures.
Future Fill-ups May Use Paper Mill Waste
Paper mill sludge, an organic waste product that can be damaging to the environment, is cumbersome for mill operators to manage since it accumulates rapidly during operation. Current disposal options include drying and spreading the sludge on land, composting or transporting the material to landfills.
Research conducted by Biofine, Inc., of Massachusetts, shows that an important, multipurpose chemical called levulinic acid, which normally is produced from refined petroleum, can be produced from biomass such as paper mill sludge at one-tenth the cost of current manufacturing processes. Levulinic acid can then be used to produce many products including herbicides, solvents, plastics and alternative fuels.
Building upon the levulinic acid production process, Pacific Northwest developed a patented catalytic process that cost-effectively converts the levulinic acid to methyltetrahydrofuran, or MTHF. MTHF can be used to improve gasoline performance, help it burn cleaner and can be used in industrial chemicals. The combined Biofine and Pacific Northwest processes reduce pollutants, require less energy than processes using petroleum and provide a means of deriving profit from what was a costly waste product.
The environmental benefits of combining these two processes are so promising and crosscutting to the chemical industry that they received one of five 1999 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Green Chemistry" is the use of chemistry for pollution prevention and the design of chemical products and processes that reduce negative impacts to human health and the environment.
The levulinic acid conversion technology, which has been demonstrated in Biofine's pilot-scale facility in New York, is ready for commercialization. A search is underway to site a manufacturing plant in a major pulp and paper producing region, providing the capacity to produce levulinic acid and to upgrade this material to alternative fuels and other products, while reducing the cost of managing the waste sludge.
This is an exciting technology emerging from DOE's investments in biomass conversion, a field where we are only beginning to realize the potential for using low-value and waste biomass to make valuable industrial and consumer products.
A Sweet Transformation
Many agricultural crops like corn and sugar cane contain simple carbohydrates, or sugars, which are recovered for food value. Researchers at Pacific Northwest are developing processes to convert by-product sugars that are not recovered during food processing into important chemicals called polyols. About four million tons of polyols are sold each year in the U.S., ultimately bringing us products like antifreeze, polyester fibers, cosmetics and plastics.
Polyols can be produced from plant-based sugars more energy efficiently and cost effectively than from petroleum, which is how they are produced currently. Pacific Northwest researchers have developed a family of catalysts that provide effective conversion of glucose to sorbitol, the key intermediate product from which other polyols can be formed.
Pacific Northwest licensed one catalyst from this family to International Polyol Chemicals, Inc. IPCI was formed by a group of Quincy, Wash.-area farmers with the intent to expand markets for agricultural products for the production of chemicals. With some assistance from Pacific Northwest, IPCI is testing the conversion process in a pilot-scale plant in Komatipoort, South Africa, where they transform molasses produced during sugar cane refining into polyols. IPCI intends to build a full-scale facility in South Africa to utilize the vast amounts of molasses produced as a by-product of sugar refining, and for which there is no other use in that part of the world.
Closer to home, Pacific Northwest researchers are applying other catalysts to create polyols from low-cost glucose that is available in the U.S. corn and wheat milling industries. This will likely lead to the building of polyol production plants in the United States, creating a new market of U.S. agricultural products.
A Bushel of Chemicals
Pacific Northwest researchers recently worked with colleagues at laboratories in Tennessee, Illinois and Colorado to develop a process that converts glucose derived from corn into a cost-effective, environmentally friendly source of chemicals that can be used to make industrial and consumer products. Currently, more than 90% of the basic feedstocks used to make these products originate from crude oil and natural gas.
The BDSA process, short for Biologically Derived Succinic Acid, uses a novel microorganism, identified by the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, to ferment glucose into succinic acid. A catalytic conversion process developed at Pacific Northwest then transforms that succinic acid into a chemical product that is used by manufacturers to make polymers, clothing fibers, solvents, paints, inks, food additives, automobile parts and an assortment of other products.
The BDSA has been licensed to Applied CarboChemicals, Inc., a specialty chemicals company based in Cranberry Township, Penn.
A Fertile Future
These projects demonstrate the potential value locked up in low-value agricultural and food processing by-products. Pacific Northwest researchers are working aggressively to harvest this value. Projects are already underway to develop processes that will utilize readily available sugars in addition to glucose and to recover starches from the left-overs of wheat milling. Other projects that will develop processes to reclaim value from more complex by-products and wastes, such as corn fiber and soybean hulls, are planned. All of these projects will result in new uses for agricultural biomass—from industrial chemicals to consumer products—thereby reducing America's dependence on petroleum processing and creating new markets for U.S. farmers.
A Capitol idea
Turning trash to treasure seems to be enjoying support on Capitol Hill. The Senate has authorized $300 million in research over the next six years. And, in the 2001 budget President Clinton is asking Congress for a total $439 million to fund research and grants to aid the production of energy and other products such plastics and chemicals from agricultural waste. The President suggests that new uses for biomass would generate billions of dollars of new income for farmers and produce thousands of additional high tech jobs in addition to the obvious environmental benefits.
Clinton's plan includes a request for a $49 million increase for the Energy Department's research into systems to break down woody and grassy crops into feedstocks and to underwrite development of new technologies to develop new consumer products.
If the presidential request is approved, it's likely some of that money will be allocated to Pacific Northwest to expand our biomass research and efforts to turn trash into treasure.