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since 12/15/98 |
| Columns::March 31, 2003 Grant will boost job choices for people with disabilities Alan Darvill, CCRC co-director, is appointed to Regents Professorship Two students receive Goldwater Scholarship; another named Truman Scholar A spring break with Seoul Former Gov. Harris will speak at spring commencement ceremony ‘Caring’ effort recognized Tag team: CCRC researchers help design better disease treatments Campus Closeup Administrative Changes Kudos Land of the Morning Calm Campus News
Bundles of energy Engineering Outreach Service director discusses issues, outcomes of recent biofuels symposium Tom Adams is director of the Engineering Outreach Service and a member of the Faculty of Engineering. Those two units
Columns: What was the goal of the symposium? Adams: We wanted direction as to how Georgia should pursue utilization of its biological resources. The paper industry is ailing and the value of timberland and wood resources has plummeted. We need some solid ideas for economic development. Everybody’s got a part to play or we can’t do it. Columns: Is there a direct link between economic development and the development of renewable energy resources? Adams: We’ve had tunnel vision in the past as far as what can be done with trees--burn them or make paper. No one made a concerted effort to bring people together to talk about those issues, so this is a first step. The Department of Energy has been funding research for quite some time now; we’re not starting absolutely from scratch. Columns: What are the urgencies that might propel the forest products industry to focus research and development on renewable energy? Adams: From cutting the tree to exporting it out of the state, the forest industry employs more than 100,000 people. But by using biomass to displace petroleum and fossil fuels, we have an environmental advantage. We’re not adding CO2 to the inventory of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. I think that is as compelling as the economic reasons. Columns: But economic development is the primary motive. Adams: If you’re going to be sustainable in this country--a capitalist system--it’s got to be. You’ve got to find a way to make it economically sustainable or it just won’t happen. Columns: Is this the beginning of the end of an economy based on petroleum? Adams: We can hope so. I can’t see us getting completely away from petroleum; after all, we are the world’s third-largest producer, producing 40 percent of our own petroleum. But what we use is just unbelievably phenomenal, on a per capita basis. We could cut our consumption in half very easily, just by focusing on fuel efficiency and changing our habits. But there has to be an incentive. Columns: Biomass seems like a catch-all term. What does it encompass? Adams: All living things, basically--though there are ethical limitations to consider, like the health of the soil. To be sustainable, technology has to be friendly to the environment and economical. Columns: Is that the biggest hurdle? Adams: At times it is. At the same time we’re creating energy and diverting our resources away from petroleum and petroleum products, we want to do it in a profitable way. Columns: As discussed in the symposium, in the early days petroleum wasn’t as widely used as it is today. Is that an encouraging sign of what might happen with biofuels? Or is it a sign of the inherent difficulties in displacing petroleum? Adams: I think both. We’re emerging from a petroleum economy where we have more than 20,000 products being made from fossil fuels and for more than 70 years our economy has been so oriented. We’re totally dependent on the price of petroleum for the economic health of the country, and in that sense petroleum is a security issue. Columns: I know the Engineering Outreach Service did a successful trial last year with fats and grease. Is there a future there, or was that just an eye-catching experiment? Adams: That is the low-hanging fruit. It’s an extremely valuable resource, compared to other forms of biomass, because of its energy density. It’s probably too valuable to use a fuel. We should be using it to make value-added products of some kind. Columns: Like polymers? What are they? Adams: Plastics, rubber, Teflon--all these various materials we find in clothing, shoes, tires. We’re a polymer society, and these polymers are by-products from oil refineries--petroleum derivatives from the economy we’ve built. We can do the same thing with bioresources. For instance, fats and grease are long-chain carbon molecules, some of which have double bonds that can be broken and used to connect to short-chain hydrocarbons. When they connect and make an extremely large molecule, it becomes a polymer. We can do this with biochemicals as well. Columns: And that’s the value-added aspect? Adams: That’s right. Some companies are already genetically modifying plants to produce polymers. While they’re harvesting food and fiber, they’re also harvesting these chemicals and creating another value-added stream at the biorefinery. You can think of a corn-milling plant as a biorefinery. At the national level, you can take various crops and feed them to a biorefinery and still maintain food and fiber resources while we’re also creating products to displace fossil fuel-built products. Columns: So where do we go next? Adams: I think we’re going to have to put all of our resources to bear on this problem of energy availability and supply--to use wind, solar and geothermal to change our economy. It’s imperative. These possibilities with biomass are economic development and entrepreneurial opportunities waiting to happen. It would be very patriotic for people to invest themselves in these issues and move the country forward. |
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