Pittcon announces a symposium on analytical instrumentation for biofuels R+D, organised by Roland Hirsch from the Office of Biological and Environmental Research, US Department of Energy
This symposium will address the analytical technologies needed to enable progress in meeting the goals of large-scale substitution of biomass-derived fuels and chemicals for their fossil-derived counterparts.
The symposium will feature presentations from each of the three new Bioenergy Research Centers funded by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy: the DOE BioEnergy Science Center, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, led by the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
After describing the mission and goals for their centre, each of the speakers will discuss the analytical instrumentation used in their centre and the limitations of existing technologies that will require analytical R+D for characterising the raw materials and processes that will be studied by their centre.
Two additional presentations will describe analytical research projects that focus on characterising and imaging lignocellulosic materials undergoing conversion to simpler molecules that can then be converted to fuels and chemicals.
Speakers and topics for this informative session include:.
Martin Keller, Oak Ridge National Laboratory: The BioEnergy Science Center: an overview - can new analytical instrumentation help to overcome the recalcitrance of biomass?.
Paul Adams, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory: The Joint BioEnergy Institute.
Markus Pauly, Michigan State University, Ken Keegstra, and Jonathan Walton: Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center: high throughput analysis of plant materials as a resource for biofuels.
Paul Bohn, University of Notre Dame and Jonathan Sweedler: Three-dimensional spatial profiling of lignocellulosic materials by coupling light scattering and mass spectrometry.
* John Ralph, USDA-Agricultural Research Service: High-resolution solution-state NMR of unfractionated plant cell walls; potential for biomass selection and process optimisation.
