Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesThe Motivation
Sustainable. Renewable. Green. These adjectives are used more and more each day in the press and in everyday life. Why? Because our society has evolved to the point where we must look forward to creating a better future by design and not by accident.
The quantity of energy consumed annually in U.S. economy is staggering. A highly informative depiction of this consumption appears each year in the Annual Energy Review) published by the U.S. Department of Energy (Figure 1). Fossil fuels dominate the picture. In 2006, renewable energy provided less than 7 percent of our needs. Do renewable and sustainable alternatives have the potential to shoulder a larger share of the burden while holding for us the promise of both a healthier environment and a stronger economy? Yes. The Center for Biofuel Energy & Sustainable Technologies (BEST) at the University of Memphis brings together people from across the university to conduct the research and develop the technologies that can help everyone breathe easier (in more ways than one).
Fuel (and the benefit to be derived from it) is no longer free in either monetary cost or environmental impact. Fossil fuels are not renewable in that our current rate of consumption far exceeds the rate of the natural processes that create them. Although we continue to find new deposits and employ ever more innovative ways of extracting usable fuel from known reserves, the supply is finite and getting more expensive by the day. The perils of air pollution have been recognized for almost half a century, and legislation has been enacted to help us breathe easier. In just the last few years there has been a growing recognition of an unintended and largely unforeseen consequence of the combustion process that converts the energy stored in fossil fuels into useful work. Carbon extracted from the earth's atmosphere eons ago by living things is being released back into the atmosphere at a prodigious rate in the form of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other Green House Gases (GHG). Although there can be reasonable debate between informed people on the impact of these emissions on our environment, a growing portion of the scientific community and the community of nations view these emissions as a serious threat to our economy and well-being. The facts that fossil fuels are not a renewable energy source and that their consumption is increasing the amount of carbon-based gas in our atmosphere do not seem to be in question.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The University
In recognition of the "unprecedented scale and speed of global warming and its potential for large-scale, adverse health, social, economic, and ecological effects" President Raines signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment committing our university to taking "steps in pursuit of climate neutrality" A campus-wide sustainability committee with direct access to President Raines is working in support of that goal. A number of organizations and systems on campus are working to diminish the threats posed to our health, environment, and economy when we depend on fossil fuels to fuel our economy and our entire way of life. For example, construction will soon begin on a new dormitory that has been designed to earn LEED certification. Buildings are being renovated to incorporate more efficient HVAC systems. More efficient boilers have already replaced older units in the campus' Physical Plant. The Ecological Research Center has been working for responsible stewardship of our environment for more than thirty years. A more recent addition to campus, the Green Campus Initiative, is composed of "students, faculty, staff, and administrators providing information and guidance to the university campus and community as they explore clean alternatives to meet their energy needs."
The Center for Biofuel Energy & Sustainable Technologies (BEST) is the latest addition to the array of campus organizations and activities helping the university fulfill its commitment to taking "steps in pursuit of climate neutrality" The seed for this center was a grant to the Mechanical Engineering Department from the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation with truly exciting objectives: on campus creation of a biodiesel production unit that will simultaneously benefit our environment as well as the university's bottom line and initiation of an awareness/outreach program to promote biodiesel as an alternative fuel source. To pursue these objectives and from a broader perspective to enhance our ability to realize the public health, environmental, economic, and social potential inherent in biofuel energy and emerging sustainable technologies, faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department and the new Master of Public Health Program formed a partnership that has evolved into BEST. The center's logo and other images that significantly contribute to the success of BEST's outreach programs reflect the talent of a member of yet another organization on campus: Ms. Juliane Richter, Art Director of the Center for Multimedia Arts. Campus-wide student support for sustainable technologies is one of BEST's stated goals, and helping BEST achieve that vision is Ms. Brandy Suleiman, an undergraduate marketing major, who dedicates considerable energy and talent to promoting the adoption of sustainable technologies. This core group is committed to making BEST inclusive and open to all who share its vision. Toward this goal, we have sought out leaders of existing initiatives to support their initiatives and to grow BEST into a center that accomplishes its wide range of goals through the participation of students, faculty, and staff from across the entire university.
The Technology
In Spring 2007, the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation issued a request for proposals for Alternative Fuel Innovations Grants with a one-year performance period. The University of Memphis proposal, "A Center for Biodiesel Production, Awareness, and Testing," was awarded $100,000.Work officially began on November 1, 2007, and is the stimulus that brought the Center for Biofuel Energy & Sustainable Technologies into existence. The centerpiece of this effort will be the design, fabrication, and commissioning of a biodiesel production unit that can meet the campus' diesel fuel needs. In addition to reaping the performance benefits that a state-of-the-art system can provide, the BEST production unit (BPU) will serve as a platform for conducting research and an invaluable hands-on experience for educating students and training technicians. As a transportable system equipped with the latest in control and display technologies, the BPU can be taken off campus to provide dynamic demonstrations that inform our industrial partners, educate students in the K-12 system, and energize the imagination of the citizens of the Mid-South.
It is necessary to define biodiesel to fully understand the BPU. Biodiesel is a fuel produced from plant or animal oils that is suitable for use in a conventional diesel engine. Soybean oil, palm oil, and used vegetable oils (UVOs) are among the feedstock options most often cited, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Other plant sources may have a better yield and/or may have less impact on the food chain, which is a major criticism of current ethanol production from sugars methods. The BEST production unit is designed to accept a variety of plant oils with the goal of using UVOs from the campus cafeterias to convert what has been a waste stream into a source of usable energy. In technical terms, the transesterification reaction converts purified triglycerides from the seed oil into simple straight chain methyl esters (biodiesel) and glycerine (see Figure 2).
Although the description is more than a mouthful, the basic chemistry of the process has been known for almost one hundred years. The BPU has many novel design features. Unlike the batch process typically described in the general media and frequently used for commercial production, the BPU is a continuous flow process designed around a novel reactor and a very high precision metering and control system. After any preprocessing required to condition a particular feedstock, the reaction oils are mixed with methanol in the presence of a catalyst (sodium methyl oxide) and passed through the reactor. Combining the precise stochiometry provided by the control system with the novel reactor enables conversion of 99 percent of the triglycerides to methyl esters. This impressive yield is accompanied with the advantages of a continuous flow process that does not suffer the performance penalties imposed by the repeated startup, shutdown, and downtime of a batch process. The absence of large settling tanks required for a typical batch process permits the BPU to be a very compact, portable system. Its skid-mounted modular design rapidly breaks into three process units that fit into a pickup truck or van. It can then be reassembled quickly and easily at an off-campus site to support BEST's awareness/outreach mission.
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
Somewhere in the preceding paragraph, a reader of some familiarity with the biofuel business has probably started to ask, how can such a system be built and an outreach awareness program initiated on the expendable budget associated with a $100,000 award? The answer is that it cannot be done without help. Industrial partnerships have been sought from the outset with terrific results. For example, the high precision metering and control system would have been beyond the reach of this project without the support of Emerson Process Management. Their commitment to the project includes donation of engineering support as well as state-of-the-art hardware and software. Their Delta V process control system will be used to run and control the BPU, ensuring consistent production of biodiesel that meets ASTM standards. The LCD displays integral to this system do much more for this project than just ensure high-quality, reliable operation. Attractive schematics that combine graphics and numbers reveal the biodiesel production process across many levels of sophistication, thereby meeting the educational needs of an elementary school student as well as the research needs of a graduate student. Emerson's contributions have enabled the BPU to excel in meeting the production, research, and educational missions of this project and BEST. Space limitations prohibit an inclusive list of all the assistance, support, and contributions this project has already received from several industrial partners and from alumni practicing in this field. To name but a few more partners, significant help has already been provided by Memphis' commercial biofuel refineries--Memphis Biofuels and Milagro Biofuels.As the project proceeds toward the planned commission date for the BPU, our list of partners continues to grow with each passing day.
FEED