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| Volume II, Issue 2 | Spring 2010 |
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Dr. Bill Batchelor, Director
Dr. Glenn Steele, Director
Sustainable Energy Research Center
130 Creelman Street, Box 9632
Mississippi State, MS 39762
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Other News:
Save the Date!
2010 MSU Biofuels Conference
August 12-13
Jackson, MS
With special guest,
Governor Haley Barbour
SERC receives recognition for advanced biofuels development. Read here.
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The
Sustainable Energy Research Center (SERC) was established in January
2006 at Mississippi State University (MSU) through funding from the
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
SERC was formed to create
an infrastructure for coordinated interdisciplinary collaboration
at MSU in the development of environmentally and economically
sustainable energy sources specific to the Southeastern United States.
SERC
is made up of six thrust areas of research. These thrusts
include over 80 professors around the university and
encompass many different colleges. For more information about our areas of research, click here.
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 Yeast Studies May Yield New Bio-diesel Source
By: Kristen Dechert
Dr. Mark Lawrence, microbiologist and Professor in
the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State
University (MSU), has teamed with Dr. Todd French,
leader of SERC's lignocellulosic conversion thrust and
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at MSU,
to study Rhodotorula glutinis, a red-pigmented strain
of yeast with characteristics that make it viable for
bio-diesel production. The two MSU researchers have
a three-year history of collaboration. They began
with bacterial studies and progressed to this yeast
work, which has been ongoing for the past year.
French's chemical research centers on how this yeast can utilize fat
accumulation in biomass, specifically switchgrass, for extraction to
make bio-diesel, and he has teamed with Lawrence for biological study
of the yeast. Lawrence's work focuses on identifying genetic
pathways that control the fat accumulation in this yeast.
Identification of these pathways can allow specific gene alterations to
increase the yeast's fat accumulation, and French can use this for more
efficient bio-diesel production. [read more] |
Renewable Fuel that Supports a Carbon Neutral Cycle
By Diane L. Godwin
Reprinted with permission from Dimensions, the 2008-2009 Annual Report for MSU's Bagley
College of Engineering
 They've lived beneath the earth for millions of years and
have enhanced the quality of life for generations. Fossil hydrocarbons are mined for making traditional fuels to power engines that release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Experts assert that these emissions create global change by increasing the earth's overall temperatures, called a greenhouse gas effect. It occurs because the Earth's environment doesn't have enough rain forests and vegetation to feed on the added CO2 that is released. To help reduce the amount of CO2 emitted, engineers invented catalytic converter technology for vehicles. Environmental scientists affirm that there's been significant improvement, but claim more needs to be done.
Two chemical engineering faculty members, Drs. Rafael Hernandez and Todd French have
invented a process that can provide the world with clean energy just by
tapping into the world's abundant supply of wastewater. They've
discovered microorganisms, naturally found in wastewater, grow fat with
bio-oil. The discovery means they can provide clean energy by making
biocrude from the bio-oil the microorganisms produce, creating a carbon
neutral environment because the microorganisms depend on CO2 to grow
larger. The process could resolve some controversial issues affecting
today's society by creating energy that's safe for the environment and
by producing a fuel that will help America become less dependent on
foreign oil. [read more] |
Clearing the Air
By Diane L. Godwin
Reprinted with permission from Dimensions, the 2008-2009 Annual Report of MSU's Bagley
College of Engineering
 It would be difficult for many to imagine a coach asking an Olympic sprinter to run his or her best time with congestion caused by a cold. However, that analogy becomes true and applicable to the way vehicle engines are designed and driven every day. Drs. Sundar Krishnan and Kalyan Srinivasan, assistant professors in mechanical engineering and researchers at the Advanced Combustion Engines Laboratory at the Bagley College of Engineering's Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS), are designing novel engine combustion strategies for the vehicles of the future that will achieve higher fuel economy and are safer for the environment.
"The
biggest problem with most current gasoline engines is the throttle in
the intake manifold. It's like one of us having a heavy cold and being
asked to sprint up a flight of stairs," explained Srinivasan. "The
throttle blocks the engine's breathing efficiency, making it have to
work harder and, therefore, it burns more fuel." The
two researchers are creating innovative engine combustion concepts
that move away from traditional, spark-ignited gasoline engines to a
more optimized engine design that incorporates novel low temperature
combustion (LTC) technology. The advantage of this technology is that
it can be tailored for fuels made from biomass-forest and agricultural
harvest byproducts-to enable highly efficient engines to meet
performance requirements while reducing harmful exhaust emissions, thus
creating cleaner air that ultimately energizes everything and everyone.
[read more]
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Graduate Student Profile: Andro Mondala
 Department and Degree Seeking
Chemical Engineering, Ph.D. in Engineering Concentration:Chemical Engineering
Prior degree
B.S. in Chemical Engineering, University of the
Philippines Los Baños, 2005
Please discuss your areas of specialty.
One
of my areas of specialty is bioprocess engineering in tandem with
environmental engineering. This involves the application of concepts of
biological process design (i.e., microbial cultures, fermentation) in
modifying microbial consortia in the environment that are involved in
biological treatment processes to produce high-value products, such as
lipids, for biofuel production. The second involves chemical analysis
of the products we extract from these natural microbiota with the use
of chromatographic instrumentation (gas, liquid, ion chromatography).
More recently, I received training in DNA extraction and analysis
techniques in order to better understand the dynamics of the
composition of the wastewater microbiota at the genetic level when
subjected to the fermentation process for lipid production. [read more] |
| Volume II, Issue 2 | Spring 2010 |
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 Writer Profile: Kristen
Dechert is the SERC technical writer. She has a bachelor's
and master's degree in English from the University of Montevallo
and Mississippi State University, respectively. In addition
to working with SERC, she serves as technical writer for the
Institute for Clean Energy Technology and teaches junior- and
senior-level technical writing for the English department at
MSU. Dechert can be reached at kcovington@english.msstate.edu.
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