For the last decade, the work of Dr. Art Ragauskas’ group has focused on the forest biorefinery.  Given the nature of the challenges and opportunities, Dr. Ragauskas seeks to partner with a variety of people and organizations to help fast track-these technologies.  As part of this mission, Dr. Ragauskas accepted a unique opportunity to work with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a Visiting ORNL Fellow on the utilization of lignin for carbon fibers and related materials derived from next generation biofuel biorefineries.  This opportunity leverages Dr. Ragauskas’ group’s expertise in lignin chemistry and ORNL’s expertise in transgenic plants, biorefining, and renewable energy security.

Dr. Ragauskas’ work has been noted by the American Chemical Society.  He has been honored with the American Chemical Society’s award for Affordable Green Chemistry.  Along with other ACS award recipients, Dr. Ragauskas will be honored at the 247th Annual ACS meeting in March 2014.  The ACS has issued a call for papers for a symposium to honor Dr. Ragauskas.  The symposium will feature topics in green chemistry research including biomass characterization, lignocellulosic recalcitrance, biological deconstruction and biofuels, biomass pretreatments, and green biorefining biomass.  The annual meeting will be held in Dallas.

The Affordable Green Chemistry award is sponsored by Dow Chemical and endowed by Rohm and Haas.  Dr. Ragauskas credits this award not only to his work but to the efforts of his graduate and postdoctoral students, and to his researchers, research partners, and the support staff at IPST.

Also, the American Chemical Society recognized research conducted by Dr. Ragauskas and IPST alumnus Haoxi Ben (PhD Chemistry/Paper Science and Engineering) as noteworthy chemistry.

In this research, Drs. Ragauskas and Ben used zeolite additives in the pyrolysis of lignin to produce simple aliphatic and aromatic liquids more suitable for possible fuel use.   They used a one-step thermal conversion of lignin to gasoline-range liquid products; the ratio of heavy to light oils and the degree of formation of polyaromatics depended on the zeolite structure.  The zeolite additives promoted dehydration and decarboxylation and were more effective than a control pyrolysis oil generated without a zeolite additive.
Dr. Ben is pursuing post-doctoral studies at USDOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.

The research was published in RSC Advances 2012, 2(33), 12892 – 12898