Turning tallgrass to fuel grass

By Mike Krapfl

He's written a textbook about biorenewable resources.

He's been photographed in the Iowa tallgrass he's turning into fuel gas.

And he's leading an initiative launched in 2002 by Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy that's looking for ways to turn crops and plants into chemicals, fuels, fibers and energy.

Sabbatical spark

But that's not where Robert C. Brown, who has eight patents and an R&D 100 Award, was headed 13 years ago. The professor of mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and agriculture and biosystems engineering was studying the fluidized bed combustion of coal. Then a colleague convinced him to audit a course about global climate change as a kind of campus sabbatical.

That break from the routine sparked some new thinking.

So when Brown was introduced to a forestry professor who wondered about possible uses for the poplar trees he was growing as a woody crop, Brown agreed to help out.

Before long he was hauling an abandoned biomass gasifier from a Missouri farm. When he recognized the shortcomings of that equipment, he returned to the fluidized bed technology he knew -- it involves reacting fuels in a heated bed of sandy material that's suspended in a column of rising air -- to turn biomass into a fuel gas.

Switch to switchgrass

Brown started working with poplar wood chips. Then he looked to Iowa's native prairie for some help. It turns out switchgrass can make a fuel gas researchers are trying to put to practical use.

"This has been an exciting time," Brown said. "Our nation was originally a bioeconomy before switching to a petroleum economy. I see good reasons to move back."

Then he ticked off four of them: fewer impacts on the environment, less reliance on petroleum, new markets for agricultural crops and more opportunities for rural development.

This fiscal year, Iowa State's Bioeconomy Initiative has generated more than $15 million in sponsored funding, according to an initiative report. Of that, $6.4 million came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, $2.9 million from the National Science Foundation and $2.2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

More than 40 faculty members and research scientists are now affiliated with the initiative's Office of Biorenewables Programs and the graduate program in biorenewable resources and technology.

The bioeconomy initiative

"I've been very, very pleased with how the Bioeconomy Initiative has been going," Geoffroy said. "One of the things that makes that progress possible is having a great leader like Robert. He's really interested in maximizing the opportunities and the research and getting as many people as involved as possible."

Geoffroy predicted the program will have a huge impact on Iowa's economy and said it will be a central focus of Iowa State's research efforts for many years.

Stanley Johnson, Iowa State's vice provost for Extension who helped launch the Bioeconomy Initiative, said it's making a difference on campus and across the state.

A March 2004 study of Iowa's opportunities in the biosciences identified the manufacture of bio-based products as among the most promising and said Iowa State would be a major player in that effort.

"Iowa State University is certainly central to the state's initiatives in the bioeconomy," said that study for the Iowa Department of Economic Development by the Battelle Memorial Institute. "The university has put in place a structure of institutes and research and development centers that positions it well as the leader in driving the science and technology of the bioeconomy forward."

Reaching out to Iowa industries

Part of the effort involves reaching out to Iowa industries. And so the university is working with an industry group called the Biowa Development Association to grow the state's bioeconomy.

What about Brown's role in moving the university's initiative forward?

Brown is doing fine work, Johnson said. Not only is he one of the major researchers in the initiative, he finds time to help build the university-wide effort.

James Bloedel, Iowa State's vice provost for research and advanced studies, said Brown is also willing to work with a lot of scientists across campus.

"It's very important to emphasize that he's interacting with a highly collaborative and excellent group of scientists," Bloedel said. "Robert is a leader in a coalition of leaders in this field."

Brown's latest project has him working with biochemists. They're bubbling fuel gas made from switchgrass through a reactor containing Rhodospirillum rubrum bacteria.

The bacteria love the carbon monoxide in the gas and use it to produce hydrogen gas and a bio-based plastic.

Other research projects in Iowa State's Bioeconomy Initiative include finding ways to sustainably harvest biorenewable resources, turning corn proteins into medicines, fermenting sugars into commodity chemicals, using natural fibers to produce building materials, converting vegetable oil to biodiesel and developing technologies that turn municipal, industrial and agricultural wastes into renewable energy.

Peanut shells into cooking gas

Some of that research has been used to turn peanut shells into cooking gas for a Chinese village. Other work has been put to use in the seed industry. But Brown said most American consumers won't notice many of these research developments until gas prices climb even higher and there are changes in America's policies toward global climate change.

Even so, Brown said Iowa State's Bioeconomy Initiative and the resulting collaboration are making a lot of progress.

"It's beyond my wildest expectations," he said. "Just about every project that has been initiated by our faculty has succeeded."

Robert Brown