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Auburn University selected by DOE for biofuel funding
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US Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that up to $21 million will be made
available for the selection of five projects that will develop supply systems to handle and deliver high tonnage biomass feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels production
Auburn University of Auburn, Alabama (up to $4.9 million) will work with leading producers of forest biomass for energy in Alabama to design and demonstrate a high productivity system to harvest, process, and transport woody biomass from southern pine plantations. Specific project objectives are to develop design improvements in tree-length harvesting machines for energy plantations, configure and assemble a high-productivity, lowest-cost harvesting and transportation system for biomass, and demonstrate at full industrial scale and document performance of the harvesting, storage, pre-processing, and transportation system.
http://www.energy.gov/news2009/7848.htm
Auburn's Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts will lead the project, "High Tonnage Forest Biomass Production Systems from Southern Pine Energy Plantations," as part of a consortium that includes central Alabama company Corley Land Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and companies from the U.S. and Canada.
The center will work with faculty in the university's Department of Biosystems Engineering and School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, and, in addition to Corley Land Services, the USDA Forest Service's Forest Operations Research Unit and TigerCat, a leading manufacturer of forestry equipment. Other collaborators include Barnes Enterprises, Blue Ox Forestry and Dixie Pellet.
The production process involves harvesting pine trees, allowing them to partially dry, chipping them and transporting the material by tractor-trailers to a biorefinery that may process it into cellulosic biofuels.
Specific project objectives are to improve the design of tree-length harvesting machines to increase productivity and minimize their environmental impacts; assemble a high-productivity, lowest-cost harvesting and transportation system for biomass; and demonstrate and document the performance of this system at an industrial scale. Auburn faculty will work with equipment designers on machine improvements and will develop and implement new sensors and GPS-based systems to help improve the performance of the forest-harvesting machines and to improve the quality of the final biomass product
http://wireeagle.auburn.edu/news/1116
Auburn's business incubation and other business development programs have netted the school more income than all of its sports programs (including football) combined for the last several years.
Could this be a new trend in how to fund education?
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