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A portable biorefinery developed by Purdue Agriculture researchers for U.S. military use in the field is creating quite a buzz in the science media.
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| Purdue University professor Nathan Mosier works with the tactical biorefinery, which is designed to convert waste into electricity. |
Several publications have featured the invention, which converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. Popular Science named the biorefinery May’s “Invention of the Month.” It also was covered by National Public Radio’s “Science Friday” program, Scientific American and MIT Technology Review.
“This is a very promising technology,” says Michael Ladisch, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, about the machine that allows soldiers in the field to convert waste into power. “In a very short time, it should be ready for use in the military, and I think it could be used outside the military shortly thereafter.”
Technicians can feed the machine several kinds of waste at once, which it converts into fuel via two parallel processes and then burns in a diesel engine to power a generator. The size of a small moving van, the biorefinery could alleviate the expense and potential danger associated with transporting waste and fuel. Also, by producing electricity from debris, it could be used as a power source in disaster scenarios or by businesses with surplus waste.
Purdue researchers are partnering with Defense Life Sciences LLC on the project. A working prototype was approved by the military in 2006, and a second unit is under construction.
Editor’s note: The development of the portable biorefinery was featured in “Waste not, want not: Researchers use waste materials to get more mileage from ethanol” in the Spring 2006 issue of Agricultureswww.agriculture.purdue.edu/agricultures/past/spring2006.
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