Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center has received a $6.5 million grant from the USDA and the&nbsp;U.S. DOE to test and expand a university-developed technology&nbsp;that can produce biogas from a variety of solid organic wastes and bioenergy&nbsp;crops. Awarded through&nbsp;the Biomass Research Development Initiative, the three-year grant will&nbsp;also allow researchers to develop technology for converting biogas to liquid&nbsp;hydrocarbon fuels, with the aim of further diversifying the country's currently&nbsp;available suite of renewable transportation fuels. University&nbsp;partners in the grant include Mississippi State University and the University&nbsp;of Georgia. The project's main industry partner is Quasar Energy Group, a&nbsp;Cleveland-based&nbsp;company that operates several anaerobic digesters in Ohio and Massachusetts, including one&nbsp;on OARDC's Wooster campus.&nbsp;Other industry partners include AgSTAR, Aloterra&nbsp;Energy, American Electric Power, CNH and Marathon. The project's&nbsp;main goal is to enhance the integrated anaerobic digestion system (iADs), a patent-pending technology&nbsp;developed by OARDC and operated by quasar. The system&nbsp;combines quasar's commercial&nbsp;liquid biodigester with a novel solid-state or "dry" biodigester. This combination&nbsp;allows the overall system to process types and amounts of dry&nbsp;biomass &ndash;such&nbsp;as yard waste, crop residue and lignocellulosic food waste&mdash;that the liquid&nbsp;biodigester can't handle alone. "The&nbsp;iADs&nbsp;can treat and recover energy from&nbsp;organic materials with up to 85 percent solids content," said Yebo Li, the&nbsp;OARDC biosystems engineer who invented the integrated&nbsp;system and the grant's&nbsp;principal investigator. "By comparison, liquid biodigesters currently used in&nbsp;the United States can only process up to 14 percent solids content." In the anaerobic&nbsp;digestion world, this difference is very important. Biogas is produced from the&nbsp;solid nutrients present in the biodigestion process, so the more solids that go&nbsp;in, the&nbsp;more biogas that comes out. Another advantage of this system is that it&nbsp;significantly increases the amount of biomass that can be fed to biodigesters&nbsp;and transformed into energy,&nbsp;allowing this budding green industry to expand and create new jobs. The first&nbsp;iADs&nbsp;was built in 2012 next to Quasar's&nbsp;biodigester in Zanesville, Ohio, and can process 8,000 tons of waste annually.&nbsp;Construction of this system was supported by a $2&nbsp;million grant from the state&nbsp;of Ohio's Third Frontier Advanced Energy Program. "The BRDI&nbsp;funding leverages our 2010 Third Frontier award, expanding the public-private&nbsp;partnership between The Ohio State University and Quasar Energy Group,&rdquo; said Mel&nbsp;Kurtz, Quasar&nbsp;president. &ldquo;Work related to this grant will be performed at our&nbsp;energy campus in Zanesville&mdash;quasar's largest facility and proving ground for&nbsp;iADs&nbsp;development."&nbsp; The new grant&nbsp;will allow Li and collaborators to research production of biogas from three&nbsp;feedstocks: yard waste, corn stover and giant miscanthus. Giant&nbsp;miscanthus is a perennial&nbsp;warm-season grass from Asia that is garnering attention across the Midwest as a&nbsp;potential bioenergy crop. Researchers at OSU South Centers at Piketon have&nbsp;been&nbsp;testing the crop's adaptability to Ohio since 2010. Project&nbsp;collaborators Rattan Lal, an Ohio State soil science expert, and Denny Hall, assistant&nbsp;director of the university's Ohio BioProducts Innovation Center, will evaluate&nbsp;the&nbsp;nutrient-rich "digestate" left over from the anaerobic digestion process as&nbsp;a fertilizer to grow giant miscanthus on strip-mined land not suitable for&nbsp;traditional crops. Additionally,&nbsp;Scott Shearer, chair of Ohio State's Department of Food, Agricultural and&nbsp;Biological Engineering, will study biogas feedstock logistics, including the&nbsp;use of a&nbsp;methane-fueled truck to both transport the digestate to the field and bring&nbsp;the miscanthus biomass back to the biodigester. The idea, Li&nbsp;said, is to "close an ecological loop," reducing transportation costs while&nbsp;improving soil fertility and crop yield. To that extent, Bhavik Bakshi, a&nbsp;researcher in Ohio&nbsp;State's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,&nbsp;will conduct a life-cycle analysis to determine the economic and environmental&nbsp;impact of the dry biodigester&nbsp;technology. While biogas can&nbsp;be burned to produce electricity or compressed to use as vehicle fuel, the project&nbsp;will also seek to expand its use in transportation by developing a technology&nbsp;to&nbsp;convert biogas to liquid hydrocarbon fuels&mdash;so that it can be used just like&nbsp;gasoline. Scientists will use techniques such as catalytic reforming and&nbsp;Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to&nbsp;achieve that goal. Another aim of&nbsp;the project is to develop a technology for pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass.&nbsp;Pretreatment, Li said, can enhance the "digestibility" of this biomass in the&nbsp;dry&nbsp;biodigester, leading to higher biogas production. Another project&nbsp;collaborator, Zhongtang Yu of Ohio State's Department of Animal Sciences, will&nbsp;study the microbial community&nbsp;present during the anaerobic digestion of&nbsp;pretreated feedstocks. OARDC is the&nbsp;research arm of Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental&nbsp;Sciences. 
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Ohio State researcher Yebo Li specializes in the development of bioenergy and bioproducts from waste and biomass.

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Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center has received a $6.5 million grant from the USDA and the U.S. DOE to test and expand a university-developed technology that can produce biogas from a variety of feedstocks. 

Ohio State University wins grant for biogas research

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