SERC earns 2009 Innovator Award
February 16, 2009
Starkville, Miss.—A nonpartisan, public-think tank created by the southern states’ governors, the Southern Growth Policies Board, has named the Bagley College of Engineering’s Sustainable Energy Research Center as the recipient of the 2009 Innovator Award for the state of Mississippi. The organization honors Southern initiatives that are improving economic opportunities and quality of life in the region. SERC researchers will be honored with the award at the Southern Growth Policies Board’s annual meeting in Biloxi, Miss.
In less than three years, the Sustainable Energy Research Center (SERC) at Mississippi State University has invented three renewable energy technologies that are safe for the environment, will lessen the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and combat rising energy costs. When the renewable research projects transition into commercial development, the economic impact will translate into new companies and more jobs for the citizens of the state.
“What we’re really trying to do is create new industry in Mississippi—the renewable energy industry,” said Dr. Bill Batchelor, SERC co-director. “We have biomass left over from the harvesting of trees, cotton, soybeans and the like. Just imagine the economic revitalization and impact we can have on the state if we can recycle and convert these wood and grain byproducts into renewable fuels.”
Since its formation in 2006, SERC experts and scientists have taken a $13 million Department of Energy grant and used the government’s investment to invent three technologies that will convert the environment’s natural biomass into renewable energy. The project closest to investment and the commercialization stage is the production of bio-oil. Created from byproducts of one of Mississippi’s largest natural resources, trees, it can be used for home heating fuel, green diesel and green jet fuel.
“We’re looking for companies willing to develop portable systems for the field that turn waste products from the harvesting of pine trees into bio-oil,” explained Dr. Glenn Steele, the center’s other co-director. “The critical part is identifying investors, finding an intermediate set of entrepreneurs who will take our technology and commercially develop a product that’s sold to larger companies. The alternative is to have the larger corporations realize the benefits and then the middle will open and develop on its own.”
The product has the same energy-producing power per gallon as gasoline. Researchers are studying the very real possibility of creating renewable electricity from bio-oil. The SERC plans to test the product’s heating and electricity generating capability at the university’s Micro-Cooling, Heating, and Power (Micro-CHP) and Bio-Fuel Center demonstration site later this year.
“Another real advantage that all three of these technologies give us is reducing the carbon footprint of our society. Petroleum and coal products take carbons that have been stored for millions of years underground and add them to the atmosphere, and our CO2 levels continue to increase. The renewable, recyclable fuel process takes carbon atoms that already exist and creates an alternative fuel that’s safe for the environment because it’s a closed system.”
Fifty Mississippi State faculty members are working specifically on ways to create renewable energy at the SERC. The center’s research on alternative fuels and energy sustainability has grown so rapidly in the past three years that it is now part of the university’s newly formed Energy Institute.
“We formed the Energy Institute to maximize our fiscal resources and use it as a central umbrella that allows us to easily share and access a knowledge foundation that we can build upon by networking with other energy-based centers and departments working on related projects,” said Steele.
The Energy Institute includes SERC, the Industrial Assessment Center, The Mirco-CHP and Bio-Fuel Center and the Institute for Clean Energy Technology.
The Southern Growth Policies Board is based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The organization develops and advances visionary economic development policies by providing a forum for partnership and dialogue among a diverse cross-section of the region’s governors, legislators, business and academic leaders and the economic- and community-development sectors. This unique public-private partnership is devoted to strengthening the South’s economy and creating the highest possible quality of life.