A Wake Forest University alternative-energy project will be able to expand the testing of a key catalyst through a $145,665 grant from the Biofuels Center of North Carolina.
The one-year grant is going to Wake's Terrafinity project, which is working to produce biodiesel from inexpensive feed stocks and other sources. Biodiesel is a renewable, clean-burning fuel that also reduces tailpipe emissions.
The center awarded $1.6 million for 15 projects statewide to accelerate the commercialization of renewable liquid fuels.
Steven Burke, the president and chief executive of the biofuels center, said that the grant recipients show "the competence, scope and remarkably rapid development of this new sector statewide."
Wake researchers have been working with vegetable-oil waste, animal-fat waste, recycled cooking grease and even oils extracted from municipal sewage- and water-treatment plants. Other scientists are exploring algae as a source of energy.
The main challenge with using the waste from vegetable oil, animal fat and recycled cooking grease is the high presence of free fatty acids, which significantly impair biodiesel production, said Abdessadek Lachgar, a chemistry professor at the university and one of two officials supervising the project.
The Terrafinity researchers are developing an inexpensive method for converting the free fatty acids into biodiesel with a yield greater than 98 percent in less than 15 minutes. The catalyst can be produced for 11 cents a gram in the laboratory, although Lachgar said the per-gram cost will be significantly reduced in a commercial setting.
The grant will help pay for the attempt at producing the catalyst in large quantities through a commercial-grade company. Lachgar said that Marshallton Research Laboratories Inc. of King is expected to begin work in July.
"We know how to make the catalyst but don't have the capacity to make the levels we need to move forward with the project," Lachgar said.
One goal of the state biofuels center is developing a statewide industry that would produce at least 10 percent of the liquid fuels sold each year in the state by 2017. That would amount to between 550 million and 600 million gallons.
The state had been producing about 70 million gallons, but the corn-ethanol plant in Raeford is not producing fuel now because of the high cost of corn.
According to the center, more than 20 companies in North Carolina are working with biofuel technologies, including two in the Triad: Algaen Corp. of Clemmons and Gortman Biofuel LLC of Winston-Salem. Gilbarco Veeder-Root makes flex-fuel pumps and has an office in Greensboro.
Analysts say there has been plenty of competition and methodologies for producing a lower-cost catalyst for biodiesel but little sustainable, cost-effective success.
One roadblock is that there are few retail outlets for biodiesel in North Carolina.
On the Nearbio.com Web site, there are three listed within a 50-mile radius of Winston-Salem — Triad Biofuels at 1242 Dorris Ave. in High Point, the Neighbors #9 station at 8400 Norcross Road in Colfax and Gortman Biofuel at 5656 Virginia Ave. in Bassett, Va.
"Producers capable of meeting retail specifications can sell everything they make for blending into petroleum diesel and every gallon blended, even at lower percentages, is still a gallon that North Carolina need not import," said Norman Smit, a spokesman for the center.
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