Cellulosic Biomass Recalcitrance to Enzymatic Hydrolysis: Investigating the Transport Phenomena a...

Event: Cellulosic Biomass Recalcitrance to Enzymatic Hydrolysis: Investigating the Transport Phenomena and Rheological Bottlenecks of High Solids Biomass

Series: UC Davis Energy Institute/Biological and Agricultural Engineering/ Plant Sciences Winter 2012 Seminar Series: Biofuels: Recent Advances and Applications

Speaker: David Lavenson, PhD Candidate - Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, UC Davis

Description: Speaker Biography and Research Interests: David Lavenson is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the chemical engineering department at UC Davis. He plans to graduate early this summer, with a dissertation title of "Transport phenomena and rheology of cellulosic fiber suspensions." He has research interests in biomass characterization, biomass processing scale-up, mass transfer, modeling, and rheology. He has given several talks on biomass and cellulosic fiber suspensions at the AIChE and Society of Rheology national meetings, along with numerous posters at other conferences. He is actively looking for a position in industry or a national lab working in the fields of rheology, transport phenomena, modeling, R&D, or other similar fields. David received his BS in chemical engineering with honors from Lehigh University, and an MS from UC Davis in chemical engineering.

Abstract:

Industrial implementation of cellulosic ethanol processes has been hindered by the lack of an economic and efficient way of digesting the recalcitrant biomass feedstock. In order to reduce unit operations costs in the areas of mixing, handling, pumping, and separations, as well as increasing end-product yield, it is necessary to perform enzymatic hydrolysis at high solids content. The underlying mass transfer and rheological phenomena that govern these suspensions are complex and not completely understood. These issues of mass transfer and rheological bottlenecks reduce the hydrolysis conversion over time. We have characterized biomass properties in the following ways: 1. By modeling the diffusion-adsorption of various molecules in cellulosic fiber beds using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to quantitatively characterize effective diffusion time scales; 2. By obtaining pertinent rheological parameters in real-time from biomass suspensions at a pilot-scale using flow MRI; and 3. By measuring the effects of mixing enzyme and substrate on the rates of liquefaction and saccharification. These studies combine to provide important scale-up parameters for designing biomass unit operations, and can add to the development of strong kinetic models for the enzymatic hydrolysis. Current projects will be discussed, and avenues for potential collaboration will be highlighted.

Starting date: 2/13/2012 Ending date: 2/13/2012

Starting time: 12:00 PM Ending time: 1:00 PM

Event type: Seminar

Location: 1003 Kemper Hall

Sponsored by: UC Davis Energy Institute
and the departments of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and Plant Sciences

Cost: 0.00

Event Website: http://energy.ucdavis.edu/files/events/seminars/2012-ei-winter-seminar-series-lavenson.pdf

Contact if questions about this event:

Contact name: Bill Kuhlman

Contact e-mail: wbkuhlman@ucdavis.edu