Microwave Projects
With our ever dwindling geological reserves of non-renewable hydrocarbon resources and the prospects of their continued use further driving global warming/ecological damage, new sources of fuels must be found. The solution is likely to take the form of a multifaceted approach including the use of nuclear, solar, wind, wave and biofuels for our future energy needs.
With this in mind the development of technologies is required to achieve this. One area of research is in the production of fuel and chemicals from biomass. This has been tackled from several directions, but with the main focus on fermentation and pyrolysis technologies, each of which have their advantages and limitations Microwaves make up the part of the electromagnetic spectrum lying between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz. They are unique in the fact they can heat a material directly and volumetrically, giving rise to much greater efficiencies that would be found in a conventional thermal heating system. They also are unique in their interactions with materials/chemicals which can give rise to different products than that of traditional methods of chemical production, although little of these so called “microwave effects” is currently known.
These projects set out to provide the fundamental understanding behind the microwave processing of biomass to produce energy and chemicals. We aim to do this through examining the interaction of microwaves with the major components of plant material; including model systems of cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin. This will provide the fundamental knowledge to enable the development of unique microwave biorefineries which can be used to produce higher purity and yield biofuels which are currently not achievable.
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