Martin Hjortso
Louisiana State University
LSU Baton Rouge is a land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant university. Student
enrolment currently exceeds 26,000, including over 4,000 graduate students. The
faculty body is approximately 1,500. LSU encompasses 10 senior colleges and
several centers and institutes. LSU offers degree programs in all common
academic disciplines. The College of Engineering has programs in all
engineering disciplines including a separate Petroleum Engineering Department
and a new, Nuclear Engineering program partially housed in Mechanical
Engineering.
There are numerous units on Campus that are particularly relevant to energy
research. While not exhaustive of LSU’s energy research by individual faculty, a
few prominent units are described below.
DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) at LSU is funded for 5 years at
$12.5 million from DOE plus $940,000 from the LSU Board of Regents. Further
funding after 5 years is possible. Of the $12.5 million, $7.2 will go to investigators
in Louisiana. The center is dedicated to “Computational Catalysis and Atomiclevel Synthesis of Materials: Building Effective Catalysts from First Principles”.
The center’s focus is on design of catalysts for key energy processes, including
emerging technologies such as hydrogen, solar and bio-fuels.
Center director is Professor James Spivey, Chemical Engineering LSU, and coinvestigators include faculty and staff at LSU, University of Florida, Clemson,
Tulane, Georgia Tech, Louisiana Tech, Texas A&M, Penn State, Utrecht
University, Oak Ridge and CAMD.
CAMD (Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices), located a short
distance from the LSU campus, is a high-tech synchrotron research center
whose role is to provide equipment, expertise, and infrastructure for research and
development in the area of microstructures and microdevices. It is the only such
facility in the South and is critical for the DOE center in that it provides atomic
resolution tools for catalysts characterization and atomic control tools for catalyst
synthesis.
Audubon Sugar Institute is a full-service unit capable of both laboratory and
pilot operations and is designed for research and technical service to Louisiana’s
agricultural industries, primarily the cane sugar processing industry. The facilities
of the Institute are ideal for pilot studies. The institute houses 8 faculty that
maintain academic appointments in departments on the LSU campus in Baton
Rouge and provides mentoring and training to graduate students from these
departments at the St. Gabriel facility.
The research program at the Institute concentrates on new technology
development that can be adopted by the cane sugar processing industry, ranging
from simple technological developments to major initiatives such as directly
producing refined sugar and utilizing lignocellulosic wastes.
Louisiana State University
Martin Hjortso
Louisiana State University
In recent years, the institute has built a significant research program dedicated to
conversion of biogases to biofuels. Similar research projects by other groups in
the LSU Agricultural Center supplements this effort.
Center for Energy Studies is mandated to provide energy information and
analysis that responds to the needs of the legislature, public agencies, and
business and civic groups. The staff, 23 full time employees, identifies issues
with important implications for the state's economy and design studies which
address them in a timely and effective manner. The Center maintains some
unique energy data bases and is the official repository of energy information from
the state and The Energy Council. Staff responds regularly to requests from a
wide variety of individuals and institutions for specialized energy data and
information.
The center coordinates multidisciplinary energy research within the University
and the State. The division assists in gathering the necessary expertise, securing
funding, and providing research management services for the performance of
basic and applied research upon request.
Expertise is available for economic analysis of research projects. The center
organizes two energy conferences each year. One on traditional carbon based
energy, primarily oil, another on alternative energy.
Clean Power and Energy Research Consortium is a consortium consisting of
five Louisiana Schools (LSU, Tulane, Nicholls State, Southern University and the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette). Researchers within this consortium
address critical issues related to power and energy generation, with the goal of
improving current technology in power generation and emission reduction.
Within this framework lies TIER – Turbine Innovation and Research Center
(situated within the College of Engineering). The mission of this center is to
enhance the understanding of flow, heat transfer and combustion in gas turbines.
The LSU Baton Rouge campus, lead by the College of Engineering and the
Office for Research and Economic Development, is currently completing an
energy research inventory that includes all energy-related research taking place
on campus. This inventory will serve as the foundation for a framework of
synergistic research across the entire energy platform (oil and gas and biofuels
(microalgal and lignocellulosic) to alternative sources including nuclear). This
effort will include researchers, industry and state entities focused on evolving
Louisiana’s energy prominence beyond oil and gas.
Louisiana State University