Dr. Thomas Butcher, Research Engineer, Brookhaven National Laboratory
ABSTRACT
This presentation summarizes important recent advances made by BNL researchers with their partners in academia and industry. In the biology area this includes applying improve understanding of plantmicrobe interactions to significantly increase bioenergy crop yield per hectare while also positively impacting features such as drought resistance; enhancing plant wall structures to facilitate conversion to products; enhancing oil and lipid production and quality in selected crops for energy and chemical end uses; and various process improvements impacting products from biomass. In thermochemical conversion, BNL is activley working on understanding the relationship between feedstock characteristics and pyrolysis process yields as well as on the development of advanced catalysts for use in pyrolysis and gasification conversions.
BNL is also very involved with end use applications of a very wide range of biofuels. This includes for example fuels derived from high fatty acid waste streams; direct vegetable oil combustion; fuels from
Fischer-Tropsch processes; pyrolysis oils, levulinates, and solid biomass. Interest in end use issues includes basic fuel properties, storage stability, elastomer compatibility, corrosion issues, combustion characteristics and air pollutant emission impacts.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Thomas Butcher is a Research Engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory currently serving as
Deputy Chair of the Sustainable Energy Technologies Department and Head of the Energy Conversion
Group. His long standing research interests include advanced concepts for building heating and cooling and the application of conventional and biofuels in stationary combustion applications.