Media Release - For Immediate Release

March 4 2010

Using Waste to Fuel the Future

He’s not weaving straw into gold like Rumpelstiltskin, but a Saint Mary’s chemistry professor is part of a team trying to do something close to it.

Dr. Rob Singer and 15 other top scientists from 11 universities across the country have received $5 .3 million in funding to find ways to convert the leftovers from forestry operations into green gold –biofuel - or light weight environmentally friendly plastics.

“Research teams across the world are looking at this kind of thing,” said Dr. Singer. “Essentially it is a search for a sustainable replacement for petroleum.”

Led by Wood Science Prof. John Kadla at University of British Columbia, the Biomaterials and Chemicals Strategic Network, is trying to develop technologies to better utilize lignin, a gooey natural binding agent that is a component of wood. Approximately 20 per cent of wood is dissolved as lignin when pulped.

Lignin is currently burned as fuel in pulp mills but Dr. Singer said it has the potential to become part of carbon-fibre composites for strong and light-weight automobile parts, bio-based polymers or biodiesel.
While it has been used for some time to make adhesives, the new research is pointing the way to lignin-derived carbon-fibre composites for strong, light automobile parts or aircraft parts.

“This is the stuff that right now we are burning or throwing away.”

The funding is through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Wood waste is the focus because the forest industry, once the economic mainstay of many communities, is changing. Competition from low cost sources of wood and declining demand for some of its products means the industry is at a crossroads and must change.

Production of new, high-value products rather than traditional commodity products is the path to the future.

Dr. Singer’s role in the effort will be to use ionic liquids to break down the lignin so that its constituent parts can used more effectively. Ionic liquids are specialized compounds that effectively break down material without the risk of releasing toxic chemicals in the process.

An organizational meeting for the network will take place early next month and Dr. Singer hopes he will begin to work on the project in the lab by early this summer. He expects to hire two graduate students to help him out.

“Our involvement puts us at the forefront of a developing science. It’s an opportunity for students to learn something socially and environmentally relevant, and because we will be going back and forth within the network, they will have an opportunity to work with an all-star line up of scientists.”

Earlier this month Dr. Singer has received $25,000 from GreenCentre Canada to further his research into eliminating harmful metals from industrial wastewater.

The Biomaterials and Chemicals Strategic Network was one of 11 research networks created with $56 million in funding over five years.

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For More Information:

Steve Proctor
External Affairs
Saint Mary's University
(902) 420.5513
E-mail: steve.proctor@smu.ca
www.smu.ca

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