Products from Biomass: The Key to a Renewable Future
John Holladay
John Holladay presented at the Community Science and Technology Seminar Series event held on Wednesday, February 18, 2004, at 7 p.m., in the Columbia Basin College Theatre. The seminar, sponsored by PNNL and CBC, was free and open to the public. John spoke on the topic, "Products from Biomass: The Key to a Renewable Future."
Currently, 10 to 15 percent of the petroleum consumed in the United States is used to produce chemicals that go into industrial and everyday consumer products, including plastics, coatings, textiles, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and nutraceuticals. The annual petroleum consumed as building blocks for these products is equivalent to 13 quadrillion BTU's* of energy (the energy in about 2.2 billion barrels of oil). Today only about one percent of such chemicals come from renewable resources or "biomass." Technologies now being developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are aimed at developing new processes to produce chemical building blocks from biomass rather than petroleum.
John Holladay, a senior research scientist at PNNL, provided specific examples of this research and how PNNL technologies are playing into the Department of Energy's objective that the United States becomes more energy efficient and independent.
The Seminar Series is sponsored by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Columbia Basin College, with the support of the Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science and Technology and by the local chapter of Sigma Xi, the international honor society of scientific and engineering research.
*A BTU is the amount of heat required to change the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit at sea level.
