Why is it sometimes the scissors glide, and other times the paper tears a dozen times? Christopher Luettgen says it all has to do with paper quality.

“Good wrapping paper is going to have a prettier surface. It may even have a textured surface, maybe embossed or more three dimensional,” said Luettgen, a professor of the practice with the Renewable Bioproducts Institute and an expert on paper.

High-quality wrapping paper is made from softwood pulp — in particular, the strongest pulp you could make is southern pine softwood.

“The really good paper starts with softwood fiber,” he said. “Softwood kraft in particular — ‘kraft’ being an old German word for ‘strong.’ It’s going to be stiffer and stronger in multiple directions. Then it gets coated so you get a nice clay coating on the surface, which will smooth the surface to get it beautifully printed. When you come across weak paper that wants to tear very easily, it is often made with mechanical fibers.”

So, if you want the glide, you want good paper. When might it be worth skimping on quality?

“If you’ve got a big job, like you want to wrap a TV or a large game or something like that, you don’t want to spend a lot of money on the high-end wrapping papers. It’s going to get torn up pretty fast. That’s when you might go with a cheaper, thinner brand.”

Of course, as Luettgen notes, you can’t tear the paper in the store, but looking for a thicker paper is a good start. The thicker paper will also give your presents a more refined look under the tree.

“Let’s say you’re giving a book to somebody. You want nice tight corners. You want good creasing. You really want to make it showy.”

Why, then, does Santa sometimes not wrap his presents? Luettgen believes it’s all a matter of resources leading up to Christmas Eve.

“If he has enough help at his studio, I would think that he’s going to get all of your presents wrapped. But if he’s rushed, with bad weather for instance, he may have to come down the chimney with the presents unwrapped, but they’ll be under the tree.”

The principal mission of RBI is to incubate and develop interdisciplinary teams of researchers that can establish thought leadership through new bioproduct research directions. Our focus is on pre-competitive, use-inspired research with a technical, economic, or policy focus. All supported work needs to address an aspect of bioproducts and the developing bioeconomy. The RBI Fellowship supports this mission by promoting two objectives:  

(1)  Helping teams of faculty to establish new concepts, publish early results, and develop competitive federal, industry, or foundation proposals in the future.  

(2) Training a diverse group of graduate-level professionals who can support the evolving bioproducts R&D workforce. 

                       ***NEW PROGRAM CHANGES*** 

• Along with Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) stipend and tuition support, RBI will provide $1,000 of materials and supplies funding or a $1,000 credit toward the use of RBI’s analytical facilities. 
• The fellowship was formerly called the PSE (Paper Science and Engineering Fellowship). It has been renamed as the RBI Fellowship. 
• The fellowship minor requirement has been changed from 12 hours to nine hours. The minor will consist of two core courses and one elective, described here. For students outside of the College of Sciences or College of Engineering, an alternative set of courses can be considered. 
• Awards can support GRAs from any school within Georgia Tech and can be advised by teams consisting of faculty from any Georgia Tech school, although the relevance of the disciplines included must be clear. 

Altogether, the agency is investing $3 million in the three projects led by faculty members in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). Georgia Tech is a contributing partner on a fourth project led by Notre Dame researchers to explore materials that can be switched from an insulator to a metal with an external trigger.

The new awards are part of NSF’s Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program, which is intended to discover and create advanced materials twice as fast and at a fraction of the cost of traditional research methods.

Read more about the researchers' plans on the College of Engineering website.

The 12 projects received a total of $27 million in investment, supporting the use of knowledge learned from studying the Rules of Life — the complex interactions within and between a broad array of living systems across biological scales, and time and space — to tackle pressing societal challenges, including clean water, planet sustainability, carbon capture, biosecurity, and antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics. The Georgia Tech-related projects received a total of $7.7 million.

"The enormous opportunity to apply biological principles to solving the biggest problems of today is one we cannot take lightly," said Susan Marqusee, NSF assistant director for Biological Sciences. "These projects will use life to improve life, including for many underprivileged communities and groups."

The Georgia Tech-led projects include:

• Co-Producing Knowledge, Biotechnologies and Practices to Enhance Biological Nitrogen Fixation for Sustainable Agriculture. $2.67 million (Georgia Tech and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, award 2319430)

The project’s principal investigator is Lily Cheung, assistant professor of ChBE@GT, and the co-principal investigators are Shuichi Takayama, professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech, and William San Martín, assistant professor of global environmental science, technology, and governance at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The researchers will address food security through low-cost technology based on biological principles to increase nitrogen content in soils and improve crop production on marginal lands.

• Next-Generation Biological Security and Bio-Hackathon, $2.81 million (Georgia Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, award 2319231).

The project’s principal investigator is Corey Wilson, professor of ChBE@GT, and the co-principal investigators are Matthew Realff, professor of ChBE@GT, and Christopher Voigt, professor of biological engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The researchers will create programmable, biological combination lock methods — "on and off" states — for using synthetic biology safely, containing potentially dangerous organisms and protecting valuable ones.

• Synthetic Protocell Communities to Address Critical Sensing Challenges, $2.23 million (Georgia Tech, award 2319391).

The project’s principal investigator is Mark Styczynski, professor of ChBE@GT, and the co-principal investigators are Shuichi Takayama, professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech; Brian Hammer, associate professor of biological sciences at Georgia Tech, and Neha Garg, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Georgia Tech.

The researchers will create synthetic "protocells" enabling the development of a highly sensitive, field deployable analysis system that could be used for many applications such as measuring micronutrient deficiencies in undernourished populations.

Georgia Tech researchers were recently awarded $11.6 million from the NNSA to address this growing need — and to study and expand on existing models of transuranic chemistry, a branch of chemistry dedicated to studying elements with atomic numbers greater than that of uranium.

Led by School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Associate Professor Henry “Pete” La Pierre, the funding will serve to establish the Transuranic Chemistry Center of Excellence. Directed by La Pierre, the Center will house a collaborative network of five other universities and six national laboratories across the United States conducting both theoretical and applied research.

“Scientifically, actinides and transuranic elements present unique challenges to existing models of chemical bonding,” explains La Pierre. These elements are man-made radioactive metals, many of which are not available in large quantities. “There are amazing open-ended questions that are fundamental to our understanding of chemical bonding and activities, that serve to transform our knowledge of how the elements form bonds across the Periodic Table.”

Joining seven other universities, this funding comes to Georgia Tech as part of NNSA’s $100 million program establishing Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Centers of Excellence. A main goal of this program is to recruit, train, and educate the next generation of researchers in nuclear science and engineering.

“These cooperative agreements will allow NNSA to train the smartest and most skilled individuals while creating a direct pathway into our workforce with a diverse group of experts that can meet the evolving needs of the nuclear security enterprise,” said Kevin Greenaugh, Chief Science and Technology Officer for Defense Programs, in a recent press release.

“The science and engineering collaboration of this center is a true synergy,” says Martha Grover, professor and associate chair for Graduate Studies in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and one of the collaborators for the Center. Anna Erickson, Woodruff Professor and associate chair for Research in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is another Georgia Tech collaborator. “This center provides a new example of the growing prominence of Georgia Tech in the nuclear field.”

Pushing the bounds of chemistry

“We are at core a synthetic inorganic chemistry group, which means we make new molecules and characterize them,” La Pierre explained. In his research as part of the Center, La Pierre will “be handling both radioactive and chemically reactive species to make new forms of matter.”

Characterizing new forms of matter is no easy task, requiring advanced techniques that allow scientists to envision and measure the properties of chemical bonds. Exposing the molecules to X-rays or neutrons and measuring how they scatter or diffract (depending on the experimental design), gives researchers insights into the chemical bonds that are formed.

Using a combination of these advanced techniques as well as theoretical models, La Pierre and the collaborators of the Center will be creating new molecules out of actinides and lanthanides — metallic elements on the bottom of the periodic table — and studying the details of their structures and behavior during chemical reactions. As these elements are not found naturally, the structures and properties of many of these compounds have never been studied before.

“We are creating systems that challenge existing bonding models, which we then have to go back and build new theoretical techniques in order to understand what we're seeing,” La Pierre explained. “So, this does push the forefront of our understanding of basic chemical model systems.”

To push those boundaries, scientists and engineers will be working together across the country — led by Georgia Tech. 

“There are so many faculty at Georgia Tech working in nuclear science and technology,” says Grover. “This center gives me the opportunity to collaborate with Prof. La Pierre and Erickson for the first time, in the area of flow chemistry and separations.”

“I'm looking forward to working with some incredibly talented colleagues whom I don't normally get a chance to work with,” says La Pierre. “And now we have the opportunity to work together every week with fantastic students that I would never have met otherwise. That's the main draw for me.”

The workshop started off with an introduction by Carson Meredith, executive director of RBI, who gave a perspective on the institute’s goals in promoting bioeconomy technology and innovation. Dr. Meredith emphasized RBI’s role in “catalyzing a community of researchers who focus on solving challenges in packaging by investing in team building across interdisciplinary boundaries.”

Research talks began with a presentation from Tequila Harris, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. Harris shared her team’s research on a continuous coating process of cellulose- and chitin-derived materials to create enhanced packaging barrier films. Meisha Shofner, associate professor and Faculty Fellow in the School of Material Science and Engineering shared her work on mechanical and thermal properties of single use packaging materials and paths to improving circularity.

Carson Meredith, professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and executive director of RBI informed on renewable barriers from carbohydrates as viable alternatives to plastics and the research methods involved to get more promising results for circular functional barrier packaging materials. Joe Bozeman, assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech presented the Systemic Equity framework as it relates to circularity.

Mehdi Tajvidi, professor from the University of Maine, discussed his team’s research to produce particle board and other packaging materials using nanocellulose and the audience got an opportunity to look and get a feel for his research team’s samples.

Discussions from industry experts included material innovations to replace plastics, packaging requirements in the European Union and the United States and how brands drive innovation more than regulations, methods to optimize package size and packing speed for sustainability, paper-based packaging equipment and systems to replace plastics including plastic water bottles, dye choices and the influence of defect detection in waterborne barrier coated papers, and innovations in fiber-based cold chain packaging.

Ken Zwick from the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory discussed managing forests using methods like forest thinning such that the biomass prevents wildfires and what success looks like for his team – less plastic in packaging and less burning of wood. Their Madison building also houses the largest wood library in Wisconsin.

Participants had a chance to interact with Georgia Tech students and get to know their research at the student poster presentation. The dinner keynote was presented by researchers Bo Arduengo and Stefan France from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech. The keynote provided an overview of RBI’s newly created ReWOOD research center. Abbreviated from “Renewables-based Economy from WOOD,” research at the center focuses on using sustainable plant-based raw materials to develop industrial products ranging from jet fuel to solvents to generic pharmaceutical additives and more. The presentation provided a glimpse on the expansion of ReWOOD since its launch through research affiliations from universities across the world. ReWOOD’s partnership list continues to grow as the center focuses on targeted research areas and funding proposals to develop technology and commercial opportunities.

“The workshop turned out to be a huge success with a highly engaged audience of faculty, students, national lab, and industry experts,“ said Carson Meredith, executive director of the Renewable Bioproducts Institute. “RBI will continue to host such events as we are committed to providing thought leadership and be a catalyst of cutting-edge research in the areas of circular materials; bioindustrial manufacturing; and paper, packaging, and tissue.”

Sustainable polymers are an important component of RBI's Circular Materials research theme. The workshop was planned by Blair Brettmann, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Natalie Stingelin, professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Will Gutekunst, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Carson Meredith, executive director of Renewable Bioproducts Institute and professor and James Harris Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and was funded through a Moving Teams Forward seed grant from the EVPR office. The purpose of this seed grant is to develop a community of researchers on campus who focus on the development of new, more sustainable types of plastics and new ways to recycle or upcycle them at the end of life.

The workshop was the culminating event in the Moving Teams Forward seed grant program and involved invited speakers from inside and outside Georgia Tech. Industrial speakers and attendees (Dow, BASF), National Labs (NIST), and faculty from universities across the country participated in the symposium. The speakers represented key thought leaders to connect with and build stronger teams for advancing this field. 

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI) at the Georgia Institute of Technology has launched a new science and technology research center called ReWOOD. The ReWOOD launch included a 2-day workshop involving faculty research partners from universities across the Southeast, as well as former Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black.

ReWOOD, abbreviated from “Renewables-based Economy from WOOD” will focus on a burgeoning field of science called Xylochemistry. Xylochemistry makes use of sustainable plant-based raw materials to develop industrial products ranging from jet fuel to industrial solvents to generic pharmaceutical additives and more. Right now, most of the world production of such materials comes from non-renewable fossil resources or petroleum products. Moving to a renewable source will not only aid in reducing the dependence on fossil fuels but will also help with reducing the overall carbon footprint. ReWOOD is sponsored by RBI through its endowment-funded fellowships and is developing a corporate affiliate program.

“The formation of this internal research center will drive regional momentum for producing carbon neutral chemicals and fuels from wood wastes deriving from the abundant and fast-growing wood in the Southeast,” said Carson Meredith, executive director of RBI. “In fact, the Southeast has a larger percentage of sustainably grown working forests than any other area in the U.S., and Georgia is the number one exporter of forest products in the nation.”

Research on chemical renewables via Xylochemistry has been ongoing at Georgia Tech under a consortium called GT-STANCE (Science & Technology for a Neutral Chemical Economy). GT-STANCE’s researchers have developed seed technologies that aid in the production of wood-based chemical intermediates with potential uses in consumer commodities like pharmaceuticals and plastics. In addition, RBI has made a significant investment of nearly $3 million in building research teams in the related area of lignin conversion in the last five years. The formation of a research center that will coalesce regional thought leadership is the logical next step, as a renewables-based economy has become a national priority with the bioeconomy, climate, and clean energy goals set by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  

Raw materials for Xylochemistry could also be sourced from any kind of non-treated wood. For example, wood from demolished construction sites like old homes and wooden buildings provide an excellent opportunity for a circular economy, since this wooden construction waste ends up in landfills now.

Currently ReWOOD has 11 university affiliates that are joining Georgia Tech. In January 2023, faculty from Georgia Tech, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and Alabama A&M University convened to discuss the plans for a research center on a renewables-based economy from wood to develop renewable biofuels, industrial solvents, pharmaceutical additives, and many other products that culminated in the formation of ReWOOD. Since then, the center has gained the interest of multiple other researchers from the University of Florida, Kennesaw State University, and Clark Atlanta University. In addition, the Mississippi State and Forestry Office and Sandia National Laboratory have become key collaborators within ReWOOD. This collection of expertise includes chemists, engineers, economists, and forest experts, covering a broad range of activities that will include technology, economic, and workforce development, as well as lifecycle and socio-economic analysis. This partnership list will continue to evolve and grow as ReWOOD focuses on specific target research areas and proposals for funding to develop technology and processes in the business sector.

About the Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute is one of ten campus interdisciplinary research institutes. RBI champions innovation in converting biomass into value-added products, developing advanced chemical and bio-based refining technologies, and advancing excellence in manufacturing processes. Our three strategic thrusts are circular materials, bio industrial manufacturing, and paper, packaging, and tissue.

RBI serves as a campus conduit for industry-university partnerships and provides a portal to Georgia Tech core laboratories, faculty and students whose work and expertise is focused on biomass and bioproducts.

Polymers. I worked with polymers in my PhD, but only used them as carrier materials and never dug deeper into the science or their properties. When I worked in industry for Saint-Gobain, I was in a polymer group and discovered how complex and interesting polymer science and especially polymer processing could be, so I decided to focus more on them moving forward.

2. What questions or challenges sparked your current materials research?

Polymers are long chain molecules, so they behave very differently than other material types. They have slow changes in properties since they need time to move, they behave differently when the chain is stretched out vs distributed throughout a globule and they have many chemical functional groups that can interact with other components in a mixture. If we can understand all these complex phenomena, we can more quickly design new and improved polymer-based products and even understand how to better recycle or remove them from the environment.

3. Why is your theme area important to the development of Georgia Tech’s Materials research strategy?

A major challenge for materials engineers today is working towards a more sustainable world, including for consumer products, many of which contain polymers either as their primary component or as a coating or binder. Georgia Tech has the base polymer community to become a leader in solving polymer sustainability challenges, both in designing new polymer systems and in better end of life for existing ones. Strategically drawing this group together will better allow our expertise and talents to make a difference in materials sustainability.

4. What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct?

Consumer plastics and polymer-containing materials are ubiquitous in the modern world and have led to many excellent outcomes in public health, preventing food spoilage, light weighting materials and more. However, they also are increasingly of concern for the environment through poor end of life degradation and challenges in recycling. Research to better understand polymers, fully integrating fundamental science and engineering design, is necessary to provide better plastics and processing for end-of-life.

5. What are your plans on engaging a wider GT faculty pool with IMat research?

I plan to partner with the Georgia Tech Polymer Network and host a series of discussions with applications specialists in consumer and industrial materials to understand the polymer science challenges in these areas and build bridges between applications and polymer faculty. I also plan to build on Georgia Tech’s core strengths related to consumer-focused polymers including polymer upcycling, machine learning for polymer design and polymer processing to link the experts to specific challenges across campus.

Walton will begin her interim role in July after the current chair, David Sholl, transitions to a joint appointment with Georgia Tech and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). At ORNL, Sholl will be the director of the Laboratory's new Transformational Decarbonization Initiative.

“David has spent the last eight years working tirelessly for the School,” said Walton. “During his tenure, rankings improved, the School became more diversified, and additional funds were raised to drive student innovation. I have a strong, personal connection to ChBE where I’ve worked for the past 12 years and am honored to help us transition to a new chair.”

Walton currently serves as the associate dean for Research and Innovation in the College. She will continue in this role, while also serving as interim chair.

“Before becoming associate dean for the College, Krista began her career in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, serving as a professor and faculty fellow,” said Raheem Beyah, dean and Southern Company chair of the College of Engineering. “She has excellent working relationships with the faculty and staff of the School, and I have every confidence she will continue the upward trajectory of both teaching and research to ensure the School thrives while we search for a new chair.”

Walton’s research focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of functional porous materials for use in adsorption applications, including carbon dioxide capture and air purification. Walton’s accomplishments have been recognized by many prestigious awards, including the Department of Energy’s  Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in honor of her contributions to the fields of atomic, molecular and chemical sciences (2021); the inaugural International Adsorption Society Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Society (2013); and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2008). Walton currently serves as an Associate Editor for the ACS Journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, and was the founding Director and Lead Principal Investigator of Georgia Tech’s Department of Energy – Energy Frontier Research Center, UNCAGE-ME.

Walton received her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 2000 and obtained her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2005. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in 2006.

Search Committee Named

Dr. Samuel Graham, Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. Chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, will chair the search committee tasked with finding a permanent chair. An External Advisors group of alumni and supporters is also being formed to help guide the search process. This will be an international search.

The Search Committee includes:

Blair Brettmann – Assistant Professor

Julie Champion – Associate Professor

Christian Cuba-Torres – Lecturer

Michael Filler – Associate Professor

M.G. Finn – School Chair, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Yoyin Ibikunle – Graduate Student

Kiyana Jacobs – Staff

Shelbe Johnson – Undergraduate Student

Paul Kohl – Regents’ Professor

Carson Meredith – Professor

Sally Ng – Associate Professor

Ami Waller-Ivanecky – Staff

Andrew Medford – Assistant Professor

Sankar Nair – Professor

Donna Peyton – Staff

Krista Walton – Professor

Corey Wilson – Associate Professor

The article offers an in-depth review of nanomaterials innovations in water purification technology. The paper highlights inorganic nanoparticles/cellulose hybrid nanocomposites which have attracted growing interest due to the unique properties of cellulose and high specific surface area of nanoparticles and their ability to target specific pollutants in water.

The integration with cellulose brings benefits to inorganic nanoparticle for water treatment, including preventing agglomeration, ensuring colloidal stability, and allowing for separation by magnetic nanoparticles after purification.

The full article, available on May 8, 2021, can be found online here at Materials Today.

This work was supported by the Renewable Bioproducts Institute (Grant number: GTF114000086) at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech offers top students an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research to advance technologies and applications in the bioeconomy, advised by world-recognized experts and supported by four-year graduate research fellowships.

The award is given by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) and the International Council of Forest and Paper Associations (ICFPA). Ringania was one of three scientists awarded at the 2021 ICFPA-hosted Global CEO Roundtable, a biennial gathering of forest product industry associations and leaders.

Launched in 2016, the international contest recognizes, celebrates and promotes noteworthy innovations being developed in the global forest sector by students, researchers and engineers age 30 years and younger.

Ringania was recognized for her research project, Dewatering of Cellulose Nanomaterials Using Ultrasound. She is a PSE fellow in the lab of Saad Bhamla, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

“Udita Ringania’s research is an impressive example of innovation in the forest products industry with great potential to help paper and packaging manufacturers advance sustainability,” said Heidi Brock, AF&PA president and CEO. “On behalf of AF&PA and our members, we congratulate Udita and look forward to seeing this exciting research progress.”

The theme for the 2020-2021 award program was “Boosting the Forest Bioeconomy: Nature-Based Solutions Toward a Lower Carbon Economy.”

In addition to Ringania, two other international finalists were recognized:

Jesús Rodríguez of Chile for research, Flexbio, A Biodegradable and Compostable Bioplastic. Radiata Pine Sawdust Derivative.

Francine Ceccon Claro of Brazil for research, Low Cost Wood-Derived Nanocellulose Wound Dressing.

AF&PA and TAPPI manage the U.S. Blue Sky Award application and selection process, nominating up to three candidates for the international competition. The U.S. judging panel was organized by the Alliance for Pulp & Paper Technology Innovation.

The international Blue Sky Awards program is sponsored by the ICFPA, a worldwide network of forest and paper associations that promotes cooperation in areas of common interest to its members and serves as the industry’s advocate at the international level.

The 2021 Blue Sky Award competition included 21 contestants from nine countries around the world. This year’s judging panel included representatives from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat, International Union of Forest Research Organizations, Monash University and University of British Columbia. 

The top three finalists presented their work at the ICFPA’s virtual Global CEO Roundtable discussion and were awarded cash prizes for their achievement. Mike Doss, president and chief executive officer for Graphic Packaging presented Ringania with her award.

“The Blue Sky Awards are proof of a vibrant, bright future for an essential and sustainable forest products industry,” said Doss. “The talent and innovation demonstrated by this year’s finalists is impressive.”

Learn more about the ICFPA Blue Sky Awards and 2021 award-winning research projects at: icfpa.org

With these recent awards, Georgia Tech researchers, with the support of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI), have launched the Direct Air Capture Center (DirACC) under the guidance of Christopher Jones, Professor and William R. McLain Chair, and Matthew Realff, Professor and David Wang Sr. Fellow. DirACC will create a forum for collaborative research on NETs and DAC, bringing together researchers from across the Institute working in energy, sustainability, policy, and related fields.

For more than a decade, Georgia Tech researchers have worked to develop materials and processes that extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and transform it into something more durable or useful. In 2008, Jones began collaborating with the founders of a startup company, Global Thermostat, to develop materials and processes for DAC. His group first disclosed the use of hybrid silica/organic amine materials for CO₂ capture from ambient air in 2009 at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting. Global Thermostat’s core technology marries the CO₂-sorbing materials developed by Jones’ group with a low energy process for ensuring good air contact with those materials. In 2015, Global Thermostat built their initial R&D facility in Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the nation’s oldest technology incubator. Global Thermostat operated its ATDC facility through the end of 2020, while building technology demonstration projects in Huntsville, Alabama, in 2019 and opening a new R&D facility in Denver, Colorado, in 2020.

In 2010, David Sholl, John F. Brock III School Chair, collaborated with Jones on what is believed to be the first federally funded DAC research project sponsored by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation played an early role in sponsoring DAC research at Georgia Tech as well. The foundation has recently produced a short film, featuring Jones, on the concept of DAC in its Chemistry Shorts film series, which is aimed at attracting young people to careers in STEM (chemistryshorts.org).

In 2017-18, Jones co-led a study on DAC technology for inclusion in the U.S. National Academies consensus study on Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda. This study adapted a technoeconomic analysis developed by Realff and former Georgia Tech Professor Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Nagoya University). The report explored all the terrestrial ways that CO₂ could be removed from the atmosphere, including DAC with geologic sequestration, bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), carbon mineralization, and coastal, forest, and soil management practices. (nap.edu/read/25259/chapter/1).

In parallel, researchers at Tech have engaged in related technology developments in carbon capture, with large, established technology firms. Examples include projects with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company led by Associate Professor Ryan Lively, along with M.G. Finn, professor and chair of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the James A. Carlos Family for Pediatric Technology; William Koros, professor and Roberto C. Goizueta Chair for Excellence in Chemical Engineering; and Realff, focusing on a range of CO2 capture problems. ExxonMobil has supported R&D efforts in CO2 capture at Georgia Tech dating back to 2005. To date, the GT-ExxonMobil relationship has resulted in the graduation of 10 Ph.D. students, the support of five postdoctoral researchers, and has resulted in more than 45 papers and 25 US patents.

Beyond the fundamental science and engineering of DAC, other research efforts at Georgia Tech are modeling the implications of large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies. Alice Favero, an environmental economist in the School of Public Policy, develops economic models to study how NETs can be balanced with the optimal use of land and other climate mitigation policies. Recently, she has collaborated with Lively and Realff on assessing the global potential for DAC. In this work, the concept of using sustainable Bio-Energy for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS) processes coupled with DAC technology allows for significantly greater atmospheric CO₂ removal and avoids the complexity of connecting the biomass energy facility to the grid. In particular, Favero demonstrated that this technology can work in combination with ecological afforestation efforts that maintain or enhance the natural ecosystem services and avoid converting forested lands into plantations.

Georgia Tech is also conducting research on DAC methods that leverage the photosynthesis of plants other than trees to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere to produce chemicals and fuels. Valerie Thomas, the Anderson-Interface Professor of Natural Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has worked with biofuels companies Algenol and LanzaTech to perform life cycle assessments to determine the potential for their technologies to contribute to carbon sequestration. Using life cycle assessment to study biofuel production also reveals the possibility of unexpected impacts and suggests ways that negative consequences can be averted or mitigated.

Climate models now show that reduction of current and future emissions alone will not limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5-2 °C, the level suggested that may allow society to stave off the worst impacts of global climate change. These models suggest that negative emissions technologies, such as direct air capture, will need to be developed and deployed at a large scale to stabilize the climate. Georgia Tech researchers have done pioneering work in this area and are poised to continue advancing the state of the art.

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Writer: Brent Verrill

Created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, BioMADE will collaborate with public and private entities to advance sustainable and reliable bioindustrial manufacturing technologies. Headquartered at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, BioMADE includes some of the largest bioindustrial manufacturing employers in the U.S. working in conjunction with some of the top educators in the world.

In support of this collaboration, the $87 million in DoD funding will be combined with more than $187 million in non-federal cost-share from 31 companies, 57 colleges and universities, six nonprofits, and two venture capital groups across 31 states. 

Pamela Peralta-Yahya, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is Tech’s representative to BioMADE’s Leadership Council, which will set the organization’s funding priorities.

Peralta-Yahya says, “An incredible cross section of Georgia Tech faculty contributed to the BioMADE proposal; over 30 faculty members, spanning five Schools across the College of Science, College of Engineering, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.”

She notes: “Georgia Tech’s involvement in BioMADE is poised to catalyze interdisciplinary collaborations across the university, from data science and downstream processing to supply chain logistics and the policy, legal, and biosafety implications of bioindustrial applications. The projects funded by BioMADE will give undergraduates and graduate students a springboard to the emerging biomanufacturing and related areas.”

Mark Styczynski, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular who is Tech’s representative to the BioMADE Technical Committee, says: “Georgia Tech will be a member of BioMADE at the governing level, the highest level of engagement for academic institutions. We are excited about the resulting opportunities for Georgia Tech to bring to bear its manufacturing, chemical, and biochemical expertise on new applications and focus areas in the biomanufacturing space.”

He adds: “Our involvement in this area is a great complement to other biomanufacturing efforts at Georgia Tech and will contribute to a rapidly growing bioeconomy in Georgia.”

Through a close relationship with DoD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products. Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g. feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.  

BioMADE’s efforts will examine and advance industry-wide standards, tools, and measurements; mature foundational technologies; foster a resilient bioindustrial manufacturing ecosystem; advance education and workforce development; and support the establishment and growth of supply chain intermediaries that are essential for a robust U.S. bioeconomy. Other important focus areas include challenges related to biosafety and security and ethical, legal, and societal considerations.

Stefan France, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry is Tech’s representative to BioMADE’s Education and Workforce Committee, which will help craft and implement the organization’s strategic plan.

France explains that this committee “will concentrate its efforts in three major areas: curriculum and training for the bioindustrial workforce, promoting awareness of career opportunities, and coordination across the STEM community, the biomanufacturing ecosystem, and the training pipeline—everything from K-12 to community and technical colleges to four-year colleges, graduate programs, and post-graduate training.”

Water separation by evaporators is effective but uses large amounts of energy. That’s significant given that the United States currently is the world’s second-largest producer of paper and paperboard. The country’s approximately 100 paper mills are estimated to use about 0.2 quads (a quad is a quadrillion BTUs) of energy per year for water recycling, making it one of the most energy-intensive chemical processes. All industrial energy consumption in the United States in 2019 totaled 26.4 quads, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

An alternative is to deploy energy-efficient filtration membranes to recycle pulping wastewater. But conventional polymer membranes — commercially available for the past several decades — cannot withstand operation in the harsh conditions and high chemical concentrations found in pulping wastewater and many other industrial applications. 

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found a method to engineer membranes made from graphene oxide (GO), a chemically resistant material based on carbon, so they can work effectively in industrial applications. 

“GO has remarkable characteristics that allow water to get through it much faster than through conventional membranes,” said Sankar Nair, professor, Simmons Faculty Fellow, and associate chair for Industry Outreach in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “But a longstanding question has been how to make GO membranes work in realistic conditions with high chemical concentrations so that they could become industrially relevant.” 

Using new fabrication techniques, the researchers can control the microstructure of GO membranes in a way that allows them to continue filtering out water effectively even at higher chemical concentrations.

The research, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy-RAPID Institute, an industrial consortium of forest product companies, and Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute, was reported recently in the journal Nature Sustainability. Many industries that use large amounts of water in their production processes may stand to benefit from using these GO nanofiltration membranes.

Nair, his colleagues Meisha Shofner and Scott Sinquefield, and their research team began this work five years ago. They knew that GO membranes had long been recognized for their great potential in desalination, but only in a lab setting. “No one had credibly demonstrated that these membranes can perform in realistic industrial water streams and operating conditions,” Nair said. “New types of GO structures were needed that displayed high filtration performance and mechanical stability while retaining the excellent chemical stability associated with GO materials.”

To create such new structures, the team conceived the idea of sandwiching large aromatic dye molecules in between GO sheets. Researchers Zhongzhen Wang, Chen Ma, and Chunyan Xu found that these molecules strongly bound themselves to the GO sheets in multiple ways, including stacking one molecule on another. The result was the creation of “gallery” spaces between the GO sheets, with the dye molecules acting as “pillars.” Water molecules easily filter through the narrow spaces between the pillars, while chemicals present in the water are selectively blocked based on their size and shape. The researchers could tune the membrane microstructure vertically and laterally, allowing them to control both the height of the gallery and the amount of space between the pillars.

The team then tested the GO nanofiltration membranes with multiple water streams containing dissolved chemicals and showed the capability of the membranes to reject chemicals by size and shape, even at high concentrations. Ultimately, they scaled up their new GO membranes to sheets that are up to 4 feet in length and demonstrated their operation for more than 750 hours in a real feed stream derived from a paper mill.

Nair expressed excitement for the potential of GO membrane nanofiltration to generate cost savings in paper mill energy usage, which could improve the industry’s sustainability. “These membranes can save the paper industry more than 30% in energy costs of water separation,” he said.

Georgia Tech continues to work with its industrial partners to apply the GO membrane technology for pulp and paper applications. 

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Institute (#DE-EE007888-5-5), an industrial consortium comprising Georgia-Pacific, International Paper, SAPPI, and WestRock, and the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organizations.

CITATION: Zhongzhen Wang, et al., “Graphene Oxide Nanofiltration Membranes for Desalination under Realistic Conditions.” (Nature Sustainability, 2021)  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00674-3.

Since 1959, the Lawrence Award has recognized mid-career scientists and engineers in the United States who have advanced new research and scientific discovery in atomic, molecular, and chemical sciences; biological and environmental sciences; computer, information, and knowledge sciences; condensed matter and materials sciences; energy science and innovation; fusion and plasma sciences; high energy physics; national security and nonproliferation; and nuclear physics.

“These researchers have made significant advances and contributions across a broad range of disciplines critical to Energy Department missions,” says U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. “We congratulate them on their many accomplishments and look forward to their achievements in the coming years.”

Walton (in the category of Atomic, Molecular, and Chemical Sciences) was honored for her “pioneering and interdisciplinary research of porous material stability under a variety of challenging conditions and advancing separation science. Working at the intersection of chemistry, computation, and chemical engineering, Walton has identified physical and chemical factors driving water stability of sorbents, especially metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and the impact of defects and complex mixtures on the chemical stability of MOFs."

Walton is the Associate Dean for Research & Innovation in Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and the Robert “Bud” Moeller Faculty Fellow.

Georgia Tech faculty members, students and the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) worked on multiple face shield designs, talking with clinicians at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory Healthcare and Piedmont Healthcare to evaluate and iterate. The result was two different designs intended for specific uses in hospital facilities, where face shields protect clinicians from splashes and help extend the life of soft respirators intended to filter out virus particles.

Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new method that could one day replace conventional pressure treating as a way to make lumber not only fungal-resistant but also nearly impervious to water – and more thermally insulating.

The new method, which was reported February 13 in the journal Langmuir and jointly sponsored by the Department of Defense, the Gulf Research Program, and the Westendorf Undergraduate Research Fund, involves applying a protective coating of metal oxide that is only a few atoms thick throughout the entire cellular structure of the wood.

This process, known as atomic layer deposition, is already frequently used in manufacturing microelectronics for computers and cell phones but now is being explored for new applications in commodity products such as wood. Like pressure treatments, the process is performed in an airtight chamber, but in this case the chamber is at low pressures to help the gas molecules permeate the entire wood structure.

“It was really important that this coating be applied throughout the interior of the wood and not just on the surface,” said Mark Losego, an assistant professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. “Wood has pores that are about the width of a human hair or a little smaller, and we used these holes as our pathways for the gases to travel throughout the wood’s structure.”

As the gas molecules travel down those pathways, they react with the pore’s surfaces to deposit a conformal, atomic-scale coating of metal oxide throughout the interior of the wood. The result is wood that sheds water off its surface and resists absorbing water even when submerged.

In their experiments, the researchers took finished pine 2x4s and cut them into one-inch pieces. They then tested infusing the lumber with three different kinds of metal oxides: titanium oxide, aluminum oxide and zinc oxide. With each, they compared the water absorption after holding the lumber under water for a period of time. Of the three, titanium oxide performed the best by helping the wood absorb the least amount of water. By comparison, untreated lumber absorbed three times as much water.

“Of the three chemistries that we tried, titanium oxide proved the most effective at creating the hydrophobic barrier,” said Shawn Gregory, a graduate student at Georgia Tech and lead author on the paper. “We hypothesize that this is likely because of how the precursor chemicals for titanium dioxide react less readily with the pore surfaces and therefore have an easier time penetrating deep within the pores of the wood.”

Losego said that the same phenomena exist in atomic layer deposition processes used for microelectronic devices.  

“These same titanium oxide precursor chemistries are known to better penetrate and conformally coat complex nanostructures in microelectronics just like we see in the wood,” Losego said. “These commonalities in understanding fundamental physical phenomena – even in what appear to be very different systems – is what makes science so elegant and powerful.”

In addition to being hydrophobic, lumber treated with the new vapor process also resists the mold that eventually leads to rot.

“Interestingly, when we left these blocks sit in a humid environment for several months, we noticed that the titanium oxide treated blocks were much more resistant to mold growth than the untreated lumber,” Gregory added. “We suspect that this has something to do with its hydrophobic nature, although there could be other chemical effects associated with the new treatment process that could also be responsible. That’s something we would want to investigate in future research.”

Yet another benefit of the new process: vapor-treated wood was far less thermally conductive compared to untreated wood.

“A lot of attention is paid in home building to insulating the cavities between the structural components of a home, but a massive amount of the thermal losses are caused by the wood studs themselves,” said Shannon Yee, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and a co-author on the paper with expertise in thermal systems. “Lumber treated with this new process can be up to 30 percent less conductive, which could translate to a savings of as much as 2 million BTUs of energy per dwelling per year."

This material is based upon work supported by the Office of Naval Research through grant No. N00014-19-1-2162, the Department of Defense through the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program, the Gulf Research Program managed by the National Academies, and a donation from Roxanne Westendorf. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring agencies.

CITATION: Shawn A. Gregory, Connor P. McGettigan, Emily K. McGuinness, David Misha Rodin, Shannon K. Yee, and Mark D. Losego, “Single-Cycle Atomic Layer Deposition (1cy-ALD) on Bulk Wood Lumber for Managing Moisture Content, Mold Growth, and Thermal Conductivity,” (Langmuir, February 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b03273

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: Josh Brown

Since October 2019, more than 5,700 students, faculty, staff, alumni, campus partners, and community leaders provided input via surveys, in-person meetings, workshops, informal sessions, and webinars. They shared varied perspectives, aspirations, and dreams to help shape the future of the Institute.

The steering committee worked in tandem with the visioning and collection process to analyze volumes of raw data and provide the building blocks for the Institute’s new mission, vision, and values, and strategic impact theme areas.

Members of the Georgia Tech community are encouraged to visit strategicplan.gatech.edu to review the draft of the foundational narrative, vision, theme and values and beliefs that will ultimately shape the strategic plan. There, you can submit feedback through March 20, and learn more about the process, the data collection and analysis methodology, and next steps.

Applying to a Working Group

Starting now in Phase two — goal setting— working groups will cluster around six strategic themes. Applications are currently being accepted for any who are interested in serving on one of six themed working groups.

The strategic themes are as follows:

1. Amplify Impact: Embrace our power as agents of change for the public good and concentrate our research and learning efforts on identifying and solving the most critical and complex problems of our time, locally and globally.
2. Champion Innovation: Champion our leadership position as an engine of innovation and entrepreneurship and collaborate with other public and private actors to create economic opportunity and position Atlanta and Georgia as examples of inclusive innovation.
3. Connect Globally: Strengthen our role as a hub of worldwide collaboration and build a global learning platform to expand our reach and amplify our impact.
4. Expand Access: Empower people of all backgrounds and stages of life to learn and contribute to technological and human progress.
5. Cultivate Well-Being: Strengthen our culture of wellbeing and create an environment of holistic learning where all members of our community can grow and learn to lead healthy, purposeful, impactful lives.
6. Lead by Example: Lead and inspire by example by creating a culture of deliberate innovation in our own practices and by being an example of agility, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability.

The working groups will meet between March and May, and work to identify goals, objectives and measures of success necessary to bring those themes to life. The groups are expected to meet on a regular basis, with time commitments expected to be between four to six hours each week.

Interested working group applicants must complete the Institute Strategic Planning Working Group Application Form by Wednesday Feb. 26, 2020.

Questions can be sent to strategicplan@gatech.edu.

The Online Graduate Certificate in Data Science for the Chemical Industry is currently accepting applications and will launch Aug. 17. Additional details on the program can be found at pe.gatech.edu/certificates/cdsci.

The professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology rallied colleagues and partners around the cause in March, and by early June, they had replaced a key component of hand sanitizer, created a new supply chain, and initiated their own donation of 7,000 gallons of a newly designed sanitizer to medical facilities.

Its name: Han-I-Size White & Gold, named for the colors of Georgia Tech. The new supply chain also may ensure that hand sanitizer producers across the country do not run out of the main active ingredient, alcohol, but the team’s path to success was a stony labyrinth.

“This project was on life support so many times because people did not understand how severe this shortage was going to be,” said Marder, a Regents Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “I called hospitals and institutions to assess the need and heard the same thing over and over: ‘No, we just got a delivery. We have no need. You’re wasting your time.’”

Marder was not. Contacts at major chemical suppliers of hand sanitizer ingredients said that a critical shortage of alcohol, particularly the one usually in hand sanitizer, isopropanol, was coming.

“Isopropanol plants in the U.S. were running at full capacity and still didn’t have enough. People were using pharmaceutical-grade ethanol now, too, but it was also in short supply. We weren’t going to have enough of either; I mean the whole United States was running low,” Marder said. 

Clean hands cabal

Marder hastily drafted Chris Luettgen, a professor of practice in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, George White, interim vice president of Georgia Tech’s Office of Industry Collaboration, and Atif Dabdoub, a Georgia Tech alumnus and owner of a local chemical company, Unichem Technologies, Inc.

To the three chemists and the business professional, it seemed simple: Mix alcohol with water, peroxide, and the moisturizer glycerin then bottle and ship it. That bubble burst quickly.

Luettgen, who had worked in the consumer products industry for 25 years at Kimberly-Clark Corporation and knew how to take products to market, had to plow through constant unexpected supply chain barriers and bureaucracy while White forged connections between companies. Neither the supply chain nor the business relationships had existed before, and the teams’ phones stayed glued to their ears night and day as they created them from scratch.

“When I worked for Kimberly-Clark, getting a new product out would take the company nine to 18 months, and the three of us had to get this done in weeks. The demand was there, and people were getting sick in some cases from lack of sanitizing. We felt speed was necessary to meet the growing demand. Seth told me to push this across the goal line, and I put everything into it,” Luettgen said.

“Georgia Tech is about the power to convene. Companies and stakeholders are eager to come to the table here to make things happen,” White said about forging new business ties. “Not everyone has that incredible recognition as a problem solver with the brainpower amassed here.”

Stinking of gin

Purchasing truckloads of alcohol was priority one.

Boutique liquor distilleries in Georgia were already converting to sanitizer ethyl alcohol production, but output was nowhere near enough to meet demand. ExxonMobil connected the team with Eco-Energy, a company that handles fuel-grade ethanol as a gasoline additive.

“The amount of ethanol that’s made for fuel in the U.S. is 1,500 times the amount of the isopropanol made. They could drain off about 1 percent of what is used for fuel and double or triple the amount of alcohol available for hand sanitizer in this country. And the fuel companies wouldn’t even notice it was gone, especially since hardly anyone was driving anymore,” Marder said.

But then prospective hand sanitizer distributors crimped their noses at that ethanol, saying it smelled odd.

“I thought, ‘This has the makings of a screenplay.’ I asked the distributor if we could come over to smell a sample for ourselves,” White said. “It needed a little love.”

Eco-Fuels produced the highly refined ethanol and then processed it through carbon filtration to increase purity and reduce odor. Atlanta-based chemical manufacturer, Momar, Inc., oversaw production, packaging, and distribution of Han-I-Size White & Gold.

The Georgia Tech team garnered funding through a donation from insurer Aflac Incorporated allocated through the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI), a Georgia Tech affiliated non-profit organization that guides new experimental medical solutions to market. Aflac’s gift of $2 million through GCMI has also expedited the development, production, and purchase of other PPE to donate to health care workers.

In addition, GCMI helped guide the hand sanitizer through regulatory processes and to market. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was also aware of the dire shortage of alcohol for sanitizer and issued waivers for the pandemic to allow for use of ethanol without having to meet usual specifications.

Water, water everywhere 

Arkema, Inc. donated hydrogen peroxide, which was delivered to PSG Functional Materials, which mixed and packaged the product then shipped with no delivery fee to Atlanta. Though water is ubiquitous, hand sanitizer requires purified water, and the Coca-Cola Company donated a tanker truck of it just when White was pondering desperate measures.

“If I have to get a truck to go pick up water and drive it, I’ll do it myself,” he said.

Finally, the first few hundred gallons of donated Han-I-Size White & Gold rolled into Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta and Brightmoor Nursing Center in Griffin, Georgia, in the second week of June 2020.

GCMI is facilitating donations of the 7,000 gallons nationwide. Separate from the Aflac-financed donations, Momar will continue to manufacture the new hand sanitizing formula commercially to include in its regular product lineup, and Georgia Tech will be able to purchase it at a reduced rate to help protect researchers now returning to their labs.

The new supply chain, the first of its kind, of “waiver-grade” ethanol has given hand sanitizer producers across the country a new opportunity to re-supply America.

“Hopefully, we helped solved a national need,” Luettgen said.

Georgia Institute of Technology is a governing member of the BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE), a nonprofit that recently won a seven-year, $87 million award from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, BioMADE will collaborate with public and private entities to advance sustainable and reliable bioindustrial manufacturing technologies. Headquartered at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, BioMADE includes some of the largest bioindustrial manufacturing employers in the U.S. working in conjunction with some of the top educators in the world.

In support of this collaboration, the $87 million in DoD funding will be combined with more than $187 million in non-federal cost-share from 31 companies, 57 colleges and universities, six nonprofits, and two venture capital groups across 31 states. 

Pamela Peralta-Yahya, faculty member of the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute, and associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is Tech’s representative to BioMADE’s Leadership Council, which will set the organization’s funding priorities.

Peralta-Yahya says, “An incredible cross section of Georgia Tech faculty contributed to the BioMADE proposal; over 30 faculty members, spanning five Schools across the College of Science, College of Engineering, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.”

She notes: “Georgia Tech’s involvement in BioMADE is poised to catalyze interdisciplinary collaborations across the university, from data science and downstream processing to supply chain logistics and the policy, legal, and biosafety implications of bioindustrial applications. The projects funded by BioMADE will give undergraduates and graduate students a springboard to the emerging biomanufacturing and related areas.”

Mark Styczynski, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular who is Tech’s representative to the BioMADE Technical Committee, says: “Georgia Tech will be a member of BioMADE at the governing level, the highest level of engagement for academic institutions. We are excited about the resulting opportunities for Georgia Tech to bring to bear its manufacturing, chemical, and biochemical expertise on new applications and focus areas in the biomanufacturing space.”

He adds: “Our involvement in this area is a great complement to other biomanufacturing efforts at Georgia Tech and will contribute to a rapidly growing bioeconomy in Georgia.”

Through a close relationship with DoD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products. Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g. feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.  

BioMADE’s efforts will examine and advance industry-wide standards, tools, and measurements; mature foundational technologies; foster a resilient bioindustrial manufacturing ecosystem; advance education and workforce development; and support the establishment and growth of supply chain intermediaries that are essential for a robust U.S. bioeconomy. Other important focus areas include challenges related to biosafety and security and ethical, legal, and societal considerations.

Stefan France, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry is Tech’s representative to BioMADE’s Education and Workforce Committee, which will help craft and implement the organization’s strategic plan.

France explains that this committee “will concentrate its efforts in three major areas: curriculum and training for the bioindustrial workforce, promoting awareness of career opportunities, and coordination across the STEM community, the biomanufacturing ecosystem, and the training pipeline—everything from K-12 to community and technical colleges to four-year colleges, graduate programs, and post-graduate training.”

Nasreen Khan and Manali Banerjee, both Georgia Tech doctoral students in materials science and engineering, and RBI paper science and engineering fellows, won first prize in this year’s event which had more than 50 national teams competing. Using the team name, “Talk Green to Me,” they presented to Mars Wrigley a detailed sustainability packaging idea and technology that eventually allows packaging to naturally convert to compost and re-enter the recycling stream. Because of the contest guidelines, specific details about their proposed closed-loop sustainability idea that makes the most of agricultural waste cannot be publicized.

“Both of us are material scientists. We work in the same lab. So, we decided to approach this idea from a materials perspective and come up with more sustainable packaging from the materials standpoint,” said Banerjee. “We wanted to use more sustainable or degradable materials to come up with a new kind of packaging that they could implement. We specifically work with cellulose and natural products. We wanted to use natural products and natural materials, so that was our approach to it.”

“Initially, we came at this with the idea that we want a single layer, and we want to use less of normal fossil fuels, or normal plastics. We then wanted to use all biodegradable materials, but specifically materials that are coming from agricultural waste that's already going to landfill,” said Khan. “If we can use agricultural waste to make one single layer that can be easily compostable and easily manufactured, then that's what we wanted to do. We looked at it from an overall viewpoint, such as, how is this product going to start from the beginning, from the farmers? And how does it end with the consumers and then loop back around in this cycle.”

Their team helped answer the overall question about how Mars Wrigley can help increase consumer rates of appropriate package disposal for candy, gum, and chocolate packaging.

“The finalists are definitely the next generation of packaging,“ said William Singleton, global director of packaging innovation at Mars Wrigley.

Khan and Banerjee are so passionate about their field of work as material scientists that they regular record and publish a podcast called “Talk Green to Me.” You can subscribe to their podcasts on Spotify, Apple, and SoundCloud.

Another Georgia Tech materials science engineering and MBA student team placed second in the Mars Wrigley packaging national contest. Team members were Monica Marks and Edward DiLoreto, both doctoral students in materials science and engineering, and Abby Brenller and Amanda Grupp, both MBA students in the Scheller College of Business.

The design developed by their team named “Buzz & Burdell's” utilized waste cacao material along with other biopolymers to create a high quality, compostable candy wrapper. The team also developed a marketing plan to engage consumers and educate them on the positive impact of the new materials design.

Peralta-Yahya and Kalaitzidou will join existing leaders Matthew Realff, the strategic coordinator for biorefinery systems and professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, along with Chris Luettgen, associate director in RBI and faculty member in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, who will continue to coordinate paper, packaging and tissue products.  

These changes reflect RBI’s expansion in biochemistry-enabled technology relevant to biorefining and development of new renewable materials. The prior focus area of nanocellulose and nanocomposites has broadened into the emerging area of circular materials.

The objective in circular materials is to move away from linear cradle-to-landfill models and retain atoms, particularly carbon, in the use-production cycle longer while minimizing waste to a landfill or the atmosphere (as CO₂). Nanocellulose, an area of RBI strength, is an important additive in achieving circularity. Georgia Tech faculty can play a broader role in developing technology that converts biomass to useful products like plastics. This will enable Georgia Tech faculty teams to better compete for federal funding from agencies like the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) that are beginning to focus on such goals.

Additionally bioprocessing can play an important role in converting CO₂ into useful chemicals (effectively sequestering it from the atmosphere) or converting plastic products into high-value chemicals (upcycling). RBI has an established strength in biorefinery process systems, the reactions and separations in biorefinery operations, through Matthew Realff’s leadership.

“Peralta-Yahya was asked to join the RBI team to fill a gap in the biochemistry and chemical biology aspects, which include the term bioindustrial technology,” said Carson Meredith,  executive director of the Renewable Bioproducts Institute. “These two new focus areas at RBI are strongly coupled with our traditional focus on pulp and paper technology.”

For example, pulp mills are biorefineries that produce a biofuel (lignin), pulp and other chemicals. Pulp is converted into paper, packaging and tissue products that are the single most highly recycled product in solid waste streams.

“We believe that a paper science and technology program is the ideal place to build a research platform for sustainable circular materials and bioindustrial technology,” said Meredith.

The goal of this project is to engineer production of a renewable, liquid, rocket propellant on Mars. In situ production of rocket propellant has the opportunity to reduce initial payloads from Earth, reducing launch costs by billions of dollars. The process centers around photosynthetically grown algae, cultivated using Martian carbon dioxide and sunlight, and feeding the digested algal biomass to an engineered microbe to produce rocket fuel. Preliminary research has identified diols as good fuel candidates based on their liquid state under average Martian conditions and theoretical combustion properties. The presence of oxygen atoms in the diols reduces oxidant demand and promotes a cleaner burn, potentially allowing reuse of rocket engines for multiple ascents. “It’s been really interesting to think about a chemical engineering problem in the context of Mars,” said Kruyer. “It changes all the assumptions and requires us to come up with creative solutions to problems that would already be ‘solved’ on Earth. I like the opportunity to take something science fiction and make it a reality.”

The researchers include Professors Carsten Sievers, Fani Boukouvala, Sankar Nair, and Chris Jones of the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as well as Omar Asensio of the School of Public Policy.

They will develop new approaches to convert plastics into valuable chemicals and related consumer strategies.

Titled “Plastics Recycling Processes by Integrating Mechanocatalytic Depolymerization, Monomer Purification, and Consumer Behavior,” the project will investigate and develop a process that breaks down polymers by application of mechanical forces (e.g., in a ball mill) in the solid phase with zero/minimal solvent use.

According to the researchers, energy-efficient recovery and purification of the chemical products will be achieved using nanoporous materials that separate molecules based upon size, shape, or specific interactions. Process systems modeling will identify the key requirements for integrating these technological units into viable industrial processes.

At the same time, consumer behavior studies will reveal means of motivating consumers to provide suitable plastics streams and increase public acceptance of the proposed products. Thus, technological innovations and behavioral/logistical insights will be integrated into process and supply chain-level models that guide long-term economic decision-making.

“This framework has great potential to be a transformative paradigm change in how plastics recycling systems are envisaged and designed,” according to the researchers. “Our vision is that the project will build the foundation for technologies that will the heart of plastics refineries of the future.”

The project will feature a number of educational and outreach activities, including the infusion of circular economy concepts into the Georgia Tech curriculum through collaborative teaching module development as well as wider dissemination of these concepts through an online Lecture Archive for Sustainable Chemical Processes accessible to worldwide users.

Using a dual catalyst system of superacid and platinum particles, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown they can add hydrogen and remove oxygen from lignin bio-oil, making the oil more useful as a fuel and source of chemical feedstocks. The process, based on an unusual hydrogen cycle, can be done at low temperature and ambient pressure, improving the practicality of the upgrade and reducing the energy input needed.

“From an environmental and sustainability standpoint, people want to use oil produced from biomass,” said Yulin Deng, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Renewable Bioproducts Institute. “The worldwide lignin production from paper and bioethanol manufacturing is 50 million tons annually, and more than 95% of that is simply burned to generate heat. My lab is looking for practical methods to upgrade low molecular weight lignin compounds to make them commercially viable as high-quality biofuel and biochemicals.”

The process was described September 7 in the journal Nature Energy. The research was supported by the Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech. 

Cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin are extracted from trees, grasses, and other biomass materials. The cellulose is used to make paper, ethanol, and other products, but the lignin — a complex material that gives strength to the plants — is largely unused because it’s difficult to break down into low-viscosity oils that could serve as the starting point for kerosene or diesel fuel.

Pyrolysis techniques done at temperatures over 400 degrees Celsius can be used to create bio-oils such as phenols from the lignin, but the oils lack sufficient hydrogen and contain too many oxygen atoms to be useful as fuels. The current approach to addressing that challenge involves adding hydrogen and removing oxygen through a catalytic process known as hydrodeoxygenation. But that process now requires high temperatures and pressures 10 times higher than ambient, and it produces char and tar that quickly reduce the efficiency of the platinum catalyst.

Deng and colleagues set out to develop a new solution-based process that would add hydrogen and remove the oxygen from the oil monomers using a hydrogen buffer catalytic system. Because hydrogen has very limited solubility in water, the hydrogenation or hydrodeoxygenation reaction of lignin biofuel in solution is very difficult. Deng’s group used polyoxometalate acid (SiW₁₂) as both a hydrogen transfer agent and reaction catalyst, which helps transfer hydrogen gas from the gas-liquid interphase into the bulk solution through a reversible hydrogen extraction. The process then released hydrogen as an active species H* at a platinum-on-carbon nanoparticle surface, which solved the key issue of low solubility of hydrogen in water at low pressure.

“On the platinum, the polyoxometalate acid captures the charge from the hydrogen to form H+, which is soluble in water, but the charges can be reversibly transferred back to H+ to form active H* inside the solution,” Deng said. As an apparent result, hydrogen gas is transferred to water phase to form active H*, which can directly react with lignin oil inside the solution.  

In the second part of the unusual hydrogen cycle, the polyoxometalate acid sets the stage for removing oxygen from the bio-oil monomers. 

“The super-acid can reduce the activation energy required for removing the oxygen, and at the same time, you have more active hydrogen H* in the solution, which reacts on the molecules of oil,” Deng said. “In the solution there is a quick reaction with active hydrogen atom H* and lignin oil on the surface of the catalyst. The reversible reaction of hydrogen with polyoxometalate to form H+ and then to hydrogen atom H* on the platinum catalyst surface is a unique reversible cycle.”

The platinum particles and polyoxometalate acid can be reused for multiple cycles without reducing efficiency. The researchers also found that the efficiency of hydrogenation and hydrodeoxygenation of lignin oil varied depending on the specific monomers in the oil.

“We tested 15 or 20 different molecules that were produced by pyrolysis and found that the conversion efficiency ranged from 50% on the lower end to 99% on the higher end,” Deng said. “We did not compare the energy input cost, but the conversion efficiency was at least 10 times better than what has been reported under similar low temperature, low hydrogen pressure conditions.”  

Operating at lower temperatures — below 100 degrees Celsius — reduced the problem of char and tar formation on the platinum catalyst. Deng and his colleagues found that they could use the same platinum at least 10 times without deterioration of the catalytic activity.

Among the challenges ahead are improving the product selectivity by using different metal catalyst systems, and developing new techniques for separation and purification of the different lignin biochemicals in the solution. Platinum is expensive and in high demand for other applications, so finding a lower-cost catalyst could boost the overall practicality of the process — and perhaps make it more selective.

While helping meet the demand for bio-based oils, the new technique could also benefit the forest products, paper, and bioethanol industries by providing a potential revenue stream for lignin, which is often just burned to produce heat.

“The global lignin market size was estimated at $954.5 million in 2019, which is only a very small portion of the lignin that is produced globally. Clearly, the industry wants to find more applications for it by converting the lignin to chemicals or bio-oils,” Deng said. “There would also be an environmental benefit from using this material in better ways.” 

Beyond upgrading lignin biofuel, a broad impact of the research in Yulin's group is developing a technology to significantly increase the solubility of active hydrogen atoms or hydrogen gas in a solution, which can also be used in broader chemical reactions such as ammonia synthesis and general hydrogenation of different substances.  

In addition to Deng and first author Wei Liu, the research team also included Wenqin You, Wei Sun, Weisheng Yang, Akshay Korde, and Yutao Gong, all from Georgia Tech.

CITATION: Wei Liu, et al., “Ambient-pressure and low-temperature upgrading of lignin bio-oil to hydrocarbons using a hydrogen buffer catalytic system.” (Nature Energy, 2020).  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00680-x

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Meredith, who earned his undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech (B.S., chemical engineering), has been on the ChBE faculty since 2000. He also served as the school’s associate chair for graduate studies between 2012-2019. 

“Carson and his research team have pioneered the use of sustainable technologies for a variety of important applications,” said Raheem Beyah, Georgia Tech’s Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research. “We are pleased that he will be leading our Renewable Bioproducts Institute as it develops new products, processes and technologies for industries that include paper and packaging, biochemicals and fuels, and bio-composites and nanocellulose.”

Meredith’s lab researches the surfaces and interfaces of advanced materials, emphasizing renewable components, sustainable processing, and bioinspired designs in adhesives, composites, foams, and coatings, among other things. Borrowing their ideas from nature, Meredith and his team are addressing the needs of human societies through food security, renewables, and energy efficiency, utilizing natural materials.  

“We’ve focused on using cellulose nanomaterials to make alternatives to conventional plastic for all kinds of things, including high performance food packaging that prevents spoilage, and we’re looking at ways in which we can replace some plastics used in paints and coatings,” said Meredith, who has been an RBI investigator for 10 years. 

“Society is demanding alternatives to plastics that accumulate in the environment, and I’m excited that RBI is positioned to offer solutions,” he added. “There’s a tremendous amount of energy coming from industry to develop new bioproducts.”

After earning his undergraduate degree from Georgia Tech, Meredith earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and served as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) before returning to Georgia Tech as a faculty member.

RBI, comprised of 50 faculty researchers from six colleges and research centers across Georgia Tech, began as the Institute of Paper Chemistry in 1929 in Wisconsin. Moving to Georgia Tech 60 years later as the Institute for Paper Science and Technology, it was renamed the Renewable Bioproducts Institute in 2014, buoyed by a $43.6 million gift from the Institute of Paper Chemistry Foundation (IPCF), which supports the institute’s expanded aim of research to unlock the potential of biomass material for a wide range of products.

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Writer: Jerry Grillo