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Southern Research part of low cost carbon fibre project

01 Sep '17

3 min read

Southern Research is part of a team exploring clean, cost-efficient approaches of producing carbon fibre from coal and other sources. The US Department of Energy has selected Western Research Institute (WRI) for an award of $3,745,413 to develop low cost carbon fibre components using various resources as the feedstock, such as coal and biomass.

Southern Research’s Energy and Environment division (E&E) will participate as a subcontractor to WRI to provide renewable acrylonitrile — the key raw material needed to produce the highest quality carbon fibres — produced from biomass-derived second generation sugars.

With partner cost share included, the overall value of the project as proposed is nearly $7 million.

“At Southern Research we have developed an innovative, thermocatalytic process that converts second generation sugars obtained from biomass to acrylonitrile,” said Amit Goyal, manager, Sustainable Chemistry and Catalysis and principal investigator for Southern Research’s E&E division.

The Southern Research process produces a direct drop-in replacement for petroleum acrylonitrile that is both economically competitive and sustainable, lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 40 per cent. “Ninety per cent of the world’s carbon fibre production utilises acrylonitrile as a raw material, growing at 11 to 18 per cent per year. Due to the high growth rate of carbon fibre production, any reduction on GHG will be highly impactful,” Goyal said.

The goal of the project with WRI is to expand the range of biomass feedstocks that the Southern Research process can use and to understand how the process is affected by impurities that change when different types of biomass and different biomass-to-sugar processes are used. Experimental data generated in this project will allow collaborators to better predict and improve the overall cost and application areas for carbon fibres.

“The Southern Research process for producing acrylonitrile from biomass-derived sugars has the promise of changing the economics and environmental footprint of this important specialty chemical,” said Bill Grieco, vice president of Southern Research’s E&E division.

“Making that process more robust and agnostic to biomass sugar feedstock is another important step toward commercialisation of the technology,” he added.

Team members working on the project led by WRI are Ramaco Carbon, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Grossman Advanced Materials Group, Terra Power, Autodesk, Advanced Carbon Products, and The University of Wyoming.

The project is among 22 announced in July by DOE related to research into advanced vehicle technologies. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India