Nationally recognized “green gasoline” researcher and advocate George Huber, from the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been selected for an esteemed Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, which includes an unrestricted research grant of $75,000. Dr. Huber becomes the third member of the Chemical Engineering Department’scurrent faculty to win this highly selective national award in the chemical sciences. The other two were Dr. Dimitri Maroudas in 1999 and Dr. Jeffrey Davis in 2007. Huber is the country’s leading expert in the area of catalytic pyrolysis of biomass, which is a simple process to produce green gasoline and petrochemicals from domestically available renewable biomass.
Huber is also one of the most highly cited young scholars in the chemical sciences, having been cited 875 times in the scientific literature in 2010.
The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program supports the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences. Nominations must provide compelling evidence of advances by nominees in important knowledge in the chemical sciences. Further, the nomination should describe dedication and contributions to education in the chemical sciences, particularly with respect to undergraduates.
Huber currently teaches a freshman introductory chemical engineering course on campus and is bringing new concepts of sustainability, renewable energy, and entrepreneurship into the Chemical Engineering Department’s curriculum.
Among the varied funding sources supporting Huber’s well-publicized research is a $400,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue his revolutionary new method for making “green gasoline” from wood or grasses, a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Frontiers in Science and Innovation program, $5 million in grants from the Department of Defense for turning wood and corn waste products into liquid transportation fuels, and $500,000 as part of the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontiers Research Center.
Huber published a groundbreaking article in the November 26, 2010, issue of the respected journal Science, which reported his team’s new method for producing high-volume chemical feedstocks, including benzene, toluene, xylenes, and olefins, from pyrolytic bio-oils or biocrude, the cheapest liquid fuels available today derived from biomass. Huber’s new process could reduce or eliminate industry’s reliance on fossil fuels to make industrial chemicals worth an estimated $400 billion annually. Instead of buying petroleum by the barrel, chemical manufacturers would be able to use relatively cheaper, widely available pyrolysis oils made from waste wood, agricultural waste, and non-food energy crops to produce the same high-value materials for making everything from solvents and detergents to plastics and fibers.
The technology created in Huber’s laboratory is moving quickly towards commercialization. In August of 2009, UMass Amherst granted the New York City based Anellotech (www.anellotech) company exclusive global rights to the university’s catalytic fast pyrolysis technology, developed by Huber for producing clean grassoline. His patent-pending technique offers a low-cost, single-step process for turning sawdust, woody stalks, and other waste biomass into gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and valuable chemical commodities such as benzene, toluene, and xylenes. This technology can be used to make subsidy free renewable petrochemicals that compete with $60-per-barrel oil. Huber is chair of Anellotech’s scientific advisory board.
"In the future our society will be making plastics from wood and agricultural wastes using catalytic fast pyrolysis technology that was initially developed at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst,” comments Anellotech CEO David Sudolsky. “Anellotech is now dedicated to commercializing this exciting new technology and is seeking investors and corporate partners. This will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil as well as improve our environment by reducing CO2 emissions."
Huber also co-authored the July 2009 cover story in Scientific American, entitled “Grassoline at the Pump,” in which he wrote that “Cellulosic biofuels – liquid fuels made from inedible parts of plants – offer the most environmentally attractive and technologically feasible near-term alternative to oil.” He predicted that if the United States maintains its commitment to biofuels over the next 15 years, the number of vehicles powered by grassoline could “fundamentally change the world.”
In addition to all that, Huber produced a 2008 publication that served as a 187-page roadmap for making hydrocarbon biofuel into a viable and sustainable alternative to fossil fuel in this country. The publication combined the expertise of some 70 top scientists and engineers in the field of biofuels and was entitled, “Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels: Next Generation Hydrocarbon Biorefineries.” (www.ecs.umass.edu/biofuels)
As the roadmap publication states: “A concerted effort to accelerate the development of domestically produced alternative transportation fuels promises to reduce our national dependence on foreign oil, spur economic development, and improve environmental quality in the United States.” (May 2011)