Jagannadh Satyavolu
Professor
Title: Towards integrated biorefinery based on dried distllers grains – Co-product strategy to enable production of biofuels and biochemicals
Biography
Biography: Jagannadh Satyavolu
Abstract
Integrated bio-refinery concepts are developed with the ultimate goal of reducing the cost of biofuels. This integrated concept allows for logistic success through an efficient co-product utilization strategy that creates multiple product streams from one source. In a C5 sugar based integrated biorefinery, our earlier work showed that the residual fibers after hydrolysis of agricultural biomass can be used for feed application. In this paper, we discuss the production of high specific surface area containing activated carbon fibers (ACF) as another value added co-product made from the residual fibers. Such ACF can be produced at low cost and are sustainable and renewable. Preliminary testing showed that the ACF produced from residual fiber yielded high surface area with minimal treatment and delivered high performance in energy storage applications such as supercapacitors and Li-S batteries comparable to commercially available ACF.