Cooking up more uses for leftovers of biofuel production

[villager]

Cooking up more uses for leftovers of biofuel production

By Hillary Rosen

The baking tins and muffin cups lining the countertops in a corner of Ronald Holser's cluttered laboratory were filled with curious substances resembling angel food cakes and loaves of bread.

But Holser did not advise eating them. The concoctions were prototypes for biodegradable weed barriers and sticky films intended to hold grass seeds on the ground long enough to germinate.

If Holser, a research chemist, and his colleague Steven F. Vaughn, a plant physiologist, are successful, they will have found more than ecologically friendly ways to fight weeds and grow grass.

They will have found innovative uses for a byproduct of the production of biodiesel fuel, glycerol. This, in turn, could help transform the biodiesel industry into something that more closely resembles the petroleum industry, where fuel is just one of many profitable products.

"Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will have to be true for biofuels," said Kenneth F. Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "Biorefining is what the vision has to look like in the end."

Glycerol is used in a variety of products, including foods, soap and dynamite. But as biodiesel fuel production in the United States has risen, the market for glycerol has become saturated.

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