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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Lindsay Soh a three-year, $100,710 grant as part of a collaboration with Yale University and University of Pittsburgh. It will support her research on processing oils, such as those extracted from corn or algae, into biodiesel using compressed carbon dioxide as a solvent.
Soh will use the NSF grant to purchase a specialized reactor needed to perform reactions at high pressure and temperatures safely and repeatedly. The funding also will help purchase starting materials and support additional student research assistants.
Professor Lindsay Soh works in her lab with Christopher Verni ’15.
At elevated pressure and temperature, carbon dioxide has properties similar to other solvents but with the benefit of being benign, readily available, and nontoxic. Soh’s research involves using carbon dioxide to extract lipids from biomass and convert these oils into biodiesel. Her long-term goals involve the use of sustainable technologies in an integrated biorefinery where fuel and value-added products can be made from renewable feedstocks.
The next phase of the research will test optimal system conditions and assess process design and feasibility.
“The work builds on exciting preliminary findings suggesting that carbon dioxide can be efficiently used for mediating the biodiesel reaction, but also that it will aid in the selectivity of the reaction,” explains Soh, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “Thus it potentially could be used to provide enriched mixtures that would produce better fuel from renewable feedstocks using green processing techniques.”
“The project is designed to be extensive, evaluating the sustainability of the process and comparing it to other processes aimed at producing biofuels to indicate which ones have the most promise,” she adds.
Last year, Christopher Verni ’15 (Medway, Mass.), a double major in chemical engineering and Spanish, worked with Soh through Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars undergraduate research program, helping to develop methods for analyzing biodiesel products. He will continue his work as an honors thesis project this year with Soh as his adviser. Soh plans to include more student research assistants as the project progresses.