Contact: Robbie Ward
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State's Sustainable Energy Research Center is being honored by a regional think tank that works to improve economic opportunities and quality of life.
The non-partisan Southern Growth Policies Board recently named the university center as one of the 13 winners of its annual Innovator Awards. One award per state is presented among the 13-state organization.
The MSU center formally accepts the honor June 8 during the board's annual conference in Biloxi. The center also will be highlighted in the organization's "2009 Report on the Future of the South."
Associated with Mississippi State's Bagley College of Engineering and its new Energy Institute, SERC involves 50 campus researchers. Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, its scientific team is seeking innovative environmentally and economically sustainable energy sources specific to the Southeastern United States.
Since being launched in 1971 by regional governors, the Southern Growth Policies Board has worked to create and support economic development policies through partnerships among government, academic, business, and community development sectors. Currently, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is chairman of the group.
In addition to Mississippi, SGPB member states include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The Innovator Award is not the first for MSU. In 2004, the land-grant institution's Institute of Furniture Manufacturing and Management, now the Franklin Furniture Institute, was Mississippi's winner. A year later, the recognition went to the Mid-South Partnership for Rural Community Colleges, which had a major MSU component.
Award winners are selected on the basis of their focus on economic opportunities relating to bio-products, alternative energy or energy efficiency, among other criteria.
"What we're really trying to do is create something new in Mississippi: a renewable energy industry," said Bill Batchelor, SERC co-director.
"We have biomass left over from the harvesting of trees, cotton, soybeans, and the like," he explained. "Just imagine the economic revitalization and impact we can have on the state if we can recycle and convert these wood and grain byproducts into renewable fuels."
Since it opened in 2006, the MSU center has received a $13 million Department of Energy grant and used the government investment to develop three technologies that convert the environment's natural biomass into renewable energy.
Of the three, production of bio-oil is the project closest to the investment and commercialization stages. Created from byproducts of trees--one of Mississippi's most abundant natural resources--bio-oil can be used for home heating fuel and "green" diesel and jet fuels.
"We're looking for companies willing to develop portable systems for the field that turn waste products from the harvesting of pine trees into bio-oil," said Glenn Steele, the center's other co-director.
Steele said bio-oil has the same energy-producing power per gallon as gasoline.
In addition, MSU researchers are investigating ways to create renewable electricity from the product. Later this year, the team will be testing the product's heating and electricity generating capability at MSU's Micro-Cooling, Heating, and Power and Bio-Fuel Center demonstration site.
MSU researchers point to another byproduct of bio-oil and the other technologies--reducing the carbon footprint in the environment.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information of the MSU center, contact Dr. Batchelor at 662-325-3280 or wdb105@msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.