How are Cornell researchers examining switchgrass?
One way of extracting energy from switchgrass is to make pellets from it and burn it, which is the approach that Jerry Cherney, professor of crops and soil science, and his colleagues at Cornell are taking. Another group of Cornell researchers is interested in producing low-cost sugars from switchgrass that can be fermented to ethanol and other valuable chemicals. They are working on pretreating switchgrass to make it more susceptible to enzymatic conversion to sugars for subsequent fermentation to ethanol and industrial chemicals. I’m working on this with Jim Gossett, who’s taking the lead, and Deborah Sills, both in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as molecular biologist David Wilson. Q: What is Cornell’s role in biofuels research? A: When I started at Cornell in the early 1980s, William Jewell of my department was doing some exciting biomass research on anaerobic digestion for methane production, and Robert Finn, chemical engineering, was working on ferment
