Facilities

Description:

The Department of Forest Biomaterials occupies 51,000 square feet of laboratory and pilot plant space equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation. We have an extensive and unique collection of equipment for bench- and pilot-scale biomass processing. These operations include chipping, pelletizing, thermochemical conversion facilities (pyrolysis, liquefaction, and gasification), biochemical pretreatment facilities (chemical (acid to alkaline) and mechanical treatments), biomass disintegration, pulp screening, enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation, and bio-oil/bio-char characterization. Our program is also well equipped with analytical instruments for fiber and wood chemistry to characterize the chemical composition of wood with respect to lignin, carbohydrates and extractives. The department has access to the NCSU Torrefaction Pilot Plant at NCSU’s Lake Wheeler Farm.

Equipment available in the department

for Dr. Park's research

  • Fluidized fast pyrolysis reactor

  • Torrefaction pilot plant, ton per day scale

  • Torrefaction tube furnace

  • Parr reactor, 300mL – small-scale biomass liquefaction/pretreatment reactor

  • Milestone Microwave Ethos EX, 100mL – small-scale liquefaction/pretreatment reactor

  • Medium-scale biomass pretreatment reactor – M/L reactor (1kg) and TMP reactor (10kg)

  • High temperature furnace for slow pyrolysis

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  • Bomb calorimeter from Perkin Elmer

  • Karl Fisher titration system

  • Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) surface area analyzer, Gemini VII 2390a, Micromeritics

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  • Two Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers – 300MHz and 500MHz

  • Perkin-Elmer FTIR spectrometer

  • ThermoNicolet Nexus 670 FT-IR/NIR microscope with DRIFT and ATR capabilities

  • Foss NIR with microprobe

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  • Three sets of gas chromatographic equipment – One GC and two GC/MS systems

  • Four HPLC (Waters, Dionex, and two Agilent) with UV and/or RI detectors

  • Two Dionex IC systems

  • Pyroprobe connected to GC/MS

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  • TA Instruments Q500, Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA)

  • TA Instruments Q1000, Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC)

  • TA Instruments Q 800, Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer (DMA)

  • TA Instruments AR 2000, Advanced Rheometer

Equipment available in NCSU campus (all user facility) that Dr. Park has used

  • CHN/O analyzer from Perkin-Elmer

  • ICP: Inductively Coupled Plasma Spectroscopy

  • SEM: Joel 6400F Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope

  • XPS: X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy

  • TOFF-SIMS: Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer

  • XRD: X-ray Diffraction

Differential Scanning Calorimeter

Thermogravimetry

Rheometer

Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer

FT-IR

Ball milling

Agilent GC-MS

Thermo GC-MS

GC

Ion Chromatography

GPC

HPLC

Parr Reactor 100 mL

Parr Reactor 300 mL

Parr Reactor 1000 mL

UV-Vis Spectroscopy

Pyroprobe Reactor

Adsorption bed with UV

Karl-Fisher Titrator

Isothermal Incubator

Bomb Calorimeter

Microwave Reactor

M/K Reactor (1kg Biomass)

12 Inch Disk Refiner

2nd Generation Reactor for Pyrolysis and Gasification

Biomass feeding system

Bio-oil Collection

Gas Loop and Its Analysis

Pilot-scale Torrefaction Unit (one ton per day)