UW-Madison professor's research could help paper mills His new catalyst to produce clean fuel could be paper industry's answer to waste disposal By Monique Balas News-Chronicle James Dumesic could be a very rare find indeed - someone valued by both environmentalists and those who work in the paper industry. The University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical and biological engineering professor and two of his graduate students recently figured out a way to turn organic materials such as paper mill waste into hydrogen-based energy using a relatively low-temperature process. Their discovery of a low-cost way to turn organic materials into a usable, clean-burning hydrogen fuel was published in the June 27 issue of Science Magazine and was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Dumesic said he and his students, George Huber and John Shabaker, have been working on the project for approximately three years. The center of their studies has been finding a low-cost metal compound that could serve as a catalyst - something that produces a chemical reaction between other substances without getting destroyed in the process. After testing about 300 materials, the team finally came up with a catalyst made of nickel and tin. It reacts with carbohydrates, or organic compounds, found in biological materials such as paper mill waste. The reaction is at a fairly low temperature and produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide without producing much of the environmentally undesirable methane. For now, this doesn't mean a new type of fuel cell car; Dumesic said it would be difficult to apply his research to moving vehicles. "It might be more realistic to look at stationary applications where you have a device that stays in one place, and then you would make hydrogen at that location," Dumesic said. "So it might be at an industrial site where there's a stream of carbohydrates you could process - so maybe at a dairy, maybe at a paper mill." Maybe even at Georgia-Pacific. "Paper mill sludge, it's hard to make that go away," said Ken Graves, a Georgia-Pacific technical services manager who has heard about Dumesic's research. Traditionally the waste is either burned, hauled to a landfill or granulated into particles that can carry pesticides or herbicides on them. All these methods can be expensive. "If (sludge) can become a raw material from another process, it can get beneficial reuse out of sludge, whereas in the past it was at a cost to the company," Graves said. "It could mitigate the cost of disposal." He said the waste produced at Georgia-Pacific is about half organic and half inorganic. Because the plant uses only recycled products, its waste might be different from that of other paper mills because it comes from recycled fibers. At Georgia-Pacific, he said, the sludge consists mostly of cellulose (the main substance of plant tissue fibers) fibers, clay and calcium carbonate, usually found on shiny magazine paper. "It's not substantially different from putting (recycled paper products) in mashing machines," he said. "It goes into our wastewater treatment plant. The good part goes into paper products, like bathroom tissue." Cellulose, a carbohydrate, is mainly comprised of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. "(Dumesic) is after the hydrogen that's in the cellulose," Graves said. "Of course, the hydrogen burns quite well and is very low in pollution. The byproducts are simply carbon dioxide and water; that's what makes it clean. "What he has done is develop a combination of metals that, in the right combination, can make some very economical catalysts to separate hydrogen from organic material." Graves said it might take years for Dumesic's research to be ready for application, but when it does it could mean dramatic changes for the paper industry. "If something like that can succeed, it's really some breakthrough technology," he said.