Providing research testing services to both internal and external stakeholders is an integral function of the Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI). These services include chemical analysis; corrosion; paper, board and box testing; pulp analysis; and pulp recovery analysis. Established over 25 years ago, RBI’s testing services are well-known in the industry for their quality and customer service. RBI is one of the ten interdisciplinary research institutes at Georgia Tech that champions innovation in converting biomass into value-added products, developing advanced chemical and bio-based refining technologies, and advancing excellence in manufacturing processes.

The RBI research testing services is a team of professional scientists and engineers who work together to provide information and offer solutions required by a manufacturers and users of biomass products, as well as Georgia Tech faculty and students engaged in research on campus. The multidisciplinary capabilities of the team make them uniquely qualified to address customers' technical needs in the areas of process and product development, and quality control. Where appropriate, the team involves RBI faculty and other staff experts to arrive at the best possible solution for their customers and users.

In this article, we will focus on a day’s work with the chemical analysis team. Headed by Rallming Yang, senior research scientist at RBI, the team is equipped to follow the Technical Association of the Paper and Pulp industry (TAPPI) standard of testing, which only a small number of labs in the country can do, and has also developed some of its own internal protocols. Yang leads two specific characterization programs within RBI: (1) the pulping and bleaching analysis, paper recycling, and recovery lab, and (2) the chemical analysis lab.

The chemical analysis team is busy year-round with research projects and testing services. In addition, during the Spring semester, the team also provides support to a paper science laboratory course for undergraduate and graduate students. In the recent times, chemical analysis of black liquor from pulp mills has kept the team busy with more than 30 projects completed by the team over three months for various industry customers. Currently, black liquor analysis continues to account for over 50% of the workload of the lab.

Black Liquor (BL) is a byproduct of a wood pulping and is released when cellulose fibers are separated from wood chips. BL contains lignin, which is used as a biofuel within the mill, and several other chemicals that are recovered and reused. In most pulp mills, nearly 50-70% of BL is converted into a convenient source of fuel or energy. Due to the important role played by black liquor in a paper mill, it needs to be tested regularly to ensure consistency in composition. The RBI chemical analysis lab gets BL samples from a pulp mill, who contact the lab by email to get their testing request into the queue. The process involved in the testing is very intense and has multiple steps that need to be carefully administered.

In the first step, inorganic elements in BL are identified by digesting it in a precise mixture of acids and filtering the mixture. The filtrate is introduced into an Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) Emission Spectrometer that can identify more than 70 different inorganic elements and compounds like sulfur, potassium, sodium, iron, calcium, etc. The next step involves identifying the proportion of anions like sulfate, chloride, thiosulfate. In this step, BL is diluted to a specific level and analyzed using a method called Capillary Ion Electrophoresis (CIE).

The next step involves analyzing BL for organic substances using two methods – gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR). For organic substances with a lower molecular weight of less than 600 Daltons (Da), GC/MS is employed where the gas chromatography separates the chemical mixture, and the mass spectrometry identifies each of the components.

The final step is to identify organic substances and polymers with higher molecular weights. For example, lignin is one of the main polymers in BL with a molecular weight higher than 600 Da. FTIR is used for testing during this step. Based on vibrations within each molecule, an FTIR spectrum allows identification of molecular groups within lignin. The equipment then uses a computer to identify the substances by comparing the sample spectrum with a built-in library. The RBI team provides detailed lab reports that is used by the pulp mill to adjust their operating parameters for trouble-free operations.

In addition to the chemical analysis of byproducts like black liquor and other chemical compounds, Rallming Yang’s team also conducts studies on pulping and bleaching, repulping, and fiber characterizations.

Researchers at Georgia Tech will work to develop new controllable materials for 3D printing, electronics made from plastics, and semiconductors that convert infrared light into electrical signals as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) efforts to create advanced materials.

Altogether, the agency is investing $3 million in the three projects led by faculty members in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). Georgia Tech is a contributing partner on a fourth project led by Notre Dame researchers to explore materials that can be switched from an insulator to a metal with an external trigger.

The new awards are part of NSF’s Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program, which is intended to discover and create advanced materials twice as fast and at a fraction of the cost of traditional research methods.

Read more about the researchers' plans on the College of Engineering website.

A new kind of polymer membrane created by researchers at Georgia Tech could reshape how refineries process crude oil, dramatically reducing the energy and water required while extracting even more useful materials.

The so-called DUCKY polymers — more on the unusual name in a minute — are reported Oct. 16 in Nature Materials. And they’re just the beginning for the team of Georgia Tech chemists, chemical engineers, and materials scientists. They also have created artificial intelligence tools to predict the performance of these kinds of polymer membranes, which could accelerate development of new ones.

The implications are stark: the initial separation of crude oil components is responsible for roughly 1% of energy used across the globe. What’s more, the membrane separation technology the researchers are developing could have several uses, from biofuels and biodegradable plastics to pulp and paper products.

“We're establishing concepts here that we can then use with different molecules or polymers, but we apply them to crude oil because that's the most challenging target right now,” said M.G. Finn, professor and James A. Carlos Family Chair in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.

Research faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology now have their own advocacy group. Since 2022, the Research Faculty Advisory Council (RFAC) has increased research faculty engagement and addressed concerns from researchers in the Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs), joining similar organizations that address such needs in other colleges.

The group addresses issues such as retention, professional development, recognition, and compensation. Julia Kubanek, vice president for Interdisciplinary Research (VPIR), formed the group after hearing feedback from research faculty and modeled it after a similar council in the College of Sciences.

“This advisory council has helped clarify how we can improve both the status and experience of research faculty on campus,” Kubanek said. “The recommendations they’ve provided and the initiatives they’ve launched are already making a difference.”

The 12 members are nominated from across the IRIs, plus two other interdisciplinary research units supported by the VPIR. These members include:

 

• Vishwadeep Ahluwalia (Center for Advanced Brain Imaging)
• Michael Chang (Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems)
• Sriram Chockalingam (Institite for Data Engineering and Science)
• Christine Conwell (Strategic Energy Institute)
• Andrew Dugenske (Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute)
• Ulrika Egertsdotter (Renewable Bioproducts Institute)
• Evan Goldberg (Global Center for Medical Innovation )
• Walter Henderson (Institute for Materials)
• Johannes Leisen (Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience)
• Paul Joseph (Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology)
• Leanne West (Pediatric Technology Center)
• Clint Zeagler (Institute for People and Technology)

In its first year, RFAC had two co-leads: Andrew Dugenske, the director of the Factory Information Systems Center and a principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute, and Paul Joseph, a principal research scientist and director of External User Programs for Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor.

“Although the research faculty contribute significantly to the overall growth of Georgia Tech, we remain largely underrepresented, unrecognized, and underemployed because of the lack of suitable platforms to talk about the challenges faced by research faculty colleagues,” Joseph said. “It was not a surprise that the same concerns surfaced and were discovered by the council when we collected input from the research faculty throughout the IRIs on issues that concern and are important to research faculty.”

Although Joseph and Dugenske have completed their terms in their leadership roles, they are satisfied with RFAC’s initial success in creating awareness of research faculty challenges on campus, and initiatives that include a mentorship program with the Research Next team, a Research Faculty Mentoring Network, and efforts in RFAC bylaws creation. Leanne West and Walter Henderson now serve as co-leads.

“It was great for the administration to recognize the many contributions that research faculty make to the Institute and establish a way to improve research faculty job satisfaction and engagement,” Dugenske said. “During the first year of the RFAC, the committee did a great job of gathering issues of importance to research faculty and presenting clear and actionable recommendations to decision-makers.”

Natalie Stingelin, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering, has been elected to the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC). The honor is bestowed upon the most distinguished European scholars and engineers for their research and contributing to the development of advanced technologies. Each honoree also displays a strong commitment to promoting science and technology in Europe.

Stingelin is recognized for her significant contributions in the broader areas of polymer physics, functional macromolecular materials, and organic electronics and photonics as well as her strong devotion and conviction to generating a notable impact on the wider engineering field as a role model for women in STEM.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.

MSE Professor Blair Brettmann and CHBE doctoral student Alexa Dobbs decided to spend a summer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to collaborate with the Lab’s materials science experts and learn more about LLNL’s experimental resources. During Brettmann’s faculty mini-sabbatical, she collaborated with researchers from LLNL’s Energetic Materials Center to refine material manufacturing techniques.

According to LLNL materials scientist Kyle Sullivan, who sponsored Brettmann’s mini-sabbatical, she helped his team take a fresh look at their methodology, enabling them to identify ways to streamline a highly complex process.

“Many of our material development activities start with multi-faceted problems,” Sullivan said. “We were eager to draw from Blair’s experience in pharmaceutical manufacturing to help us identify an efficient methodology to apply to our research.”

Brettmann’s research focuses on material processing, including how a material’s properties influence the optimal processing approach, as well as how novel processing techniques can be used to develop materials with the features needed for specific applications. Her goal is to better understand options for real-time monitoring of material processing, including effective data collection tools, as well as knowing which experimental data would be beneficial to analyze. As she heads back to Georgia Tech to start another academic year, Brettmann is hoping that the insight she gained during her mini-sabbatical will help her research team as they test new analytical techniques for their material formulation experiments.

Dobbs spent her summer at LLNL investigating material formulation techniques. She helped design and conduct experiments that explored ways to optimize material mixing and she developed a new process for analyzing experimental data. During her internship, Dobbs met with LLNL experts in materials processing and advanced manufacturing, who helped her frame her experiments.

“It was great to expand my understanding of the entire manufacturing process and learn about key challenges in the field," Dobbs said. “The opportunity to spend time with energetics experts was one of the highlights of my internship experience.”

Read the full article

This is part three of the student experiences series. Erin Phillips, rising fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in chemistry and biochemisty shares her experience from the 2023 RBI Spring Workshop on "Innovations in Packaging and Circular Economy."

Tell us about yourself. 

My name is Erin Phillips, and I am a rising fourth-year Ph.D. student here at Georgia Tech. I graduated with my bachelor's from Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, in 2020. I am a student in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, but I am co-advised by Carsten Sievers in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Marta Hatzell in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. The title for my thesis project is "Mechanochemical Depolymerization of Lignin and Lignin Model Compounds." I am currently writing a JACS Communication about the cleavage of the lignin model compound benzyl phenyl ether, which represents the B-O-4 bond found within lignin. 

How was your experience at the RBI workshop? 

I thought the workshop was fantastic! I really enjoyed the interdisciplinary focus of the event, which allowed for greater networking opportunities between departments. 

What was your main takeaway from the poster session? 

During the poster session, it was great to see what other PSE (Paper Science and Engineering) fellows were currently working on. We often all take classes together and pass each other in RBI, but it was nice to actually see everyone's work laid out and visually represented. I also enjoyed talking with a few people from the industry about their expectations in terms of hiring after graduate school and what a realistic position in an industry setting would entail. 

What more would you like to see in future events at the Renewable Bioproducts Institute? 

I think the greatest thing RBI can do is to continue to allow for PSE fellows to build contacts that we may not normally have access to during our day-to-day lives in RBI. Many of us want to continue in our field of research after leaving Georgia Tech, so events like the RBI workshop are a great experience to connect with others who share our interest and could help provide opportunities after completing the program.