"Our goal is to add a value to the cotton crop by using the residue from the cotton to make a valuable product," said Foster A. Agblevor, professor of biological systems engineering in Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
About 100,000 acres of cotton are grown in the Virginia counties of Southampton, Isle of Wight, Greensville, Sussex, and the City of Suffolk. After the cotton is ginned, the residue left at the processing plant contains the chemical ingredients for products that are commercially valuable. Currently, the residue piles up at the site and must be removed. Because it easily ignites, it can be a hazard, and if it burns, can contribute to air pollution.
"We have been able to develop the manufacturing processes that can extract specific chemicals and make two products ethanol, which can be a fuel in automobiles, and xylitol, a sugar.
"Our work shows a manufacturing process for extracting both products simultaneously from the cotton residue so in the future it is possible that a manufacturing company operating in Southside Virginia could produce both the ethanol and the xylitol products," Agblevor said.
Agblevor's research has shown that the processes work in a laboratory. Along with students and technicians at Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Agblevor has taken the cotton gin residue and successfully chemically processed the material. The processes allow them to extract the glucose that can be used to make ethanol and the xylose that can be made into xylitol. The preliminary work was supported by the Southern Regional Biomass Energy Program.
The project offers a solution to one of cotton production's problems, he said. "Our estimate is that about 90 gallons of ethanol can be produced from a
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Contact: Mary Ann Johnson
jnayram@vt.edu
540-231-6975
Virginia Tech
17-Dec-2004