| CRBJ Charter Member: |
|
|
| CRBJ Home > February 2007 | ||||||
Foresting nanotechnology and biofuelsInterviewed by Nathan Leaf
Director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory, 1 Gifford Pinchot Drive Age: 56 Family: Wife Sue, two daughters Personal background: Born in Fergus Falls, Minn., about 60 miles southeast of Fargo, N.D. Grew up on a dairy farm outside Dalton, Minn. Education: Bachelors of science in forestry from University of Minnesota (1972); Masters in forest administration (1977) and Ph.D. in economics (1979) from Michigan State. After receiving bachelors, served with the Peace Corps working on forest planning projects in Morocco. Professional background: Has been with the U.S. Forest Service since starting his career at the Forest Products Lab as a research scientist in 1978. Moved to Washington, D.C., in 1981 as a member of the Forest Service's Cooperative Forestry staff. Became project leader in 1984 at the agency's North Central Research Station in St. Paul, Minn. Transferred back to Washington in 1985 to become director of policy analysis. Named a deputy regional forester in 1988 based in Montana. Named director of planning in 1995 based in Washington, D.C. Took over as director of the Forest Products lab in 2001. Q. What were your goals coming in as the new director of the Forest Products Lab in 2001? What did you hope to accomplish? A. One is we need to rebuild this place. This building dates to 1931. Our newest facilities date to 1965 and if we're going to be on the cutting edge of science, we've got to have our scientists in modern facilities with modern equipment. I've been pushing a rebuilding of the Forest Products laboratory. The other (goal) was to refocus and reorganize because we've been downsizing the Forest Products Laboratory over the past couple of years due to budget problems. So we've dropped from 66 scientists to 58 and we expect to drop further. We can no longer do everything and cover the waterfront on the research of wood. We've got four focus areas now: advanced composites, which is essentially making wood into smaller and smaller pieces and mixing it with glue or plastic or cement or ceramics in some cases. To go to the ultimate extreme of that, we're starting on nanotechnology. Wood has nano-sized fibers in it that are extremely strong. And we've never liberated them and figured out how to use them before. So nanotechnology is second. Advanced structures is the third area. It's how you put the pieces of wood together into an effective envelope. It's as important as the properties of the individual pieces (of wood) themselves. And then chemicals and energy from wood is the fourth area. We grow 700 million tons of wood a year in this country. We harvest 300 million tons, and we're accumulating biomass at the rate of 400 million tons a year in the forests of the United States. A lot of that biomass is in small trees, too small to do anything with, and species that aren't very good for products. So part of our focus is to figure out what to do with that material so it can pay its way out of the woods. Q. So U.S. forests need to be thinned? A. Yes. That's one reason we spent $1.3 billion fighting forest fires this year in the Forest Service; because nature is trying to remove that biomass and get back to the amount it should have. If we thin it to prevent or reduce the impacts of wild fire it costs us $1,000 per acre because we're not making many products out of that stuff. We're trying to figure out how to make products out of that so we can reduce the cost of thinning national forests down to zero. Q. What products are you working on right now that would come from that surplus biomass? A. Ethanol is the big one we're working on right now. It's got huge potential. But trees are made up of three major components: lignan, which is the glue, hemicellulose and cellulose. And they're just sugar molecules strung together. But (with) the way the tree puts them together, it's very hard to take it back apart efficiently, so we're working on that. In fact the Department of Energy is also working on it, funding projects. They call it the recalcitrant cellulose problem. It just doesn't want to break down back into sugar very easily. Q. How close are you to a solution? A. We've patented a strain of yeast called pichia stipitis and licensed it to a company called Xethanol Corporation and they're building plants right now to make cellulosic ethanol. Q. So they'll be able to produce cellulosic ethanol commercially? A. Yeah, but I don't know if it's going to make them a lot of money because it's still difficult to break (the biomass) down into the sugars for this yeast to ferment. Q. So manufacturing cellulosic ethanol is possible but too expensive to be profitable? A. It's not profitable enough at this point. Q. The Forest Products Laboratory has been downsizing over the past couple of years due to budget problems. How do you deal with those budget shortfalls? A. You work with members of Congress to build their support. You work with your constituents who use your research to have them either fund your research, which they do to the tune of about $4 million a year, and have them support us in Congress. Q. With recent staff cuts, what areas have suffered in the laboratory? A. Well we've only got two scientists in fire research, for example. And there's very interesting areas of fire research. The way you assemble a house influences how easy it is for a forest fire to burn it. You'd think when you build your house in the woods and you get a forest fire, it burns from the outside in, right? Well, some research has shown that you get embers going through the vents and the gables and it burns from inside out. ... And we think there are important areas of knowledge to be gained there because we lose 4,000 houses a year to fire. ... What we're trying to do is develop (a fire resistant) tent for a house. When the hot forest fire is coming you ought to be able to flop that reflective material over your house, staple it to the corners and run like hell to get out of there. It would dramatically improve the chances of your house surviving a forest fire, but we don't have the funds to pursue that research. Q. How have you applied what you learned growing up on a dairy farm to your career in the Forest Service? A. Growing up on a farm you realize that humans can not survive without extracting things from the environment. You grow your crops. You raise your cattle. You harvest trees to make your house. You can't avoid impacting the environment to survive. The key is doing that in the right way and a sensitive way. We talk now about sustainable forestry: that you're not taking more than what the environment can afford to give you. I've always been interested in that. How do you extract what you need to survive and prosper, but still have a healthy environment that's got wildlife habitat, clean water, clean air and open space? nleaf@madison.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
|
|||||
