Dr. Professor and Chair of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, UA
Wednesday, December 14, 2022,
2:30-3:30 pm,
ASA Koffler Great Room & Zoom
Bioeconomy has been proposed as a strategy to overcome many global and national challenges, from climate action to income diversification in rural areas. The University of Arizona and researchers from Bridgestone Americas, Inc., Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, New Mexico State University, and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service are collaborating on research, development, and deployment activities to investigate cultivation of a desert-dwelling crop known as guayule.
Guayule (a perennial) is a source of natural rubber and resin, but 80% of its biomass is lignocellulosic. The crop is drought and heat tolerant, grows on marginal lands, and is therefore an important alternative crop in times of water rationing. Scale up to profitable production, however, requires feedstock improvements, expansion of cultivation, agronomic knowledge and practices, and economic crop residue utilization. This presentation will focus on an overview of the project, growth modeling of guayule in the field, evaluation of coproducts, and techno-economic and life cycle analysis results.
Kimberly Ogden is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at UA. She received her BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD from the University of Colorado. She is a Fellow and past-President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).
Kim’s research includes bioreactor design for production of alternative fuels and chemicals from algae, guayule and guar, as well as energy/water nexus research. Her research in algae to biofuel continued through a Regional Algal Feedstock Testbed program funded by the Department of Energy to address the long term outdoor algal cultivation data for use in modeling and other research efforts, and demonstrate the feasibility of year-round cultivation. Currently, Kim is the PI for USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Challenge Area Project titled Sustainable Bioeconomy for Arid Regions (sbar.arizona.edu)
Preview edited by Norm Scott, Academy Village Volunteer
You can connect to Zoom either by using the following URL: https://zoom.us/j/95456511620?pwd=OC9GcnJRNmJpMTdXdXFhaUpCUkx4QT09 or by opening a browser to zoom.com/join and typing in Meeting ID: 954 5651 1620 and Passcode: 85747