The environmental and chemical engineering department at Mississippi State University is involved in an ongoing project to develop alternative fuel from products that can be found in Mississippi, like wood, crop residue, cotton gin trash, and kudzu (just to name a few).
About 80 faculty members, 50 graduate students and 10 postdoctoral research associates at MSU are applying their collective brainpower to the task of finding alternatives to crude oil.
"We want to develop large quantities of liquid that can go into a refinery and be converted into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, whatever the refinery makes," said Bill Batchelor, director of the MSU Sustainable Energy Research Center.
"We want to compete head to head, price to price with crude oil," Batchelor said. "Biogas is looking like it’s going to be competitive between $2 and $3 gasoline prices, so we're competitive today."
About six weeks ago, researchers discovered a cost-effective process that turns wood chips into a substance that looks a little like gasoline and a little like diesel.
