AMES, Iowa – Iowa State University’s Robert C. Brown keeps a small vial of brown, sweet-smelling liquid on his office table.
“It looks like something you could pour on your pancakes,” he said. “In many respects, it is similar to molasses.”
Brown, in fact, calls it “pyrolytic molasses.”
That’s because it was produced by the fast pyrolysis of biomass such as corn stalks or wood chips. Fast pyrolysis involves quickly heating the biomass without oxygen to produce liquid or gas products.
“We think this is a new way to make inexpensive sugars from biomass,” said Brown, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, the Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering and the Iowa Farm Bureau Director of Iowa State’s Bioeconomy Institute.