Research Initiation Award: Investigation on Tribo-charging Behavior of Agricultural Particles in the Development of Water-free Bio-separation Approach for Biomass Residues

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Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The project seeks to develop a new method of separating agriculture biomass residues based on their electrostatic properties rather than size and density. Conventional wet processes to the purification of protein-rich biomass residues require large amounts of water and energy and the native functionality of the proteins is lost due to pH changes and temperature effects required for dehydration. This project will employ a tribo-electrostatic technique to pneumatically transfer milled agricultural residues into a fluidized bed reservoir where protein and fiber particles in the flour will be charged to different levels through collisions with the wall of the bed and/or interparticle contact, before being separated under the influence of an electric field. The long-term research goals are to expand the application of tribo-electrostatic separation (TES) technology to fractionate lignocellulosic biomass residues to further evaluate their tribo-charging behavior and to investigate the quality of the produced fractions for biofuel production. Moreover, these principles can be potentially used for food powder coating as well as coating solid pharmaceutical dosage forms to eliminate the use of organic solvents during conventional liquid coating technologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.