Biofuel Research Pays Off for Iowa State

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By JEFFREY BRAINARD

Iowa State University announced last week that it would receive $22.5-million over eight years from the ConocoPhillips Company for research to develop biofuels from crops as a replacement for gasoline.

ConocoPhillips, the nation's third-largest energy company, was attracted to Iowa State partly because of the university's strength in developing technologies for the thermochemical conversion of biomass to energy, said Robert C. Brown, director of Iowa State's Office of Biorenewables Programs. He has helped pioneer one such technology, fast pyrolysis, a process that uses heat in the absence of oxygen to decompose plant material into a liquid. This so-called bio-oil can be used for heating or can be converted into transportation fuel at petroleum refineries.

The company also plans to support research projects at Iowa State to improve biofuel production, including the cultivation, harvest, and transport of suitable crops. It will also study the impact of biofuels on Iowa's rural economy and communities.

The deal seems unlikely to generate nearly the level of controversy created by a similar but significantly larger award announced in February by the international energy company BP, which plans to give $500-million over 10 years to a consortium led by the University of California at Berkeley. Some faculty members there have worried that the industry money could skew Berkeley's research agenda toward commercial applications (The Chronicle, April 13).

Keeping a Distance

Unlike in the Berkeley deal, however, the industry sponsor's staff scientists will not work regularly on Iowa State's campus. Agreements on intellectual property and publishing will match those for other industry-sponsored projects at Iowa State, said Lisa L. Lorenzen, director of industry and government relations.

The university will own the rights to any inventions it makes using ConocoPhillips's money, but the company will have first rights to exclusive licenses. It will have a right to delay publication of scholarly findings for up to 45 days to ensure that no proprietary information is inadvertently released.

The company will tell Iowa State the research areas in which it is interested, and faculty members will propose matching projects.

"I'm impressed with how ConocoPhillips is working with an academic frame of mind," said Ms. Lorenzen. "They're not trying to direct things. That goes a long way to keeping faculty happy." Unlike BP, ConocoPhillips did not run a formal competition but visited several academic institutions before choosing Iowa State.

Ryan Lance, a senior vice president at the company, told the Associated Press that Iowa State was ahead of most other universities by three to four years in biofuel research.

It probably didn't hurt Iowa State that Ruth R. Harkin, wife of U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, is a member of both the state's Board of Regents and the Board of Directors of ConocoPhillips, which is based in Houston.

The ConocoPhillips money will support 10 faculty members, as well as graduate students, this year, but the number of researchers involved is expected to grow. Iowa State's biorenewables office counts a total of 145 affiliated faculty members, in 18 academic departments. The university formed the office in 2002 to coordinate such research, said Mr. Brown, "not because there was a pot of money sitting there."