Chemical Engineering Student Wins Poster Award

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Oscar Guevara and Yu-Wu Lu beside their award-winning poster.

Yu-Wu Lu, a student in the Ralph E. Martin department of chemical engineering, was awarded Third Place and a Merit Award for his poster entitled, “Production of Sugars from Corn Stover Using Reactive Carbonated Hot Water Pretreatment Prior to Enzymatic Saccharification” at the recent 56^th Pentasectional American Chemical Society held March 12 in Bartlesville, Okla., at the Conoco Phillips Technology Center.

Lu’s poster was one of 55 posters submitted from universities and colleges within the states of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas for consideration. A cash prize of $150 also accompanied the award. Collaborators on the poster were Oscar Guevara of biological engineering program, Drs. Keerthi Srinivas of chemical engineering and Ya-Jane Wang of food science. Lu’s faculty mentor on the project was professor Jerry King of the chemical engineering department.

The poster described research focused on the use of high pressure carbonated water as reactive pretreatment that makes use of excess CO₂ in conjunction with subcritical water and enzymes to form a natural “green” catalytic synthesis. This sustainable process is designed to produce sugars for fermentation to bioethanol or similar carbochemicals from renewable agriculturally derived resources. The research was funded by a U.S. Department of Energy Regional grant.