Gasifier and More at Splinter Lab
By Marina Bradaric

Above: Compost is being tested for biodegradability. Photo: Dan Mott

From testing tractors and monitoring a gasifier to using a specialized wind tunnel, Splinter Laboratory on the East Campus houses numerous agricultural and engineering projects that are constantly at work.

One of the exciting, new graduate projects is the biomass gasifier, led by graduate research assistant Ajay Kumar and research coordinator Robert Webber. In layman's terms, they are basically taking objects of mass and turning them into energy, in the form of gas, while the process is monitored and controlled by the LabView program and a flow meter that calculates the amount of air and oxygen.

Biomass that is being used includes switch grass, distillers grains, and corn stover, "a cellulose that is basically everything but the ears" from ground-up corn, as Terry Bartels, the research technician, noted. Materials are ground, heated in the gasifier and condensed at a low temperature, cooling the gas from 100 degrees Celsius. Char then gets collected, is separated and condensed in water. This process produces a clean gas, which is then captured in a plastic gas sample bag for gas chromatography.

The gasifier is the only one on campus, which is why this is such an exciting lab. In the Splinter Labs, the room that houses the biomass gasifier used to be a pyrolysis lab, and the professor who worked there took the old gasifier with him. So Kumar is the first to use the new one, running experiments on temperature, air and steam. The gasifier's stainless steel inside, coming from Rivers Medical Products, heats to around 850 degrees Celsius.

"I bet you've never seen stainless steel rust like that, huh?" Bartels joked following a peek inside the chamber. Everything in the lab is student-designed, if not student-built. Bartels explained how once a student forms a design, it is reviewed by professors, goes through various steps and if it isn't satisfactory, gets sent back to the student for re-design until it is approved.

Aside from the biomass gasifier, Splinter Laboratory also contains the wind tunnel, where students are currently researching how long it takes an egg to cool when it is packaged a certain way, to ensure maximum efficiency. A wind tunnel is made because the refrigerator has an uneven air flow, so the wind tunnel straightens it out.

In the same area, a biodegradability test is being run. Compost is received from LinGrow and sifted to get any sticks out so just fine material is left. A certain amount of biomass is put in the silver posts, along with a certain amount of water; the post itself is 50 percent water by weight. Air is measured, which increases at 100 mL/minute, and then it is run through a hydrator before being put in the biomass gasifier.

At a table next to the biodegradable testing is the super saturated project, belonging to a student who is working on her Ph.D.

Above: An inside view of the gasifier, which is made of stainless steel. Photo: Dan Mott

For those who aren't extremely informed on science, Bartels explained that "super saturated just means that there are many, many variables. The student has to find out which are true variables and which are just noise."

UNL's famous Tractor Testing Lab is also housed in Splinter Laboratory. The testing lab is the only independent one in the entire world! In 1920, Nebraska law stated that if you sold a tractor, it must do what you say it did, at least if it was 45 horsepower and above. If 44 HP or less, it didn't have to follow the rules, and that is why UNL's Tractor Testing Lab is unique.

Renovations have started around the area, such as stucco being put on the Tractor Museum, and there is great hope for innovative, future projects.