The National Science Foundation has approved a 6 million dollar grant for a new research program for North and South Dakota. The Dakota Bioprocessing Consortium- or DakotaBioCon- will focus its research on finding a renewable source of raw materials to replace chemicals made from petroleum. ?
South Dakota State University- the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology- and the University of North Dakota are joining forces to tackle a research problem that has a national impact… renewable energy.
Both states are part of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research- or EPSCoR. This program helps universities fund certain investments in order to be competitive for federal research grants- like the most recent NSF award.
James Rice is the director of South Dakota’s EPSCoR program- as well as a professor and head of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at SDSU. He says the work done through DakotaBioCon could benefit South Dakota in the future.
"We’ve started to see that there’s a tremendous amount of value that can come from using some of the non-fuel type molecules that you can isolate from prairie switch grass or from forest wastes or even municipal wastes," says Rice. "If we could figure out a way to substitute them for the chemicals that are coming from petroleum- we would one- decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil- and secondly- it could be a tremendous economic development and workforce development initiative for the state because everything that we have pretty much is manufactured from chemicals and from the kind of chemicals you get from petroleum."?
Rice says once the program receives approval for spending- they will start ordering equipment and hiring personnel for DakotaBioCon.
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