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Pilot Plants Push Tech Transfer
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At the NCAUR pilot plant in Peoria, Illinois, chemists Terry Isbell (left) and
Steve Cermak prepare meadowfoam derivatives for use in hair conditioners.
(K8777-2) |
In the 1930s, as advances in farming
ushered in an age of agricultural product surpluses, USDA countered with plans
for establishing four research centers for developing new uses for the
surpluses. Since the 1940 opening of the utilization centers,
ARShas patented hundreds of inventions
and processes for making use of farm products.
Highlights include launching the antibiotics industry, making frozen orange
juice, developing edible oil and other products from soybeans, creating a
durable-press finish for cotton fabrics, and making leather processing more
environmentally friendly. |
Chemical engineer Mike
Kozempel tests a poultry
pasteurization process at the
renovated ERRC pilot plant in
Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania.
Recent renovations will help
expand research on
pasteurization of foods.
(K8972-1) |
A secret to those successes and
future ones may have been expressed best by a former center director:
"Employ the most competent scientists you can find, supply them with the
best scientific instruments and equipment, explain your research goals, and
then back off and let them work."
The director's philosophy is alive and well, thanks partly to some 1998 federal
legislation (P.L. 105-185). Under this measure, industries can team up with ARS
scientists to further evaluate, in larger settings generally called pilot
plants, research that in the laboratory shows promise for new commercial
biobased products.
The centers at Albany, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; Peoria, Illinois;
and Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, are welcoming the new opportunities with pilot
plant and laboratory renovations that began in 1997 and will continue for the
next 5 years.
The pilot plant wing of the National Center for Agricultural Utilization
Research (NCAUR) at Peoria now includes four new two-story chemical and
biological processing bays designed with the flexibility needed as one project
is replaced by another.
The facility offers the opportunity to test processes and equipment on a scale
large enough to make economic assessments, says Peter B. Johnsen, NCAUR
director. "Until now, some inventions had too often fallen into a 'death
valley'never to be heard from again." Renovated pilot plants will
serve as a bridge between invention and commercialization.
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A look into the future: When remodeling at the SRRC's Oilseed and Grain
Processing Pilot Plant in New Orleans has been completed, chemical engineers
and others will work in a setting like this.
(K8998-1) |
Commercial partners in the new
endeavors may enter through cooperative research and development agreements
(CRADAs) under a 1986 amendment to the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation
Act of 1980 or under funding arranged through the Biotechnology Research and
Development CorporationUSDA's Small Business Innovation Research Program.
Through the risk-sharing CRADAs, the private sector may provide some of the
capital, manufacturing and production equipment, and technical support needed
to commercialize ARS technologies.
In two of the first CRADA's involving pilot plant research, NCAUR scientists
used the new facilities to help explore the potential for new industrial
products derived from vegetable oils. In an earlier CRADA, the NCAUR scientists
had supplied researchers of Lambent Technologies Corporation, in Skokie,
Illinois, with laboratory-made compounds called estolides. Lambent produced the
estolidesmade from oleic acid of sunflower oilfor testing as
components of motor lubricants and found two that just might work if modified
properly for pilot-scale production.
Shortly after the NCAUR pilot plant was completed, scientists were able to
control processing conditions in the scale-up under a new CRADA much as they
had in the laboratory. The success led to a lubricant patent issued to USDA and
the company. The researchers then proceeded to make up to 60 gallons of the
modified estolides in the pilot plant. The company is now using the estolides
in formulation research and providing samples to client companies for testing.
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At the WRRC pilot plant in
Albany, California, research
associate Artur Klamczynski loads
wheat flour in the feed hopper
of a twin-screw extruder during
preparation of cereal snacks.
(K8795-4) |
Similarly the Peoria researchers
made estolides from the oil of a new crop, meadowfoam. These estolides had
shown potential as ingredients for personal care products. The Fanning
Corporation, Chicago, Illinois, had the formulation expertise and the
facilities for testing.
Through cooperative research on pilot-scale manufacturing of the meadowfoam
estolides, another joint USDA-industry invention was patented. Shampoos
containing meadowfoam estolides produced at NCAUR are now being tested in
salons of some of the Fanning Corporation's client companies.
In other pilot-stage research at Peoria, scientists will focus on production of
biological control agents, as well as ethanol and other fermentation products.
They will also conduct research on food ingredients and on a biodegradable
insecticidal decoy designed to reduce the need for pesticides in orchards.
At the Eastern Regional Research Center (ERRC), Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, the
pilot plant wing required less renovation to meet 21st century standards than
did its sister laboratories. The upper level, used only for new foods research,
needed more modern electrical and plumbing systems. A recently remodeled lower
level now has two new modules: one for biochemical research on goals such as
increasing efficiency of ethanol production and one for research on improving
food safety.
Until now, food safety research has been mainly on poultry meat, says ERRC
director John P. Cherry. "The renovations will help us expand research on
pasteurization of solid foods such as fruits and vegetables and thermally
sensitive fluids such as eggs."
ERRC has a dairy pilot plant that includes facilities for milk processing,
cheese making, encapsulation and extrusion, and spray drying. The facilities
allow researchers to develop new products with unique functional properties
like low-fat mozzarella cheeses for pizza making, encapsulated highly flavored
butterfat fractions for the pastry industry, and extruded high-protein foods
made with grain and dairy proteins.
A bioengineering pilot plant with fermentation capabilities is developing new
cost-effective downstream processing technologies for ethanol and coproducts
technologies. ERRC also has a unique hides-to-leather tannerythe only one
like it in the United Statesthat is used extensively in collaborative
work with the industry to solve problems through research.
At the Southern Regional Research Center (SRRC), New Orleans, Louisiana,
renovations began with the recently completed modernization of chemical wing
laboratories. As in planned changes at NCAUR, these projects include remodeling
of electrical and plumbing systems to provide the flexibility to meet changing
research and technology needs. The improvements were also designed to help
ensure the safety and health of ARS employees and users of the new
technologies.
The SRRC pilot-plant wing is getting an overhaul that's expected to be complete
by spring 2001. The renovations will bolster research on the safety and quality
of foods and on development of new food and animal feed products. "Our
scientists plan to use the pilot plant to develop new corn and rice milling
processes that will help foods retain nutritional qualities," says SRRC
director John P. Jordan.
Scientists at SRRC will also use the pilot plant to further develop rice food
products that have had their starch modified to be digested slowly. Such foods
may help diabetics manage their levels of blood glucose. Other food research at
SRRC deals with the processing and storage of fresh-cut fruit and with the
detection of off-flavors in catfish. Off-flavors in many cases develop as fish
take in geosmin and 2-methylisoborneolmuddy-smelling chemicals produced
by microbes.
Remodeling of the Western Regional Research Center's four-story,
20,000-square-foot pilot plant is under way and should be complete in about 6
years.
Today, in the food-processing section of the plant, researchers use a highly
instrumented, twin-screw extruder to create healthful new fruit- or
vegetable-based foods. Others extract natural chemicalsfrom
citrusthat have been shown to fight cancer.
The pilot plant in Albany, California, has been the home of other interesting
investigations, including development of edible coatings to keep fruits and
vegetables fresh. The center's pioneering research to improve processing of
rice branthe nutritious brown layer that WRRC scientists showed can lower
cholesterolalso began here. The industrial processing wing housed early
trials of a unique, now-patented process for making wheat-starch-based
concrete.
"Our remodeled pilot plant," says Center Director James N. Seiber,
will be ideal for a host of other projects that require equipment that we can't
squeeze into our existing labs. We'll have the capacity for new food safety and
food processing studies with lettuce, sprouts, or poultry, for example, or for
tests of biodegradable packaging materials made from wheat starch. We'll be
able to conduct onsite tests to explore new uses of crops like guayulea
desert shrub that our patented research has shown is a promising new domestic
source of hypoallergenic natural latex. And we may use the pilot plant to
expand our experimental processing of insect diets for biological control.
"Our pilot plant has served us well," says Seiber. "The new
improvements we're planning will make it high tech and up to
date."By Ben Hardin,
Agricultural Research Service Information Staff. This research is part of
New Uses, Quality, & Marketability of Plant & Animal Products, an ARS
National Program (#306) described on the World Wide Web at
http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov/programs/cppvs.htm.
For information on people mentioned in this article, contact
Ben Hardin,USDA-ARS
Information Staff, 1815 N. University
St., Peoria, IL 61604; phone (309) 681-6597, fax (309) 681-6690.
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"Pilot Plants Push Tech Transfer" was
published in the August 2000
issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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