Before this summer, Giovanni Marquez had never heard of biochar, but after four weeks working on a SURE project, he and his five teammates could not only tell anyone who is interested all about the black substance and what it’s used for, they could even make it themselves in the lab and run experiments adding it to other materials.
“I didn’t know what biochar was!” said Marquez, an electrical engineering student going into his junior year in the fall. The research project “has been fun! The hands-on experience is what I enjoy the most.”
As they learned from working with Dr. Zhongzhe Liu — an associate professor of engineering — biochar is created by “burning” organic waste materials without oxygen, like forest trimmings and agricultural waste. Biochar can sequester carbon for 100 years, making it a valuable tool in carbon neutrality. Alone, biochar can be used as a soil amendment, but Dr. Liu’s team of student researchers wanted to learn how adding biochar to infrastructure materials could be a way to improve the final product’s properties and reduce greenhouse gas emissions too.
Dr. Liu’s students spent the first several days of the SURE program doing literature review and watching demonstrations. From there, they ran pyrolysis experiments in the lab to gain hands-on skills, heating biomass materials without oxygen. One team worked with woody forest waste while the other worked with agriculture waste. After pyrolysis, the teams had three products created from the biomass: gas, liquid and biochar.
Finally, the students used the biochar they created to synthesize new materials, combining the biochar with chemically bonded phosphate ceramics. They then tested the strength of the combined material to see how it stacks against traditional infrastructure materials. If used for repairing potholes, for example, the new material needs to be able to handle the weight of traffic.
“I think they did a great job,” Dr. Liu said of his students. “It’s their first time to touch the renewable energy field. It’s their first time for most of them to touch the material synthesis field.”
For Marquez and his teammate Jason Vasquez, their SURE project with Dr. Liu is their first time doing any research outside of classroom experiments. They both agreed that their introduction to research has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.
“Coming in here, I was nervous because it was my first time ever doing anything like this. I didn’t know if everyone else was experienced and they knew what to do,” Marquez said. “But being here … you build your confidence. I’m not as nervous as I was when I first came here. It’s not as scary as I thought.”
Vasquez, an incoming freshman who will be majoring in computer science, said he enjoyed working with his hands and problem-solving on the project but got even more out of the experience than something to add to his resume.
“It’s been a really cool experience getting to know these people,” Vasquez said of his teammates. “I feel like it’s a really warm welcome to CSUB. It’s giving me an example of what campus is.”