Wei Liao
Wei Liao
Assistant Professor
Research Biography
Research
- Biological pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials such as straws, corn stover, wood residues etc. to produce mono-sugars.
- High density enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials to enhance sugar yield and sugar concentration.
- Development of innovative anaerobic digestion systems to convert animal wastes to renewable energy and other bioproducts.
- Organic acid production from lignocellulosic materials using fungal fermentation.
- Simulating bioprocesses such as organic acids production, anaerobic digestion, ethanol fermentation etc., considering both technical and economic aspects.
- Genetic modification of yeast to develop a strain that is able to tolerance high ethanol concentration.
Teaching
- BE 825 Properties of Biological Materials
- BE 360 Microbial Systems Engineering
- BE468 Biomass Conversion Engineering
Selected Publications
- Chen, R., Li, R., Dietz, L., Liu, Y., Stevenson, J., Liao, W. 2011. Freshwater algal cultivation with animal waste for nutrient removal and biomass accumulation. Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy (Accepted).
- Frear, C., Liao, W., Ewing, T., Chen, S. 2011. Evaluation of co-digestion at a commercial dairy anaerobic digester. Journal of CLEAN – Soil, Air, Water 39(7), 697-704.
- Yue, Z., Teater, C., MacLellan, J., Liu, Y., Liao, W. 2011. Development of a new bioethanol feedstock – anaerobically digested fiber from confined dairy operations using different digestion configurations. Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy 35, 1946-1953.
- Li, Z., Liu, Y., Liao, W., Chen, S., Zemetra, R. S. 2011. Bioethanol production using genetically modified and mutant wheat and barley straws. Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy 35, 542-548.
- Teater, C., Yue, Z., MacLellan, J., Liu, Y., Liao, W. 2011. Assessing solid digestate from anaerobic digestion as feedstock for ethanol production. Bioresource Technology 102, 1856-1862.