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
Research Area
Research Group
Education
Ph.D., Biological Systems Engineering, December 2005, Washington State University
M.S., Biotechnology, December 1996, Wuxi University of Light Industry, China
B.S., Fermentation Engineering & Technology, July 1994, Wuxi University of Light Industry, China
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.
Primary Department
