NARA just wrapped up its 2014 annual meeting held September 15-17th at the Museum of Flight in Seattle WA. This annual gathering provides the over 150 NARA members, drawn from 22 organizations, the NARA …more
NARA funds educational opportunities for students at all levels — grade school through college graduate. For the past three years, NARA has provided summer research internships to college undergraduates through the NARA SURE program. SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research Experience) is a program coordinated by Washington State University that provides research internships to undergraduate students throughout the United States and is funded by multiple organizations including NARA.
For the summer of 2014, NARA funded five undergraduate students to conduct research …more
NARA investigates conversion technologies that rely on enzymes called cellulases. Cellulases break down the cellulose and hemicellulose polymers found in wood and release simple sugars. The simple sugars can then be used to make …more
Gevo, a NARA affiliated organization, has developed a fermentation and process technology that converts biomass sugars into isobutanol and further into biojet fuel through chemical processing. To convert …more
Douglas-fir trees are not all alike. Some grow faster, some adapt better to harsher climates and they all differ somewhat in their chemical makeup. These distinctions are due to variations in their genetic makeup. Those interested in breeding plantation trees for timber value have capitalized on genetic …more
NARA supports research that discovers ways to develop commercially valuable products from forest residuals. When forest residuals are converted to biojet fuel, a significant amount of the material remains. That remaining material is a …more
NARA is tasked to provide a supply chain analysis for converting forest residuals to biojet fuel and lignin-based co-products within the northwestern United States defined within the Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana state borders. University students and their mentors, through the Integrated Design Experience (IDX) course, provide much of the …more
When NARA was initiated in the Fall 2011, it was tasked to evaluate available pretreatment methods and ultimately select one as a NARA-preferred method to incorporate into a wood to bio-jet fuel conversion process. Pretreatment is the process that breaks up the wood fibers so that enzymes can …more
NARA researcher J.Y. Zhu and his team are trying to solve a problem. They are refining a pretreatment method used to soften the wood and allow the simple sugars to be released. It is the simple sugars that are used to make alcohols, which are …more