Alumni Feature: From lab bench to boardroom, Danielle Pascoli is giving waste a second life

Written by

Danielle Pascoli in a graduation cap and gown
Danielle Pascoli holding nanocellulose film made from agricultural wastes.

Where some see waste, SEFS alumna Danielle Pascoli sees possibility. That perspective has led her from looking for higher-value uses for plant waste during her PhD to becoming the sole founder of an innovative nanofiber company in the last year.

As an undergraduate student in her home country of Brazil, Danielle was a biochemical engineering major when she joined a research project using waste material from sugarcane industry to make biofuels.

“That was the first time I did anything hands-on, and I remember my mind was blown. You’re taking trash and waste and you’re making a valuable product out of it. I was so in love with that idea that I knew I wanted to keep doing this for my career,” said Danielle.

Years later, Danielle joined the Bioresource Science and Engineering program at the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) to work with Professors Renata Bura and Rick Gustafson on biofuel research for her master’s degree. With a growing interest in working with longer-lasting materials, Danielle turned her focus to biomaterials, such as nanocellulose, for her PhD studies. Nanocellulose is a natural biopolymer made from plant materials that has unique properties, such as reinforcing and lightweighing, and can be used to create enhanced and more sustainable materials in many industries.

From cosmetics, electronics, and sensors, to packaging, plastic, and cement, nanocellulose has an array of applications. But the nanofibers currently on the market are made with expensive wood pulp materials through processes with a high environmental and economic cost, which limits their production on a large scale. Danielle and her advisors set out to find a better alternative.

“We wanted to solve that problem. That’s how it all started,” said Danielle. Using different types of waste from agricultural residues, invasive plant species, and industrial hemp, they started developing a low-cost process to produce nanocellulose. The project began with Washington State funding Prof. Gustafson and Bura’s effort to develop sustainable biobased industries for Lewis County – a region of the state that is aggressively developing its industrial base. One of the industries was the production of nanocellulose, and in the course of the research, it was discovered that reed canary grass, a widespread invasive species in the state that overtakes native plants and harms biodiversity, is an excellent feedstock for nanocellulose production. The use of an invasive species to produce a very high-value product is so compelling that Gustafson and Bura have since been awarded an additional $1 million from Washington State to continue this research.

Not only did their process work, the nanocellulose they created vastly improved the materials it was added to. When incorporated into biodegradable plastic, the material becomes stronger, tougher, and more flexible. What’s more, the process was by far more cost-effective than any existing system and could be adapted to a range of waste materials.

Danielle Pascoli and Professor Renata Bura
Danielle and Prof. Renata Bura in 2022.

In the last year of her PhD program, Danielle was mainly focused on testing the materials in front of her, and her impending graduation timeline. That changed when she attended a presentation on the Activate Fellowship program during a conference. Activate focuses on helping scientists turn their technologies into products, and bring real solutions to life through commercial enterprises. Both of Danielle’s advisors immediately encouraged her to apply, despite her initial hesitations.

“I was focused on graduating. That was my last year, I had my thesis defense coming up. I was like, ‘I’m worried about defending, I’m not worried about creating a company right now,’” said Danielle. But over the course of a few weeks, her advisors helped her see her own potential as an entrepreneur and leader, so she decided to submit an application based on the technology she developed at the UW.

The fellowship kicked off a whirlwind journey that led Danielle to defend her thesis, complete her PhD, move to a different state, and start a company on her own in the span of the summer of 2022. She faced a massive transition from the academic world and soon found the NSF’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program to help build her entrepreneurial skills and confidence. The I-Corps program is an immersive, entrepreneurial training program that facilitates scientists along the transformation toward commercialization.

In the year since Danielle launched VERDE Nanomaterials, she has tackled a dramatic learning curve. From finding funders and market testing products to navigating all the bureaucratic red tape that accompanies running a business, she was grateful for the continued support of her former advisors and fellows cohort.

“It wasn’t something that I was born with, thinking ‘I’m going to create a company. I’m an entrepreneur.’ It really grew on me over time,” said Danielle.

Danielle Pascoli poses with a poster
Danielle Pascoli at a startup showcase at Climate Tech Cocktails at UC Berkeley (2023).

Her first year as a company founder was far from easy. She had to learn how not to think like a scientist 100% of the time, and start seeing the world from a business perspective. She learned that just having really cool technology is not enough. Figuring out what value your technology brings to the world is key to success.

Now, Danielle is building a vision for her budding company. Currently, she’s testing materials to find out what type of product will be most cost-effective, in demand, and effective to produce as her first prototype. In the coming year, Danielle plans to hire her first employee.

Having mentors that helped her take the leap out of the lab and into creating real-world solutions has allowed her to go farther than she ever anticipated.

“I am 100% sure that if I weren’t at SEFS, working with the people I worked with, I would never be doing what I’m doing right now. It felt like I wasn’t trying anything by myself. I really had a network of support that was there, saying ‘you can do it,’” said Danielle.

Undergrad Spotlight: Samantha Mendez

Written by

by Karl Wirsing/SEFS

For someone about to graduate with an engineering degree, SEFS senior Samantha Mendez got hooked on her program through a surprisingly mundane product: a popcorn bag.

Sam grew up in Sacramento, Calif., until she was 13, when her family moved to Spokane, Wash. That’s where she attended part of middle and high school, and it’s also where she met Tom Wolford, executive director of the Washington Pulp and Paper Foundation (WPPF) at the time.

Tom was giving an info session on the Bioresource Science and Engineering (BSE) program at SEFS, and one of his demonstrations—involving that popcorn bag—struck Sam immediately. Tom spoke about how something as ordinary and overlooked as that bag was the product of a lot of people spending a great deal of time making it perfect. Sam liked the buzz about scholarships and internships and job opportunities, too, but she found the popcorn story particularly entrancing. “That was my first introduction to the industry, and I really liked it,” she says. “It was a turning point for me.”

Sam and her mom at the annual WPPF luncheon, where she was honored with the UW TAPPI Award.
Sam with her mom at the annual WPPF luncheon, where she was honored with the UW TAPPI Award.

Sam graduated high school in the spring of 2011 and enrolled at the University of Washington the next fall. The summer after her freshman year, she decided to take some classes at a community college back in Spokane. She wanted to catch up on a few prerequisites—including linear algebra, differential equations and organic chemistry—and she ended up extending at Spokane Falls Community College for the whole next year before returning to SEFS in 2013.

As soon as Sam settled into the BSE program, everything clicked. She felt at home with the small class sizes and close contact with professors, and she loved knowing all of her classmates by name. She got involved in the UW student chapter of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI), including attending the 2015 TAPPI Student Summit in Savannah, Ga., and serving as chapter president this past year. She spent countless hours working with the paper machine in Bloedel Hall, attended PaperCon this past May in Cincinnati, Ohio, and also gained tremendous hands-on experience through several internships.

Her first was a three-month stint with the Ponderay Newsprint Company just north of Spokane in the small town of Usk, Wash. Sam worked as an engineering intern and got to assist with a range of projects, from statistical analysis and validation of testing equipment, to helping reallocate jobs for the workers. Her schedule involved four 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday, while she stayed at her aunt and uncle’s place along the Pend Oreille River. She’d come home after work, go for a run and then jump in the river to cool off. Then on Fridays, she’d head to her parents’ home in Spokane and work about 20 more hours over the weekend at an orchard. “It was really fun, and I learned a lot,” she says.

Sam, at work here in the paper lab, cites the small class sizes and accessibility of professors as huge reasons for her success. “Renata [Bura] is such a mom,” she says. “She’s fantastic.”
Sam, at work here in the paper lab, cites the small class sizes and accessibility of professors as huge reasons for her success. “Renata [Bura] is such a mom,” she says. “She’s fantastic.”
The next summer, she started what would become a 15-month internship with NORPAC in Longview, Wash. Working about 50 hours a week, Sam spent the first nine months on the paper machines, and then six months in the pulp mill.

Now, in a week she will head to Ashdown, Ark., for her third and final internship—this time with Domtar as a process engineering intern. WPPF had invited Domtar to campus earlier this year for an info session, and Sam scored two interviews and then a job offer in the same day.

She thoroughly enjoyed everyone she met with the company, and she’s looking forward to her first experience in the South. She’s also keen to work for a company that’s launching a new fluff pulp machine (used primarily for diapers). “It’s a rare opportunity to get to start up a new machine,” she says. “That’s what I’m most excited about.”

Perhaps the best part about this internship—like the two before it—is that it is fully paid. In fact, between her internships, the Del Rio Environmental Studies Scholarship she won her freshman year, and other WPPF support, Sam has been able to pay for most of her education. That’s a fairly remarkable achievement in today’s college environment, and Sam will head into her Domtar internship for what is essentially an extended interview process, with the potential to stay on permanently.

Before she leaves SEFS for good, though, Sam has one course to complete this fall with Professor Rick Gustafson. But first, she will be walking with the 17 members of her class at this Friday’s graduation as a worthy send-off for so many years of studying and working so closely together. “It’s such a great group of students,” she says, “and I’m proud and excited to be walking with them.”

Photos © SEFS.

Sam (back middle) and some of her BSE classmates.
Sam (back left) and some of her BSE classmates at the WPPF banquet on May 26.

 

Understanding the Carbon Balance of Biofuel Production

Written by

In 2011, the USDA awarded $40 million to the Advanced Hardwood Biofuels Northwest (AHB) consortium to develop a system to convert poplar trees into liquid biofuels. Led by the University of Washington and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS), the AHB team is developing various strategies to create a renewable, direct replacement for existing fossil fuels that can be used in conventional cars, trucks and jet engines. The long-term vision is to produce 400 million gallons of biofuel per year from 400,000 acres of hybrid, sustainably-grown poplars.

Poplar Plantation
Poplar plantation in Oregon.

Four poplar demonstration plantations in the Pacific Northwest are being established as part of the AHB project to optimize production of biomass feedstock. At these poplar plantations in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, AHB researchers are thoroughly assessing the plantation environmental impacts on a number of factors, such as the carbon cycle, soil, wildlife and water usage.

Part of this research includes life cycle assessment (LCA) to determine total carbon emissions associated with production and use of biofuels. One question to be resolved by the LCA is the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of biofuels, especially compared to petroleum-based fuels.

“The life cycle greenhouse gas emissions depend on many factors,” says SEFS Professor Rick Gustafson, who is leading the AHB research. He says preliminary results show that poplar-derived biofuels unquestionably lead to substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to gasoline, but the precise magnitude of the reduction has yet to be worked out. These reduced emissions result from carbon sequestration of growing poplar feedstock balancing emissions from conversion of biomass into fuel and from use of the fuel product.

As a result, producing ethanol from plantation-grown poplar trees can be nearly carbon neutral. Research by Erik Budsberg, a SEFS Ph.D. student involved in the AHB program, shows that carbon emissions from fermenting the lignocellulosic sugars directly into ethanol, and burning the residual biomass to create electricity, is balanced out by the carbon sequestered by the poplar trees and by the displacement of fossil fuel-based electricity. The downside to this process, however, is that the total product yield—80 gallons of biofuel per ton of biomass used— is somewhat low, resulting in inferior process economics and greater feedstock demands. In addition, the ethanol fuel product is not compatible with our current transportation infrastructure, making its use somewhat limited.

Erik Budsberg
Erik Budsberg standing in front of year-old poplar trees at a GreenWood Resources poplar plantation in Boardman, Ore.

By using a different process, ethanol can be produced with a yield of 130 gallons per ton of biomass used. This process uses a different fermentation pathway but requires the addition of hydrogen to produce the fuel. While the yield is high—resulting in superior process economics and low biomass demand—this method has greater life cycle carbon emissions since it requires pumping natural gas, a fossil fuel, into the system. Even so, the process still results in a 60-percent reduction of greenhouse gases compared to gasoline.

A challenge of using bioethanol is that current infrastructure in the United States—most vehicles, and the fuel distribution network—is not built to handle fuels with high concentrations of ethanol, and that’s not likely to change any time soon, says Gustafson. To produce biofuels that are fully compatible with existing infrastructure, the ABH research program is developing processes that convert the poplar trees all the way to hydrocarbons, which are the molecules found in gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

“By producing hydrocarbons, we end up with greater carbon emissions when compared to producing ethanol,” says Gustafson. The process the AHB team is developing, however, will produce infrastructure-compatible hydrocarbons with good yields while still reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent compared to gasoline, which is a big advancement.

It’s therefore clear that producing fuels from biomass like poplar trees leads to significant greenhouse gas emission reductions compared to petroleum-based fuel. The exact amount depends on many factors, such as the conversion process used and the choice of final products. The value of the research under way in the AHB project is that environmental benefits and impacts can be quantified before the factories are built and the feedstock plantations are established. Their research will also identify early on areas where environmental performance can be improved, enabling us to construct the most sustainable biofuels production enterprise possible.

Photo of poplar plantation © GreenWood Resources; photo of Budsberg © Renata Bura.

SEFS Seminar Series: Week 6 Preview

Written by

Biofuels Slide

Lignocellulose, or dry plant matter, is the most abundantly available raw material for the production of biofuels. But how can we improve the production of fuels and chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass? And how do we deal with heterogeneous biomass?

Join Professor Renata Bura this Wednesday, February 13, as she tackles these questions in Week 6 of the SEFS Seminar Series!

The seminars, held in Anderson 223 on Wednesdays from 4 to 5 p.m., are open to all faculty, staff and students. Check out the rest of the seminar schedule for the Winter Quarter, and join us each week for a reception in the Forest Room from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Additional Background:
Professor Bura is part of the Biofuels and Bioproducts Laboratory (BBL), which includes Shannon Ewanick, Brian Marquardt, Rick Gustafson, Erik Budsberg and Jordan Crawford. Here’s what she says about the lab’s work and her seminar presentation:

Improvements in individual processes (pretreatment, saccharification and fermentation) have been ongoing, but few researchers have considered the effect that the incoming heterogeneous raw biomass can have on the process. Even within the same species, biomass is physically and chemically very heterogeneous due to the agronomy practices, water and nutrients management, weed control, harvest and storage, seasonal changes, and age. Rather than designing a biorefinery around an ideal source of a given feedstock, it is preferable to understand how we can process heterogeneous feedstock. How can we alter the heterogeneous biomass to provide the maximum yield of hydrolysable and fermentable sugars from whatever is available?

In this presentation we discuss how by preconditioning of biomass, online reaction control, techno-economic and life cycle analysis we can deal with heterogeneous biomass such as switchgrass, sugarcane bagasse and hybrid poplar. We will present that by improving the uniformity of heterogeneous biomass in terms of moisture content, we could improve sugar yields by 28 percent. Another means of dealing with heterogeneous biomass is to improve overall process control by increasing the level of data collection. We will show how Raman spectroscopy could provide early detection of feedstock heterogeneity, leading to increased real-time awareness. Finally, when processing heterogeneous biomass, overall results of the techno-economic analysis have to be incorporated into life cycle assessment work to estimate life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from mixed lignocellulosics.

Join us on tomorrow to learn more!

BBL Graphic © Renata Bura.