Page 13 - Georgia Forestry - Spring 2017

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI), located at Georgia Tech, is the premier research center for the transformation of biomaterials into new products, including new forest products, renewable energy, advanced materials and pharmaceuticals.
RBI sponsors numerous projects led by a cross-section of faculty in the area of lignin and nanocellulose. This work is enhancing the portfolios of industries — automotive,
pulp and paper, aerospace — further extending sustainability into the rapidly expanding global bioeconomy.
Visit www.rbi.gatech.edu for more information.
RBI-affiliated researchers are making tremendous progress with nanocellulose and lignin. Used in the creation
of fibers, studies show these can revolutionize a number of industries by replacing a portion of heavier materials such as carbon and steel.
Story by Elizabeth Lenhard
Photography by Raftermen Photography
Nothing about the Georgia Tech Manu- facturing Institute feels organic. The belly of this midtown Atlanta building — a clanking, cavernous room called Hi-bay — is a factory floor of sorts.
Professors in fields like mechanical engineering, robotics and composites stake out real estate here in which to test inscrutable contraptions, most of them miniature versions of dreams for the future.
One of these machines is the design of Associ- ate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Kyriaki Kalaitzidou. An assembly line of rollers, conveyer belts and quick-hacking blades, Kalaitzidou’s machine combines a gluey blob of resin with a cascade of ribbon-like glass fibers, then stretches and smashes the composite polymer into a rough-
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