Luke Williams

• Year

  2024

• Program

  Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future (VIFF)

• Institution

  Idaho National Laboratory

• Location

  Idaho Falls, USA

Dr. C. Luke Williams is a Senior Research Scientist at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Thermochemical Preprocessing Group Lead. He has 15 years of experience in biomass preprocessing for conversion to renewable fuels and chemicals through thermal and catalytic pathways. His research has encompassed catalytic engineering for the conversion of furans to BTX compounds and hydrogenation of oxygenated aromatics in an aqueous environment as it could be applied to biomass processing for thermochemical conversion. Biomass specific research at INL focused on how biomass thermal conductivity changes during thermal processing as well as how properties like size and chemical composition impact pyrolysis oil yields. Additional research has looked at the impact of ionic liquid pretreatment as it compares to dilute acid pretreatment for biological conversion.  Recent work has focused on biomass slurry rheology and engineering wet waste streams for hydrothermal liquefaction. Dr. Williams led a $15M equipment upgrade to INL’s Biomass Feedstock National User Facility (BFNUF) which includes new capabilities for wet waste processing. Dr. Williams has 24 publications related to biomass processing and reaction engineering, an h-index of 18, i-10 index of 22, and over 2,000 citations. In his “spare” time Luke is kept busy with his two kids and enjoys skiing, rock climbing, cooking, and travel.