According to people in this career, the main tasks are...
| Task | Importance |
|---|---|
| Design or conduct applied biodiesel or biofuels research projects on topics, such as transport, thermodynamics, mixing, filtration, distillation, fermentation, extraction, and separation. | 81% |
| Analyze data from biofuels studies, such as fluid dynamics, water treatments, or solvent extraction and recovery processes. | 79% |
| Prepare, or oversee the preparation of, experimental plans for biofuels research or development. | 78% |
| Provide technical or scientific guidance to technical staff in the conduct of biofuels research or development. | 77% |
| Propose new biofuels products, processes, technologies or applications based on findings from applied biofuels or biomass research projects. | 76% |
| Conduct experiments on biomass or pretreatment technologies. | 74% |
| Prepare biofuels research and development reports for senior management or technical professionals. | 73% |
| Develop lab scale models of industrial scale processes, such as fermentation. | 73% |
| Oversee biodiesel/biofuels prototyping or development projects. | 71% |
| Develop methods to estimate the efficiency of biomass pretreatments. | 70% |
| Conduct experiments to test new or alternate feedstock fermentation processes. | 70% |
| Develop carbohydrates arrays and associated methods for screening enzymes involved in biomass conversion. | 68% |
| Perform protein functional analysis and engineering for processing of feedstock and creation of biofuels. | 67% |
| Conduct research to breed or develop energy crops with improved biomass yield, environmental adaptability, pest resistance, production efficiency, bioprocessing characteristics, or reduced environmental impacts. | 67% |
| Develop computational tools or approaches to improve biofuels research and development activities. | 67% |
| Develop separation processes to recover biofuels. | 65% |
| Design chemical conversion processes, such as etherification, esterification, interesterification, transesterification, distillation, hydrogenation, oxidation or reduction of fats and oils, and vegetable oil refining. | 63% |
| Design or execute solvent or product recovery experiments in laboratory or field settings. | 60% |
| Develop methods to recover ethanol or other fuels from complex bioreactor liquid and gas streams. | 59% |
