Spring 2027

Biorefining: Energy and Products From Renewable Resources

Covers concepts, processes, and future directions of biorefining to produce energy, chemicals, and materials from biomass, emphasizing chemical, biological, and engineering aspects.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Xuejun Pan

Summary

1 / 3

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2023: 3.45 GPA, 63.6% A/AB (n=11 letter grades); Spring 2024: 3.35 GPA, 38.5% A/AB (n=13 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.21 GPA, 41.7% A/AB (n=12 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify the opportunities and challenges of energy, chemicals, and materials from biomass

  • Describe chemical composition, anatomical structure, and physical & chemical properties of lignocellulosic biomass and their effect on biomass processing and conversion

  • Evaluate the technologies and processes and their working principles for producing liquid biofuels, such as corn ethanol, cellulose ethanol, biodiesel, and other alternative fuels.

  • Outline representative platform chemicals derivable from biomass, such as furfural, HMF, levulinic acid, lactic acid, xylitol, and sorbitol, and their production technologies and reaction chemistry

  • Compare the production of fibers, pulp & paper, and biobased materials from lignocellulosic biomass

  • Develop mass balance for a process to convert biomass to fuel, chemical, or material.

  • Design a process to produce a target product (fuel, chemical, or material)

  • Synthesize the historical and current research on a select topic in biorefining and generate evidence-based predictions regarding the future direction of the topic.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

(CHEM 104 or 109) and (CHEM 341 or 343), or graduate/professional standing

BSE 460

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2023: 3.45 GPA, 63.6% A/AB (n=11 letter grades); Spring 2024: 3.35 GPA, 38.5% A/AB (n=13 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.21 GPA, 41.7% A/AB (n=12 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

XUEJUN PAN is recorded teaching in Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 00

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2023: 3.45 GPA, 63.6% A/AB (n=11 letter grades); Spring 2024: 3.35 GPA, 38.5% A/AB (n=13 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.21 GPA, 41.7% A/AB (n=12 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Production of energy, chemicals, and materials from biomass.
  • Technologies and working principles for producing liquid biofuels like corn ethanol, cellulose ethanol, and biodiesel.
  • Platform chemicals derivable from biomass, including furfural, HMF, levulinic acid, lactic acid, xylitol, and sorbitol.
  • Production of fibers, pulp and paper, and biobased materials from lignocellulosic biomass.

Skills

  • Develop mass balances and design processes to convert biomass into fuels, chemicals, or materials.
  • Synthesize research on biorefining topics and generate evidence-based predictions about their future direction.

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Not enough comparable courses for Spring 2027 in UW–Madison.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records
BSE 460 · Spring 2027

Biorefining: Energy and Products from Renewable Resources

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:112:023087",
    "course_id": "BSE 460",
    "course_uid": "course_e07cea6261c3b2629bc048b1",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "023087",
    "source_subject_id": "112",
    "title": "Biorefining: Energy and Products from Renewable Resources",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Fall"
  }
]
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Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

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Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "c0d8b53e1021ed08f38e693c12e0304d80de94d545aa8e93f2b974806a83be79",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}