DARPA says ahead of schedule to produce jet fuel from biomass at less than $3 per gallon

March 6, 2008

In Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said that the BioFuels project has successfully passed through the first stage of laboratory testing. Project managers say that they expect to produce JP-8 jet fuel with a production cost of less than $3 per gallon, primarily from soy and camelina. The project will ultimately use a multi-feedstock approach with a non-food focus. Project management said that cellulosic feedstocks such as algae and waste biomass were two to three years away, and that the primary challenge to using algae was the feedstock cost. The United States Air Force has set a goal of producing 50 percent of its fuels by alternative means by 2016.

Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)., and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) have called on the Department of Defense to comply with section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act by discontinuing purchase of fuel made from Canadian tar sands or US coal-to-liquid technology. The two sources of fuel are prohibited under the Act because of environmental impacts.

UOP, a division of Honeywell, announced last June that it expected to develop military aviation jet fuel, using a synthetic biocrude made from algae. The UOP project is backed by $6.7 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The program is currently outlined in a recently issued broad agency announcement and is known as The BioFuels program. The goal of the BioFuels program is to develop an affordable alternative production process that will achieve a 60 percent or greater conversion efficiency, by energy content, of crop oil to military aviation fuel (JP-8) and elucidate a path to 90 percent conversions.

DARPA seeks processes that use limited sources of external energy, that are adaptable to a range or blend of feedstock crop oils, and that produce process by-products that have ancillary manufacturing or industrial value.

Current biodiesel fuels are 25 percent lower in energy density than JP-8 and exhibit unacceptable cold- flow features at the lower extreme of the required JP-8 operating temperature range (minus 50 degrees F).

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Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Research