Author Archive: Jim Lane
Boom! US DOE Loan Program Office drops $2.9B in conditional loan guarantee commits to Gevo, Montana Renewables
In Washington, the US Department of Energy Loan Programs Office revealed two conditional loan guarantee commitments, up to $1.44 billion to Montana Renewables for its Montana Renewables project, and $1.48 billion to Gevo for its Net-Zero 1 project in South Dakota. The Gevo project The NZ1 facility is being built in Lake Preston, South Dakota. […]
Propel Fuels wins $604M judgment against Phillips 66 in jury trial over trade secret theft allegations
In California, Bloomberg reports that a jury found Phillips 66 liable for a judgment of $604.9 million in a trial over allegations that Philips 66 stole confidential data, proprietary strategies and business intelligence developed by Propel over 13 years at a cost to Propel of more than $200 million. According to court filings, Propel and […]
The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to Fractionation of Forest Biomass Wastes
A team of researchers have designed a project to support development of woody feedstocks forUniversity of Maine’s Thermal Deoxygenation pathway to produce renewable aviation fuel and chemicals. The goal of the project is to prepare woody biomass for conversion in TDO by engineering particle attributes to improve flow reliability and separating detrimental components within the […]
The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to Biomass Size Reduction, Drying and Densification
Low-cost carbon resources (agricultural residues, forest residue, and non recyclable municipal and industrial wastes) exhibit consistent challenges. Inherent physical and chemical variability in feedstocks result in excessive process downtime, and uncontrolled costs with documented failures in the industry as a whole. Common industry milling operations do not address core problems such as: fines, contaminants, and […]
The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to process intensification in the supply chain
A team of researchers have designed a project to utilize post-harvest physiology and chemistry tools during long-term storage and queuing to positively impact downstream processes through reduced chemical and energy input. They aim to enhance anatomical fractionation, co-products; improve feedstock quality, find use for discarded fractions not meeting specification; and, improve feedstock quality, improved conversion. […]
Cometstock: Comstock Fuels yields are headed for the stars. Why?
They say that if Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas lives up to expectations as it nears Earth these days, it will be comet of the century. Beg to differ on the grounds that if Comstock Fuels technology lives up to expectations, that might well be a bigger event of planetary significance . Accordingly, let’s think of it just […]
The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to Electrolyzers For CO2 Conversion from BioSources
Researchers have initiated a project to develop electrolyzers that can convert CO2 from biorefineries to produce useful products, and save the cost of air capture. Yet, research still has not been done on testing with CO2 from fermenter to understand how dilute/recycled CO2 will affect performance. Rich Masel of Dioxide Materials gave this presentation on […]
The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to Electrochemical Production of Formic Acid from Carbon Dioxide
CO2 electrolysis can utilize waste CO2 from bioreactors to produce market competitive formic acid at commercial scales. Conventional design has energy and cost intensive downstream separations. A solid electrolyte design has tunable formic acid concentration with elimination of downstream separations. Dr. Feng Jiao of the University of Delaware gave this presentation on the project at […]
The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to Polymer Products from Lignin
Today, lignin from pulp and paper is converted to polymer products through sulfonation. An industry goal, and the goal of this Ingevity / USC / Sandia project, is commercial products from lignin that provide 20% reduction in feedstock cost, because lignin coproducts must contribute $2-3/GGE to MFSP to meet DOE target of $3/GGE. Mike Kent […]
