The US Department of Energy is supporting projects to investigate and recommend promising pathways for advanced biological upgrading of biomass sugars and lignin to hydrocarbons (HC) and co-products to support the DOE BETO 2022 goal of enabling advanced HC fuels at $3/GGE. In this project, a NREL-led research team is investigating the engineering of Zymomonasfor […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project to better manage seasonal variation in algal biomass production, through stabilization to reduce conversion costs, and to reduce ash to increase conversion yield. In this project led by Lynn Wendt and Bradley Wahlen at Idaho National Laboratory, researchers are working up a process that preserves harvested microalgal biomass over a […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project within its Advanced Algal Systems Platform to define the indicators of sustainable algal biofuels, and determine best practices for sustainably meeting productivity and profitability goals. A research team led by Rebecca Efroymson at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division prepared the following slides for the DOE’s 2017 Project […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project on hydrothermal liquefaction — a thermochemical interface for algae biofuels — developing processing methods to reduce conversion cost, improve sustainability and enable commercialization of algal biofuels while validating conversion processing at engineering scale. Dan Anderson is leading the research team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and […]
Hurricane Harvey has turned the world’s most widely-produced chemical, ethylene, into something of a rarer commodity because of refinery slowdowns. The US Department of Energy is supporting a project to produce transportation fuels via photosynthetically derived ethylene. The research team notes that “steam cracking of petroleum, is the largest CO2 emitting process in chemical industry”. […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project aimed at providing process design and economic analysis support for the algae platform to guide R&D priorities to commercialization. In short, a technolo-economic rationale for algae biofuels at scale, and co-=products along with those fuels or as a pioneer product set. The research team aims to translate […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project to develop a catalyst cost estimation tool that would enable rapid and informed cost-based decisions in research and commercialization of catalysts. As the research team notes, “Nearly all biomass conversion processes rely on catalysis as do many biochemical processes. Catalytic technology development is leveraged by a major portion […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a NREL-led project to establish a novel gas fermentation bioprocess for secretion of an array of fuel and chemical intermediates. The project also aims to develop a novel methanotrophic biocatalyst and fermentation configuration for the production of muconic acid from renewable biogas. The research team ultimately demonstrated an […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project to demonstrate solvent liquefaction as viable path to stable intermediates for subsequent upgrading to fuel blendstocks. This is based on a technology originally developed in large part via Catchlight Energy and we profiled its revival at Iowa State right here, in “Chevron’s forgotten biofuels wonder-tech gets […]
The US Department of Energy initiated a project to advance a hybrid conversion technology for catalytic upgrading of biomass-derived syngas to produce Alcohol-to-Jet fuel and chemicals while meeting the cost, quality and environmental requirements of the aviation industry. Ultimately the goal is to demonstrate that ethanol from gas fermentation is suitable for catalytic conversion to […]
