DOE BETO awards $10M to 7 advanced biofuels projects
21 February 2015
The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) has selected seven projects to receive up to $10 million to support innovative technologies and solutions to help advance the development of advanced biofuels, including bugaboo and drop-in hydrocarbons.
The Bioenergy Technologies Office is working to produce cost-competitive ($3/gallon of gasoline equivalent) advanced biofuels from non-food biomass resources that reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% or more versus petroleum-based alternatives. These newly selected projects are intended to support this effort.
| BETO awards | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organizations | Description | Funding (up to) | ||||
| Metabolix in collaboration with North Carolina State University | Develop a non-genetically modified, non-food feedstock, Camelina sativa, with significantly increased seed yield and oil content to maximize oil yields per acre, thereby enabling the widespread use of a currently underutilized non-food feedstock. |
$2,000,000 | ||||
| Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in collaboration with MicroBio Engineering | Develop a process to produce microalgae directly from CO2 in air at high productivities, thereby decoupling algal growth from CO2 sources. |
$900,000 | ||||
| The Ohio State University in collaboration with the University of Alabama and Green Biologics | Develop a cellulosic butanol production process with high productivities, yields, and carbon conversion through novel metabolic engineering of two different pathways. |
$1,200,000 | ||||
| The University of California, Riverside in collaboration with the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and CogniTek | Further develop a co-solvent pretreatment for high yields of clean fuel precursor fractions that can significantly improve downstream chemical catalytic upgrading to final biofuel additives. |
$1,000,000 | ||||
| OPX Biotechnologies | Develop the production of cost-competitive C8 fatty acid derivatives (which can readily be converted to high-performance lubricants and synthetic oils) from cellulosic sugars via novel metabolic engineering pathways. |
$2,000,000 | ||||
| Kiverdi in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory | Further develop processes and genetic tools to produce hydrocarbons in previously unengineered bacteria that directly utilize biomass-derived syngas for growth. |
$2,000,000 | ||||
| The Gas Technology Institute in collaboration with W.R. Grace and Company and Michigan Technological University | Develop a process to catalytically convert biomass and methane into hydrocarbon liquid fuels and chemicals at high yields, while simultaneously decreasing hydrogen consumption. |
$1,400,000 | ||||
President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget request submitted earlier this month included $246 million for BETO—a $21-million increase from BETO’s enacted budget for FY 2015. This increase was across all Office programs: Feedstocks, Conversion Technologies, Demonstration and Market Transformation (new title; formerly “demonstration and deployment”), and Strategic Analysis and Cross-Cutting Sustainability.
Specific proposed changes in BETO program activities include the following:
Feedstocks (including Algae): Increased funding will be applied to the FY 2016 Algal Biomass Yield Phase 2 funding opportunity for up to three facilities to reduce the risk of scaling up to achieve 2,500 gallon/acre annual average yields of biofuel intermediate oil at the one-acre cultivation equivalent scale.
Conversion Technologies: The increase reflects a greater emphasis on preparing to conduct validation activities at a scale above bench scale with process integration to meet the FY 2017 research and development target (to validate a mature, modeled thermochemical conversion cost of $3.39/gallon gasoline equivalent for a combined blendstock) as technologies reach greater maturity and de-risk the technologies in preparation to release the successful projects to the Demonstration and Market Transformation Program.
Demonstration and Market Transformation: Increased funding will be applied for up to three new pilot projects or one new demonstration project that will enable the advancement of a wider array of technology pathways converting biomass feedstocks to hydrocarbon fuels.
Strategic Analysis and Cross-Cutting Sustainability: Increase funding for projects focused on improving the environmental and social benefits of bioenergy production while generating critical data on feedstock quality, logistics costs, and life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.
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