1 July 2013
Details
Following last week's roll out of President Obama's plan
to cut carbon pollution, the Energy Department today
announced 4 research and development projects
to bring next generation biofuels on line faster and
drive down the cost of producing
gasoline, diesel and jet fuels from biomass.
The projects represent US $ 13 million
US Energy Department investment.
The research projects announced today build on
the Obama Administration's broader efforts to
accelarate the next generation of biofuels by
* bringing down costs,
* improving performance and
* identifying effective, non-food feedstocks and
conversion technologies
These projects will
* help maximize the amount of renewable carbons and
hydrogen that can be converted to fuels from biomass
* and improve the separation processes in bio-oil production
to remove non-fuel components-further lowering production costs
The 4 Projects selected for negotiation include :
1. Ceramatec (Up to $ 3.3 million : Salt Lake City, Utah)
- Ceramatec will utilize
an efficient electrochemical deoxynation process
to develop cost effective technology
to separate oxygen from bio-oil.
- This project will help produce hydrocarbon products
suitable for further processing in
conventional petroleum refineries.
2. Oak Ridge National Laboratory ( Up to $ 2.1 million ; Tennessee)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use
a microbial electrolysis process
to efficiently remove hydrogen from the water
found in bio-oil.
- This technology will help reduce the corrosivity of bio-oil and
improve the efficiency of converting
hydrogen and biomass to biofuels.
- The University of Tennessee-Knoxville,
Georgia Institue of Technology,
Pall Corporation,
OmniTech International and
FuelCellsEtc
will also participate in this project.
3. University of Oklahoma ( Up to $ 4 million; Oklahoma)
- The University of Oklahoma will investigate two methods
* thermal fractionation and
* supercritical solvent extraction
to maximize the amount of renewable carbon and hydrogen
that can be extracted from biomass and converted to
a refinery-compatible intermediates and
suitable for final upgrading to a transportation fuel.
- The multidisciplinary research team includes
experts in catalysis, separation, life-cycle analysis and
techno-economic assessment.
4. Virent, Inc. ( Upto $ 4 million, Madison, Wisconsin)
- Virent will develop an innovative separation process
which uses its technology to efficiently convert
carbon from lignocellulosic biomass to hydrocarbons fuels.
- Virent will work to improve the overall carbon conversion
efficiency of biomass_helping
to reduce the cost of producing hydrocarbon biofuels that
* work with existing transportation fuel infrastructure and
* are capable of meeting the Renewable Fuel Standard
- Idaho National Laboratory will also bring their feedstock
pre-processing capabilities to the project.
WWW.CHEMWINFO.COM BY KHUN PHICHAI
