DOE to fund six biorefinery projects at pilot/demo scale
The US DOE Bioenergy
Technologies Office (BETO) communicated its intention of issuing a Funding
Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Project Definition for Pilot and
Demonstration Scale Manufacturing of Biofuels, Bioproducts, and Biopower
(PD2B3)” on 15th April of last year (see post
of the BR Blog). This FOA was issued shortly after and the projects selected
were announced just before the end of the year (see US
DOE press release, December 28th).
These projects, required to share the cost at a
minimum of 50%, will be evaluated in two phases. Award recipients will design
and plan their facilities in Phase 1. In order to continue to Phase 2, projects
will be evaluated on Phase 1 progress, as well as the ability to secure the
required 50% cost share funding for Phase 2. DOE anticipates Phase 2 awards to
be made in fiscal year 2018 to construct and operate the pilot- or
demonstration-scale facility. Projects could receive additional federal funds
of up to $15 million for pilot-scale facilities or $45 million for demonstration-scale
facilities. The six Phase 1 projects will utilize thermochemical, biochemical,
algal and hybrid conversion technologies to generate the data required to
enable future commercial-scale facilities. The table below shows the information
available about them.
Figure 1. AVAPCO R&D facility in Thomaston
(extracted from AVAPCO web page). AVAPCO is the leader of one of the projects
awarded.
Companies
|
Scale
|
Funding
|
Biorefinery model
|
AVAPCO (Atlanta, Georgia)
Partners:
Byogy and Genomatica.
|
Demonstration
|
$3.7
million
|
Feedstock:
woody biomass.
Products:
jet fuel, cellulosic renewable diesel and other bioproducts.
Technology:
combination of biomass-to-ethanol (AVAPCO) and alcohol-to-jet (Byogy).
|
LanzaTech (Skokie, Illinois). Partners: Aemetis, Ambitech,
Audi, PNNL,
CRI Catalyst Company, Gardner Denver Nash, Michigan Technological University, Nexceris and Petron Scientech.
|
Demonstration
|
$4
million
|
Feedstock:
industrial waste gases from steel manufacturing.
Products
and capacity: 3 million gallons per year of low-carbon jet and diesel fuels.
Technology:
combination of “Lanzanol” (low cost ethanol intermediate) production and alcohol-to-jet.
|
Global Algae Innovations (San Diego,
California)
|
Pilot
|
$1.2
million
|
Feedstock:
algae.
Product: algae
biofuel.
Technology:
open pond cultivation with improved productivity and more energy-efficient
algae harvest (Zobi Harvester™).
|
ThermoChem Recovery International (Baltimore,
Maryland)
|
Pilot
|
$0.8
million
|
Feedstock:
woody waste and agricultural feedstocks.
Product:
transportation fuels.
Technology:
Gasification.
|
Rialto
Bioenergy (Carlsbad, California)
|
Pilot
|
$2
million
|
Feedstock:
300 tons per day of biomass (food extracted from MSW and wastewater treatment
plant biosolids).
Products:
high-nutrient fertilizer and up to 6.4 MW of carbon-negative, renewable
biopower.
Technology:
pyrolysis.
|
Water Environment & Reuse Foundation
(Alexandria, Virginia)
|
Pilot
|
$1.2
million
|
Feedstock:
wastewater treatment plant sludge.
Product: biocrude
oil (when upgraded can produce a variety of fuels including gasoline, jet
fuel and diesel), biogas (to offset power needs in the plant or to be sold to
the grid) and fertilizer.
|
Also, I seize this post to comment that the DOE
Office
of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the DOE BETO and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture
(NIFA) have already announced the joint funding opportunity to support
Integrated Biorefinery Optimization (see previous
post reporting on the intention of issuing this FOA) .
Closing Date: Monday, April 3, 2017.
Funding Opportunity Number: DE-FOA-0001689.
Estimated Total Program Funding: $2,900,000.
See additional details and interesting links here.
