DOE to fund six biorefinery projects at pilot/demo scale

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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.
(Lanzatech press release)
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.

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