Smart Energy News

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday announced it is investing up to $16.5 million for two research and development initiatives aimed at expanding production of transportation bio fuels.

The first program will fund up to $12 million over three years for four projects to develop technologies for the thermochemical conversion of biomass into biofuels that are compatible with existing fueling infrastructure. A second program provides up to $4.5 million for three projects that support research focused on “designing landscapes that produce bioenergy feedstock while protecting air, soil, water, and wildlife resources and enhancing ecosystem services,” according to the announcement.

The following are the individual projects selected for funding:

• North Carolina State University will receive up to $2 million for its project with sites in Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina that will evaluate the impacts on hydrology, water quality, wildlife, plant diversity, soil productivity, carbon budgeting, economics, and safety of biomass feedstock cultivation.

• Purdue University will receive up to $1.6 million for its project that will conduct a sustainability assessment of multiple species of energy crops including miscanthus, switchgrass, and hybrid poplar, and examine the impacts of removing of crop residues within two watersheds in the Upper Midwest.

• The University of Minnesota will receive up to $790,000 for its project that will analyze the Mississippi River watershed using a set of models to help stakeholders make informed decisions about what bioenergy feedstocks to use, where to produce or collect them, and what environmental impacts they will have in terms of climate change or other environmental shifts.

• W. R. Grace & Co. will receive up to $3.3 million for processing bio-oils to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuels.

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will receive up to $3.1 million on a collaboration with Albemarle Corp. and UOP, a Honeywell company, in a three-year project to develop better processes to upgrade pyrolysis oil to hydrocarbon fuels. The goal of the project is to produce hydrocarbon fuels from bio-oil that are interchangeable with gasoline, diesel or jet fuels produced from petroleum.

• Gas Technology Institute will receive up to $2.4 million for a project to demonstrate demonstrate long-term processing and catalyst stability in an automated, integrated pilot plant that converts biomass directly to gasoline and diesel fuel.

• Battelle Memorial Institute will receive up to $3.2 million to develop catalysts and an integrated process tailored to upgrade pyrolysis bio-oil, demonstrate system operation for more than 1,000 hours using a single catalyst charge, and produce a final product that can be blended to 30% by weight with petroleum fuels or that is compatible with existing petroleum refining operations.