Bracketology: Which 3 of 6 Will Win in NABC Drop-In Fuels Consortium Cut-Off?

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March 18, 2011

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) …Amongst the various projects that received support under the 2009 Recovery Act were an algal R&D consortium called the NAABB, and a drop-in biofuels R&D consortium called the NABC, of the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium.
…Within three years, the consortium’s goal is to downselect from six processing technologies to one, and have that one ready for pilot, en route to commercialization.
…This fall, the NABC will go through the Big Downselect, in which its six technology pathways will be reduced to three.
…“There is the possibility of producing bio-based crude oil equivalents which can be dropped in to the refinery process. There are refinery-ready intermediates that can, for example, be fed in. And there are finished fuels and blendstocks that can be blended directly into the pool. In all, three insertion points.
…In NABC, for example, many of the partners are working in support of several or all of the projects. That way, you get a “deeper and cheaper” investigation – equivalent in many ways to the venture capitalist’s dream that “if a company has to die, please let it die early, and for very little money.”
In NABC, Pall Corporation will address separations challenges across the process. Tesoro and BP will provide refinery integration. NREL will study process economics. NREL and Argonne National Laboratory will perform life cycle assessment; ARL and PNNL are also doing work in screening, synthesizing and processing catalysts. NREL and Washington State University will develop pretreatment, saccharification, and inhibitor mitigation strategies. Catchlight Energy and ISU—provide loblolly pine and corn stover biomass, respectively. Albemarle is screening catalysts and upgrading hydrocarbon liquids.
So, you get all this on a shared basis, as opposed to buying it all via one-to-one research partnerships and duplicating and slowing a lot of the work.

OK, who are the contenders?

Fermentation of Lignocellulosic Sugars Process Strategy …
Catalytic Conversion of Lignocellulosic Sugars Process Strategy …
Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis Process Strategy …
Hydropyrolysis Process Strategy …
Hydrothermal Liquefaction Process Strategy …
Syngas to Distillates Process Strategy …

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