Heard on the Floor: Disruptive Technology, Feedstocks under the Microscope at ABLC 2017’s Opening Day

by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) ... While there were big questions, there were big answers, beginning with a panel on The Sustainable Agriculture Imperative. John Pieper from Dupont Industrial Biosciences shared their latest work with cellulosic ethanol in the corn belt and how one of the greater challenges, but most exciting, is how to get sustainable supply chains by ensuring production is not damaging the soil but in fact continuing to build the health of our soils. He noted their recent partnership with the FDA for certification of their process and for training to document soil health in the supply chain for stover removal.

Daphne Preuss, CEO of Chromatin, offered updates on sorghum even though she admits it’s not as well known in the U.S. as in other countries. She also offered some good advice on competitive landscapes and said not to think of just your feedstock’s competition but competition that your customers may be looking at that are in totally different feedstock areas. And don’t forget, farmers are also your customer and they need to believe it will be economically good for them too.

Naveen Sikka, CEO of TerViva is taking a $3,000 acre piece of land in Florida and turning it into a $5,000 piece of land. How is that possible? By planting seedlings that add value and can be used for animal feed which is in high demand. He noted that problems won’t be solved by monochromatic planting, as investors want disruptive technologies – something that will help deal with climate change, like nascent land use, environment where many crops are co-existing, no nutrients added, low water, and self feeding ag.

If you didn’t think the renewable chemicals market was going anywhere, think again. It’s at $49 billion today with expected growth to $84 billion over the next 5 years, according to Jeff Robert, Director of Technology Deployment at Fluid Quip Process Technologies. He focused on cereal grains which won’t be going away anytime soon and have lots of varieties and versatility, and on the biochem side he announced for first time publicly that they are the new front end technology provider for GreenBiologics, for upstream providing a clean sugar stream. READ MORE

Brian Davison, Chief Scientist for Systems Biology at the Bioenergy Science Center Oak Ridge National Lab highlighted recent research on improving low recalcitrance feedstocks and results of their field trials, population studies, and more. While not resolved completely, it shows it can be manipulated and thus can improve feedstocks.

Quang Nguyen from the Idaho National Laboratory ended the day with a hand outstretched to the audience saying their new user facility can help with biomass processing and handling research for testing your feedstocks. READ MORE