ROOTS, REFUEL, MARINER & Algae: DOE Invests $100M for 4 Big Shots at Liquid Transportation Fuels & Feedstocks

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) It may be a sign of the times, a sense of worry that R&D for renewable transport fuels may lose all their popularity under the incoming Trump Administration. Whatever the cause, the biggest set of projects announced in renewable fuels since the days of the Recovery Act have been just announced by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Energy) and the DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office.

MARINER

MARINER will focus on supporting the development of new approaches to cost-effective and scalable cultivation of macroalgae (seaweeds) in the oceans for the production of fuels and chemicals.

On Friday, ARPA-E announced up to $25 million in funding for a new program to significantly expand the opportunities to produce macroalgae as an economically viable, renewable feedstock for biofuel and energy applications.

The MacroAlgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources (MARINER) program will develop innovative cultivation and harvest systems and additional supporting tools necessary to produce macroalgae biomass at a scale required for fuel production and at a cost competitive with land-based biofuel feedstocks. If successful, MARINER is expected to deploy new technologies to help bolster U.S. energy security and diversify U.S. fuel sources.

The MARINER program seeks to increase macroalgae yield and expand into off-shore environments to increase the areas of deployment by two orders of magnitude above current global levels, all while significantly reducing cost. These transformational technologies could potentially enable a U.S.-based macroalgae industry capable of producing up to two quads—approximately 2 percent of U.S. primary energy consumption—of bioenergy by 2050, without competing for freshwater or farmland currently dedicated to food production. READ MORE (Algae Industry Magazine)

REFUEL

Dr. Grigorii Soloveichik is the ARPA-E-‘er behind this one. It’s about converting renewable power to fuels for storage and back to power again for electric motoring.

The Renewable Energy to Fuels Through Utilization of Energy-Dense Liquids (REFUEL) program seeks to develop scalable technologies for converting electrical energy from renewable sources into energy-dense carbon-neutral liquid fuels (CNLFs) and back into electricity or hydrogen on demand. REFUEL projects will accelerate the shift to domestically produced transportation fuels, improving American economic and energy security and reducing energy emissions.

Carbon-neutral liquid fuels as defined by REFUEL are hydrogen-rich and made by converting molecules in the air (nitrogen or carbon dioxide) and hydrogen from water into an energy-carrying liquid using renewable power. While existing fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) use pure hydrogen as a fuel, the limitations of hydrogen storage and transportation have made it difficult and expensive to build transmission, distribution, and refueling infrastructure for mass adoption of these vehicles. The CNLFs of REFUEL address these challenges by using the infrastructure already in use by traditional liquid fuels. Once the CNLF arrives at its point of use, it can be used to generate electricity in a fuel cell or produce hydrogen on demand, greatly reducing transportation and storage costs.REFUEL projects will aid in the development of energy sources that are readily produced and easily transported, like ammonia, while reducing production costs and environmental impact. Projects will enable new, efficient, scalable and cost-effective energy delivery when and where it is needed.

ROOTS

Conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide to soil organic matter (SOM) via photosynthesis and natural metabolic processes is a unique opportunity to reduce the atmospheric concentrations of important greenhouse gases while creating significant economic value. Current land management practices result in the loss of more than 75 billion tons of topsoil per year, costing the world about $400 billion annually, or about $70 per person per year. The amount of soil carbon can be increased by one of two pathways: increasing the rate of carbon additions to the soil, or reducing the rate of decomposition of organic matter already present in the soil. One potential path to increasing carbon stocks is the development of improved crops that impart more carbon into the soil through their roots or grow deeper root systems. Such plants could be deployed rapidly and at scale. Advanced root systems that increase SOM can improve soil structure, fertilizer use efficiency, water productivity, crop yield, climate resilience, and mitigate topsoil erosion—all of which provide near-term and sustained economic value. Taken over the 160 million hectares of actively managed U.S. cropland, such advances could mitigate approximately 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions annually over a multi-decade period.

If successful, developments from ROOTS projects will produce crops that will greatly increase carbon uptake in soil, helping to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, decrease N2O emissions, and improve agricultural productivity.