Vale Male: Big Changes at the BioEnergy Technologies Office

April 30, 2020

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... If you’ve noticed that DOE is taking on a much more fundamental bit of science than we’ve seen in the past decade — a move away from catalyzing demonstrations and scale-up and towards more fundamental questions that might unlock industry’s scale-up purse-strings via developing breakthroughs such as the valorization of lignin — well, that’s no accident.

“In the Fiscal Year 2018 budget request language,” Dr. (Johnathan) Male told us back in 2017, “there’s a desire to focus on early tech readiness levels, and we are all working through that in discussions now, in how we can have significant impacts.”

Now, we know better what BETO is there for, and that is to address early-stage technology development and fill gaps where the risks are too high for commercial companies to progress. The DOE always has intended to be a public partner leveraging private resources to fill gaps, but they are more tactical now, more targeted. Some of the projects of the past felt distinctly like the “Charge of the Light Brigade” and were manfully executed but there was an ambition imposed on them that scarcely matched the technical readiness.

Now, assessing technical readiness, probing for gaps, surgically designing programs to fill those gaps, is the mission. And BETO is now known for leveraging the resources of the US National Lab system and well as industry partners and academic labs.

Redefining Readiness

Under Dr. Male and in cooperation with DOE, BETO has reexamined and revalidated, for the first time in quite a while, its own fundamental definitions of readiness and demonstration.

As Jonathan told The Digest, “We’re looking at what you classify as development and what you classify as demonstration. For example, are you looking at demonstration the verb, or demonstration the scale? This process affords a wonderful opportunity to look at the Technical Readiness Levels and ask what they mean. Do we use the terms strictly as developed by NASA and DOD — recognizing that, in general, TRLs were set up for components, not for the integration into systems?”

“So, what if there is more than one dimension to readiness? What if there is a component readiness level and a system readiness level? That’s the kind of dialogue we are trying to unpack.”

...

Unlocking the energy in waste affordably, or die trying. Scorching the land to make a reliable, scaleable process that would produce a valuable byproduct if that was what was needed to make a viable fuel. After all, refiners sell cheap gasoline not only because petroleum is cheap but because they sell expensive chemicals refined out of the same barrel.

Of late, the focal points have been:

• R&D of feedstock supply systems that can reliably deliver industrially relevant quantities of quality feedstocks

• R&D of high productivity advanced algal systems

• R&D of conversion technologies able to efficiently process diverse and variable feedstocks into biofuels (e.g., gasoline, diesel, jet, and marine fuels), bioproducts, and biopower

• Development of integrated processes, tested and verified at engineering scale, to reduce technology uncertainties and enable industry deployment

• Crosscutting sustainability and strategic analysis of economic, social, and environmental effects to identify emerging opportunities

...

The most recent topics were:

1 Cultivation Intensification Processes for Algae: Develop technologies for outdoor algae systems that increase the harvest yield, reliability and quality of algae.
2 Biomass Component Variability and Feedstock Conversion Interface: Research to lower the cost and improve the reliability of biomass handling and preprocessing.
3 Efficient Wood Heaters: Develop technologies to reduce emissions and increase efficiency of wood heaters for residential heating.
4 Systems Research of Hydrocarbon Biofuel Technologies: Integrate new technologies and processes in experimental prototype systems to improve and verify real-world performance and lower the cost of drop-in biofuels.
5 Optimization of Biomass-Derived Jet Fuel Blends: Identify and develop cost-competitive drop-in renewable jet fuel with improved energy density and lower particulate matter emissions.
6 Renewable Energy from Urban and Suburban Wastes: Support academic research and educational programs that focus on strategies to produce bioenergy and bioproducts from urban and suburban waste feedstocks.
7 Advanced Bioprocessing and Agile BioFoundry: Reduce the time and cost of developing biological processes for biomanufacturing fuels and products through the use of synthetic biology, low capital intensity methods, and continuous production systems.
8 Plastics in the Circular Carbon Economy: Develop biobased plastics with improved performance and recyclability and lower the cost and energy-intensity of recycling existing plastics through enhanced degradation.
9 Rethinking Anaerobic Digestion: Develop anaerobic processes or alternative strategies to enhance carbon conversion efficiency and lower costs of smaller scale wet waste systems.
10 Reducing Water, Energy, and Emissions in Bioenergy: Identify biofuels or bioproducts technologies with the greatest potential for reducing water consumption, energy consumption, and/or emissions relative to existing conventional fuels or products.

...

Co-Optima. The initiative aims to accelerate the introduction of affordable, scalable, and sustainable biofuels and high-efficiency, low-emission vehicle engines. The Co-Optima initiative takes a three-pronged, integrated approach to identifying and developing:

⁃ Engines designed to run more efficiently on affordable, scalable, and sustainable fuels.
⁃ Fuels designed to work in high-efficiency, low-emissions engines.
⁃ Marketplace strategies that can shape the success of new fuels and vehicle technologies with industry and consumers.

There are seven Goals in all — and an ambitious set. DOE says that the project will provide U.S. industry with the R&D needed to:

• Reduce petroleum consumption “by billions of barrels a year”
• Improve passenger vehicle fuel economy by 50%: 15%-20% beyond the projected results of existing R&D efforts
• Deliver tens of billions of dollars in cost savings annually via improved fuel economy
• Dramatically decrease criteria pollutants and GHG emissions from the transportation sector
• Accelerate the rate of advanced biofuels deployment
• Enhance energy security through more effective use of diverse domestic energy sources
• Spur U.S. economic and technological vitality READ MORE

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Aviation Fuel/Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Department of Energy (DOE) pilot scale demonstration scale/unit scale up lignin Investing government investment grants National Laboratory Technical Readiness Levels BioRefineries/Renewable Fuel Production BioChemicals/Renewable Chemicals algae biomass feedstock logistics logistics Jetfuel (Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)) waste-to-chemicals waste-to-fuel bioenergy Waste-to-Energy synthetic biology circular economy anaerobic digester/digestion water consumption Sustainability Engine/Fuel Co-optimization optimized flex fuel vehicles E30 optimized Engine Development markets/sales marketing mileage fuel economy GHG (Greenhouse Gas Emissions) energy security

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