DOE awards $228 million for solar liquid fuels, algae, CO2-to-products
In Washington, the US Department of Energy announced the award of $228 million, including $122 million to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight, and $106 million for six projects that convert industrial CO2 emissions into fuel, plastics, cement, and fertilizers.
The Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub is one of three Hubs that will receive funding in FY10. The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), to be led by the Cal Tech in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The goal of the Hub is to develop an integrated solar energy-to-chemical fuel conversion system and move this system from the bench-top discovery phase to a scale where it can be commercialized. JCAP research will be directed at the discovery of the functional components necessary to assemble a complete artificial photosynthetic system: light absorbers, catalysts, molecular linkers, and separation membranes.
The Hub will then integrate those components into an operational solar fuel system and develop scale-up strategies to move from the laboratory toward commercial viability.
In addition to the major partners, Cal Tech and Berkeley Lab, other participating institutions include SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford, California; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Irvine; and the University of California, San Diego.
More on the Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub
The $106 million for CO2-to-products grants will be matched by $156 million in private cost shares. The projects were initially selected for a first phase funding in October 2009 as part of a $1.4 billion effort to capture CO2 from industrial sources for storage or beneficial use.
The selected projects now enter a second phase in which researchers design, construct, and operate their innovations at pilot-scale and evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of applying them commercially.
Two of the six projects involve the conversion of CO2 to biofuels. The projects selected include:
Touchstone Research Laboratory (Triadelphia, W. Va.)—DOE Share: $6,239,542. This project will pilot-test an open-pond algae production technology that can capture at least 60 percent of flue gas CO2 from an industrial coal-fired source to produce biofuel and other high value co-products. A novel phase change material incorporated in Touchstone’s technology will cover the algae pond surface to regulate daily temperature, reduce evaporation, and control the infiltration of invasive species. Lipids extracted from harvested algae will be converted to a bio-fuel, and an anaerobic digestion process will be developed and tested for converting residual biomass into methane. The host site for the pilot project is Cedar Lane Farms in Wooster, Ohio.
Phycal (Highland Heights, Ohio)—DOE Share: $24,243,509. Phycal will complete development of an integrated system designed to produce liquid biocrude fuel from microalgae cultivated with captured CO2. The algal biocrude can be blended with other fuels for power generation or processed into a variety of renewable drop-in replacement fuels such as jet fuel and biodiesel. Phycal will design, build, and operate a CO2-to-algae-to-biofuels facility at a nominal thirty acre site in Central O’ahu (near Wahiawa and Kapolei), Hawaii. Hawaii Electric Company will qualify the biocrude for boiler use, and Tesoro will supply CO2 and evaluate fuel products.
More Coverage on this Topic
Category: News Analysis, Top Stories
FREE Subscription
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive the Biofuels Digest email newsletter - the world's most widely read biofuels daily.
Comments (0)
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed
There are no comments yet. Why not be the first to speak your mind.