NREL teams with Colombia on residue-based ethanol

In Colorado, the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is working with Ecopetrol, the largest oil company in Colombia, to process the residue from sugar cane and palm oil harvesting into fuel ethanol for blending with gasoline.

The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between NREL and Ecopetrol aims to optimize the conversion process for bagasse (the material left over after the sugars are removed from the sugar cane) and to analyze the economic case for commercial production of biofuel from these materials. The CRADA will also include some limited study on palm rachis — the material left over after palm oil production.

The $2.3 million 18-month project is being funded by Ecopetrol, which turned to NREL for its expertise on conversion of biomass, its compositional analysis and techno-economic analysis capabilities, and NREL’s unique facilities. NREL has a pilot plant at its Golden, Colo., campus that has conversion capabilities from lab scale to pilot scale, processing up to one ton per day of biomass – everything from corn stover to switchgrass and poplar trees.