DOE awards $16.7M to accelerate affordable biofuels and biochemicals: Zymochem, Invizyne, Wisconsin, OSU, MTU in the money

(City, State, Zip Code)

Monrovia, California

(91016-3412)

The project further advances a cell free production system to produce isobutanol. In this project, Invizyne will demonstrate the potential for economic and energy efficient cell-free production of the biofuel isobutanol by developing an optimized cell-free process that utilizes yellow dent corn starch coupled to energy efficient in situ separation and isolation of product, enabling the sustained production of isobutanol at high productivity over many days. Upon completion of this project, a working prototype system will be developed that can be deployed at scale to provide a commercially competitive biofuel.  Success of the project will demonstrate that cell-free biomanufacturing is an important option that complements or replaces metabolic engineering, redefining the possibilities for bioconversion technologies.

(49931-1200)

The project team aims to further develop the Solvent-Targeted Recovery and Precipitation (STRAP) process by pre-sorting and fractionating MSW (INL), followed by STRAP to remove Chlorine, Nitrogen and Sulfur contaminants to generate a clean biogenic material that will produce a cleaner syngas via gasification for SAF production via F-T synthesis. Additionally, this process will recover pure plastic resins that can be sold as a high value co-product, thus improving the overall process economics.

(43210-1132)

The project leverages prior work on coal syngas and membrane module fabrication and will develop a new amine carrier reaction chemistry for biomass derived syngas. The Facilitated Transport Membrane will reduce hydrogen sulfide (H2S) to ≤ 1 ppm while also removing ≥ 8% CO₂. The project could have significant impact on small-scale biomass/waste gasification by enabling replacement of an energy intensive and costly gas cleanup step through reduced gas cooling requirements and eliminating re-compression. This research will enable utilization of challenging feedstocks like forest residue and municipal solid waste (MSW) for producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) via gasification and F-T synthesis to support the BETO goal of economically converting domestic biomass and waste into liquid fuels.

(53706-1314)

This project will convert industrial lignin streams to adipic acid, which will be used to produce the polymer nylon-6,6 at pilot scale. A tandem chemocatalytic and biocatalytic strategy will be initiated by continuous aerobic oxidative depolymerization of lignin and continuous liquid-liquid extraction to produce aromatic monomers. The mixture of aromatic monomers will then undergo biological funneling into cis,cis-muconic acid, which is a direct precursor to adipic acid. The bioconversion process will use an engineered strain of a robust soil bacterium, Pseudomonas putida KT2440, to achieve industrially relevant titer, rate, and yield of muconic acid from lignin-derived aromatic compounds. Muconic acid will be separated from the fermentation broth and hydrogenated into adipic acid in a continuous process. Finally, the lignin-derived adipic acid will be used to synthesize nylon-6,6 on a scale suitable for full material performance testing.

San Leandro, California

(94577-1200)

This project develops bio-based Super Absorbent Polymers (‘Bio-SAP’) that are low-cost, environmentally safe, high-performing, biodegradable, and can be made using lignocellulose-derived sugars. This project develops iterative, stepwise process development in which fermentation and downstream purification operations are optimized at 10-fold jumps in scale (300 L to 3,000 L to 30,000 L). This project enables near term chemical commercialization with significant GHG reduction potential, exceeding >70% compared to incumbent and large market.