On January 6, 2017, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and USDA announced a $22.7 million funding opportunity to support integrated biorefinery (IBR) optimization, with DOE providing up to $19.8 million and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) providing up to $2.9 million . To date, there are only a limited number of pioneer-scale commercial IBRs in the early stages of start-up and production, due to the technical and non-technical challenges associated with the reliable and continuous operation of IBRs. The funding opportunity will be jointly managed by the DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and USDA-NIFA to address the barriers impeding the wider deployment of highly efficient IBR facilities, including increased capital, operational expenses, and scale-up complications. Projects will be selected from the following topic areas:
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Robust, continuous handling of solid materials (dry and wet feedstocks, biosolids, and/or residual solids remaining in the process) and feeding systems to reactors under various operating conditions;
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High value products from waste and/or other under-valued streams in an IBR;
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Industrial separations within an IBR; and
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Analytical modeling of solid materials (dry and wet feedstocks, and/or residual solids remaining in the process) and reactor feeding systems. |
The submission deadline for concept papers is February 6, 2017, and the submission deadline for full applications is April 3, 2017.
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