DOE Provides $21M for Cellulosic Biofuels Production
September 10, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will provide up to $21 million for five projects that will develop supply systems to handle and deliver high tonnage biomass feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels production.
The projects were selected to stimulate the design and demonstration of a system to handle the harvesting, collection, preprocessing, transport and storage of sufficient volumes of sustainably produced feedstocks, according to DOE.
Feedstocks or combinations of feedstocks that were considered include agricultural residues, energy crops (such as switchgrass), miscanthus, energy cane, sorghum, poplar and willow, forest resources (such as forest thinnings, wood chips, wood wastes and small diameter trees) and urban wood wastes.
Projects selected for negotiation of awards include:
- Agco Corp. (up to $5 million) - Will seek to demonstrate the viability of the densified, large square bale (LSB) as a means for supplying high tonnage biomass feedstocks to cellulosic biofuel processors. Agco plans to use the LSB supply system to fulfill the feedstocks needs of biorefineries in Iowa, Kansas and Texas.
The project will deploy, evaluate and improve upon an industrial-scale feedstock supply chain capable of provisioning crop residues and herbaceous energy crops to biorefineries in the densified format. Throughout the course of the project, the company will demonstrate stages of the biomass supply chain, beginning with field harvest and continuing through storage and preprocessing.
- Auburn University (up to $4.9 million) - Will work with producers of forest biomass for energy in Alabama to design and demonstrate a system to harvest, process and transport woody biomass from southern pine plantations.
Specific project objectives are to develop design improvements in tree-length harvesting machines for energy plantations, configure and assemble a harvesting and transportation system for biomass and demonstrate and document performance of the harvesting, storage, preprocessing and transportation system.
- FDC Enterprises Inc. (up to $4.9 million) - Will target Abengoa Bioenergy's cellulosic biorefinery, which is under development in Kansas. FDC's plans to complete design, fabrication and demonstration of three types of new harvest and biomass handling machines, including a single-pass mowing and baling operation, a bale-picking truck and a self-loading trailer.
Annual demonstration harvests will be performed on large-acre tracts of biomass feedstocks. Available plots of energy crops, including miscanthus and biosorghum, will also be harvested.
- Genera Energy (up to $4.9 million) - Will supply low-moisture switchgrass with a bulk-format system. The project aims for an overall process where switchgrass is dry chopped into bulk format on the farm, hauled to a nearby satellite location, stored in a protective facility, bulk compacted into a trailer and hauled (80 kilometers) for unloading at the handling unit of the biorefinery.
- SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry of Syracuse (up to $1.3 million) - Will build on existing collaborative efforts among the project partners to develop, test and deploy a single-pass cut-and-chip harvester combined with a handling, transportation and storage system that is operative in a range of different short-rotation wood crops (SRWC) production systems throughout North America.
The system aims to reduce the costs associated with harvesting and transportation, provide material to meet end-user specifications, improve environmental attributes and accelerate the deployment of SRWC.
More information about the Biomass Project is available from the DOE.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).