Resource Efficiency

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of Oregon, Genomatica, and DeNora will generate low-cost and low-carbon-intensity fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) feedstock to generate renewable diesel and sustainable jet fuel. The team’s biorefining concept uses electrochemically generated formate as a universal energy carrier to facilitate a carbon-optimized sugar assimilation fermentation to synthesize FAME without release of CO2.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has demonstrated a two-stage system where acetate is produced from CO2 and H2 via acetogenic fermentation in the first stage and then fed to the yeast reactor for converting acetate to lipids or alkanes. MIT proposes to reduce or eliminate CO2 generation during lipid production by (1) engineering an oleaginous yeast with the enzymes necessary to generate reducing equivalents from hydrogen, formic acid, or methanol, and (2) installing a carbon-conserving non-oxidative glycolysis.

Invizyne Technologies proposes an electrically powered cell-free enzymatic approach for upgrading ethanol into more useful chemicals. Because carbon for 99% of organic chemicals is petroleum-derived, replacing petroleum carbon with carbon captured from the atmosphere could greatly mitigate carbon emissions. Atmospheric CO2 represents a potentially limitless source of inexpensive carbon, but there are significant challenges to converting captured CO2 into useful chemicals and fuels.

ZymoChem will develop carbon- and energy-efficient biocatalysts capable of co-conversion of one-carbon molecules and biomass-derived substrates to a high-volume platform fuel and chemical intermediate. The team will demonstrate a carbon-conserving process decoupling growth and production. Most bioprocesses using microbes and renewable feedstocks to make fuels and chemicals are unprofitable, precluding their adoption on the industrial scale.

Stanford University is developing a commercially attractive, scalable, carbon-negative technology for producing commodity biochemicals. Glucose, carbon dioxide (CO2), and electricity will provide the required atoms and energy for carbon-negative, energy-positive production. Instead of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, this new approach will enable use of atmospheric CO2 and glucose obtained from cornstarch to produce renewable fuels and chemicals.

The University of Washington will develop cell-free (in vitro) platforms that produce functional multi-enzyme systems and perform the cost-effective bioconversion of CO2 into industrial chemicals. Cell-free transcription-translation (TXTL) is a popular, robust approach for producing cell-free biocatalytic systems capable of complex, multi-enzyme reactions.

The University of California, Irvine, proposes a cell-free enzymatic process as the first biological platform to convert carboxylic acids into a broad range of fuels and commodities with greater than 100% carbon efficiency. This is achieved using stabler bioenergy-storage and transmission molecules and specially engineered enzymes. Natural biological pathways for carboxylic acid conversion suffer from a low carbon yield, however.

ZymoChem has created fermentation processes that convert sugars into polymer precursors using microorganisms with novel enzyme-based pathways that avoid the loss of the sugar’s carbon as CO2. ZymoChem will develop two transformational innovations that combine (1) inexpensive metal catalysts from abundant metals for converting electricity and CO2 into formate and (2) electricity-compatible fermentation systems that enable microbes to co-utilize formate and sugars for the production of a high-volume platform fuel and chemical intermediate.

The University of Delaware aims to develop a platform technology based on synthetic syntrophic consortia of Clostridium microbes to enable fast and efficient use of renewable carbohydrates to produce targeted metabolites as biofuels or chemicals. In this syntrophic microbial consortium, two microbial species are co-cultured, allowing the different species to divide individual bioconversion steps and reduce their individual metabolic burden.

8 Rivers Capital seeks to enhance the profitability and responsiveness of gas turbine generators in high variable renewable energy environments. This project would retrofit existing plants with Exhaust Gas Recycle (EGR) and a novel phase-change solvent CO₂ capture system known as UNO MK3, offering a lower cost pathway than new gas turbines with capture. The UNO MK3 process captures 90% of exhaust gas CO2 using a benign precipitating solvent at high concentration to reduce circulation rates and decrease energy usage.