Transportation Fuels

The University of Minnesota will design a cell-free biocatalytic system that will reduce CO2 efficiently into formate, an important feedstock for chemicals and fuels, with energy supplied from electricity. Renewable electricity is now competitive with and in many instances less expensive than fossil fuel-derived electricity, but its storage remains challenging. Energy storage in chemical bonds through electricity-driven carbon reduction offers higher energy densities and greater safety and transportability than batteries.

Johns Hopkins University aims to catalytically convert low-cost #3-7 plastic mixtures into para-xylene, one of the most valuable hydrocarbon products. Johns Hopkins' primary design of the hydrocracking process first converts hydrocarbon plastics selectively to volatile hydrocarbons with xylene isomers as the predominant products. Then a post-reaction separation unit derives pure para-xylene as the desired product. The unit allows recycling of the residual H2 and possibly other hydrocarbons back to the hydrocracker.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a significant greenhouse gas that, once emitted, has 300 times more heat-trapping capability than CO2 on a 100-year timescale. It also depletes the ozone layer. Michigan Aerospace Corporation proposes to develop an inexpensive system to sense N2O emissions from agricultural fields using laser-based sensors mounted on drones. These sensors include an optical absorption cell, a short-range miniature wind LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging), and a camera for plant health and ground assessment.

The University of Illinois will develop a commercial solution, SYMFONI, to estimate soil organic carbon (SOC) and the dynamics of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions at an individual field level to promote advanced carbon management and sustainability practices in agricultural systems. The solution can be scaled up to perform per-field estimates for an entire region.

Argonne National Laboratory is developing a low-temperature catalytic upcycling process for converting post-consumer plastic wastes made of polyethylene or polypropylene polymers to premium synthetic lubricants. Argonne’s hydrogenolysis (decomposition of a compound resulting from its interaction with hydrogen) catalyst technology converts these polymers to the desired lubricant product with high selective and near-quantitative yields, and with negligible formation of light gases.

Western Research Institute will explore technologies based on pyrolysis (thermal conversion) and hydrocracking (a chemical process that upgrades low-quality, heavy gas oils) to convert waste, low-value plastic, and paper polymers into high-energy liquid products suitable as fuel, refinery feedstock, or feed for chemicals manufacturing. The pyrolysis technologies involve heating the polymers in oil media to a temperature high enough to break the chemical bonds to produce a liquid product.

The University of Utah aims to develop and deploy a distributed carbon sensor system that is buried into the soil, capable of locally stimulating a surrounding volume of soils at multiple depths, and sensing carbon and carbon flux at ultra-low operational cost. The sensors will enable high-accuracy and real-time decision data for cost-effective carbon removal, storage, and management to promote climate change mitigation via agriculture and managed land systems.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) CARBON STANDARD team will develop advanced machine learning tools for a cross-scale quantification of carbon intensity (CI) during biofuel feedstock production. LBL will act as the integrator across all SMARTFARM teams to analyze complex, multi-physics, and multi-scale datasets, and develop scaling approaches across the variety of CI monitoring fields.

Oklahoma State University (OSU) will synthesize scientific principles from eddy covariance (a method enabling observation of gas and energy exchange between ecosystems at earth’s surface and the atmosphere), plant and soil science, remote sensing, and crop modeling to measure field-level emissions. The OSU-led team will collect data for field-level emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane in grain sorghum production systems in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

The University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL) will leverage existing data sets and new data collection methodologies to quantify fertilizer- and biomass-induced emissions, biomass nitrogen content, carbon dioxide uptake, and soil organic carbon sequestered—while providing agronomic management insights to farmers, farming communities, and agricultural supply chains. This team will use eddy covariance flux towers and static chamber methods to quantify field-scale emissions, while using active chambers to quantify fertilizer and soil surface biomass emissions.