Energy and Carbon Optimized Synthesis for the Bioeconomy

Resource Efficiency
Transportation Fuels

Status:
Active
Release Date:
Project Count:
16

Program Description:

The ECOSynBio program aims to promote the use of advanced synthetic biology tools to engineer novel biomass conversion platforms and systems. These systems will be designed to use external energy inputs to substantially increase carbon use, versatility, and efficiency while achieving economies of scale for industrial applications. Successful platforms will offer new capacities for the bioeconomy by enabling fully carbon-optimized renewable fuel and chemical synthesis with maximum carbon and resource efficiency.

Proposed systems of interest include, among others: (1) carbon-optimized fermentation strains that avoid CO2 waste, (2) engineered organisms that can use a mix of different sources of energy and carbon, and avoid evolving CO2, (3) biomass-derived sugar or carbon oxide gas fermentation with internal CO2 recycling, (4) cell-free carbon-optimized biocatalytic biomass conversion and/or CO2 use, (5) cross-cutting carbon-optimized bioconversion methods not otherwise described but having the potential for high-impact emissions reductions. All systems will need to be engineered to accommodate external reducing equivalents to optimize the carbon flux and overall system carbon efficiency relative to traditional fermentation or other bioconversion pathways (i.e., the sum of the recoverable energy products should be greater than the energy content of the primary carbon feedstock). Applicants are encouraged to use external reducing equivalent sources that can be produced electrocatalytically using H2O, CO2, or both.

Innovation Need:

A robust and sustainable bioeconomy can only be realized through the industrial-scale, carbon-neutral synthesis of fuels, chemicals, and materials. Ethanol biofuel, along with a growing number of other plant-based products, are made almost exclusively via fermentation, the age-old technology that can also produce wine, beer, and cheese. Current methods for ethanol production can waste more than a third of the carbon in the feedstock as carbon dioxide in the fermentation step alone. This waste adds greenhouse gas emissions, limits product yields, and squanders valuable carbon feedstock. Preventing the loss of carbon as CO2 during bioconversion, or potentially incorporating external CO2 into bioconversions, would revolutionize bioprocessing: the yield per unit input would increase greater than 50%.

Potential Impact:

The sustainable use of renewable biomass for energy, intermediate, and final products---i.e., the “bioeconomy”—provides economic, environmental, social, and national security benefits and offers a promising means of carbon management.


Security:

If successful, the new technologies are expected to catalyze new conversion platforms for biofuels and other high-volume bioproducts that are capable of promoting U.S. energy security by increasing recoverable product from the same mass of feedstock through the avoidance of wasting carbon in the form of CO2.

Environment:

This program will fund cutting-edge technologies to de-risk the engineering of carbon optimized bioconversion pathways that prevent the production of CO2. For example, more than a third of feedstock is wasted as CO2 in SOA conversions of sugar to ethanol.

Economy:

The technologies funded by this program can increase the potential bioproduct output by more than 40% without requiring another square inch of land or pound of feedstock, while catalyzing the next generation of carbon optimized bio-based manufacturing.

Contact

Program Director:
Dr. Steven Singer;Dr. Kirk Liu;Dr. James Seaba;Dr. David Babson
Press and General Inquiries Email:
ARPA-E-Comms@hq.doe.gov

Project Listing

• Circe Bioscience - Circularizing Industries by Raising Carbon Efficiency
• Harvard University - CIRCE: Circularizing Industries by Raising Carbon Efficiency
• Invizyne Technologies - Carbon Negative Chemical with Synthetic Biochemistry
• LanzaTech - Carbon-Negative Chemical Production Platform
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Zero-Carbon Biofuels: An Optimized Two-Stage System for High Productivity Conversion of CO2 to Liquid Fuels
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) - Formate as an Energy Source to Allow Sugar Fermentation with No Net CO2 Generation: Integration of Electrochemistry with Fermentation
• Stanford University - Disruptive Technology for Carbon Negative Commodity Biochemicals
• The Ohio State University - A Novel Integrated Fermentation Process with Engineered Microbial Consortia for Butanol Production from Lignocellulose Sugars without CO2 Emission
• University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) - A Microbial Consortium Enabling Complete Feedstock Conversion
• University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) - Carbon-Efficient Conversion of Carboxylic Acids to Fuels and Chemicals
• University of Delaware (UD) - Bioenergy Production Based on an Engineered Mixotrophic Consortium for Enhanced CO2 Fixation
• University of Minnesota (UMN) - Cell-free Bioelectrocatalytic Platform for Carbon Dioxide Reduction
• University of Washington (UW) - Self-Assembling Cell-Free Systems for Scalable Bioconversion
• University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) - Acetate as a Platform for Carbon-Negative Production of Renewable Fuels and Chemicals
• ZymoChem - Development of a Bio-electrochemical Hybrid Fermentation Technology for the Carbon Conserving Production of Industrial Chemicals
• ZymoChem - Development of Carbon-Conserving Biosynthetic Systems Co-Utilizing C1 and Biomass Derived Feedstocks