National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

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 oxidation of formate to CO2 provides the reducing equivalents necessary for the fermentation and enables potentially all the carbon within the sugar to be converted to FAME. The fermentation technology continuously uses the electrochemically generated formate, which is stored in a surge tank decoupled from bioproduction. The tank is part of a novel chemical looping reactor system that allows the team to take advantage of intermittent low-cost renewable electricity.

The application of biology to sustainable uses of waste carbon resources for the generation of energy, intermediates, and final products---i.e., supplanting the “bioeconomy”—provides economic, environmental, social, and national security benefits and offers a promising means of carbon management.