The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center submitted two proposals in response to the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)
FY20 Multi-Topic Funding Opportunity Announcement this month.
An Economic Biorefinery using Food Waste from MSW
Through this proposal, NCERC is collaborating with the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. NCERC's Director of Research Dr. Yan Zhang is leading the project as the Principal Investigator (PI).
The study will develop an economic biorefinery to convert food waste into biofuel or bioproducts through a combination of waste stream pretreatment and biological conversion using a robust omnivorous conversion host Rhodosporidium toruloides. In addition, this study will investigate valorization of post-fermentation residues into an alternative aquaculture feed ingredient. This bio-chemical processing approach, using a low cost chemical method for pretreatment, and delivering high-added value chemicals and biofuel precursors, and a coproduct of aquaculture feed, has potential to reach commercialization scale.
Ecosystem Service Delivery in Complex Agroecosystems with Bioenergy Hemp
NCERC is collaborating with SIUC, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and University of Illinois at Chicago for another proposal. In this proposal, NCERC Fermentation Chemist Dr. Jie Dong will act as a Co-PI with SIUC leading the project. The 2018 Farm Bill made hemp an ordinary agricultural commodity. As a covered commodity under crop insurance, the planted hemp acreage increased 534% in 2019 as compared to 2018.
The goals of this project are to quantify the potential for hemp biomass systems to deliver ecosystem services in the temperate U.S. Midwest that include carbon sequestration, reduction of nutrient and chemical loading, erosion control, wildlife habitat; and to refine and enhance measurement systems used for ES verification and valuation. NCERC will provide technical evaluation on industrial hemp as a competitive energy crop on making drop-in fuel precursor (isopentenol) and making bioproduct for the textile industry (100% hemp jeans with hemp fiber and indigoidine as the blue dye).
NCERC would like to thank Congressman Mike Bost (IL-12), Congressman Rodney Davis (IL-13) and Congressman John Shimkus (IL-15) for their support of NCERC's proposals.
