The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) intends to issue, on behalf of the Bioenergy Technologies Office and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Integrated Biorefinery Optimization”.
This FOA will support research and development of technologies that will improve the quality of feedstock characterization, reliability of operations, decrease the Capital Expenses (CapEx) and Operating Expenses (OpEx) and thereby increase the performance efficiencies of biorefineries resulting in continuous operation and production of biofuels, bioproducts and biopower at prices competitive with fossil-derived equivalents. Validation and scale-up of these technologies is essential to enable the industry to build future commercial scale manufacturing facilities. Plans for processes that convert woody biomass, agricultural residues, dedicated energy crops, algae, municipal solid waste (MSW), sludge from wastewater treatment plants, and wet wastes, into biofuels, biochemicals, and bioproducts will be considered under this funding opportunity.
It is anticipated that the FOA may include the following Areas of Interest:
1. Robust, continuous handling of solid materials (dry and wet feedstocks, biosolids, and/or residual solids remaining in the process) and feeding systems to reactors under various operating conditions
2. High value products from waste and/or other under-valued streams in an integrated biorefinery
3. Industrial separations within an integrated biorefinery
4. Analytical modeling of solid materials (dry and wet feedstocks, and/or residual solids remaining in the process) and reactor feeding systems
EERE envisions awarding multiple financial assistance awards in the form of cooperative agreements. The estimated period of performance for each award will be approximately 36 months.
This Notice is issued so that interested parties are aware of the EERE’s intention to issue this FOA in the near term. All of the information contained in this Notice is subject to change. EERE will not respond to questions concerning this Notice. Once the FOA has been released, EERE will provide an avenue for potential Applicants to submit questions.
EERE plans to issue the FOA on or about December 2016 via the EERE Exchange website https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/. If Applicants wish to receive official notifications and information from EERE regarding this FOA, they should register in EERE Exchange. When the FOA is released, applications will be accepted only through EERE Exchange.