4 Corners Biocarbon Alliance

1
4 Corners Biocarbon Alliance

• Sustainable carbon and energy from biorenewables
• Production
• Processing
• Utilization
• Environmental and Economic Assessment
• Education

2
Participants and Contacts

• KSU Center for Biobased Polymers by Design -
  Sun Bioprocessing Industrial Value-Added Program
• MU Bioprocessing and Biosensing Center - Tan
• ISU Office of Biorenewables Programs - Brown
• UNL NE Center for Energy Sciences Research -
  Cassman
• KU Center for Environmentally Beneficial
  Catalysis - Subramaniam Transportation Research
  Institute
• Diverse interdisciplinary groups at each
  institution (Agriculture, Engineering, Basic
  Sciences, Logistics, Transportation, Economics,
  Policy)

Designates contact representative at each
institution
3
Challenges to Sustainabilty

• Water use
• Reducing fossil fuel use
• Nutrient redistribution
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Educating students about sustainability
• Public outreach
• Improved energy efficiency
• New materials and fuels from renewable carbon
• Soil and water quality
• Producing both food and fuel

4
Advantages for proposal development

• Education
• Rural development
• Connectivity to national labs and industry
• Center of feedstock production
• Policy development for the transition to the
  bioenergy economy
• Systems approach

5
Targets for State Support

• Study group to assess current biofuels/bio-based
  products sustainability
• Workshops to identify and develop new models for
  sustainable carbon and energy from biorenewables
• Virtual college of biorenewables
• Coordinated strategic plan for expertise and
  physical infrastructure
• Memoranda of understanding among the institutions

6
Targets for Federal Support

• IT infrastructure for real time collaborative
  research and education
• National center for production-scale
  environmental assessment of biorenewable
  feedstocks
• High-throughput screening of feedstocks catalysts
  and media for process development
• University/industry consortia for transport,
  handling and storage
• Midwest alliance for biocarbon science and
  engineering
• National standards for life cycle assessment

7
Plan for advancement

• White paper for research offices
• Support of state governments
• Workshop for proposal development

8
KU Strengths and Resources

• Multiscale infrastructure and expertise for
  catalysis and process engineering research for
  biomass conversion (NSF ERC)
• Transportation research for biofuel testing,
  standards, engine performance and emissions
• Partnerships with a dozen leading chemical and
  energy companies

9
KSU - Strengths and Resources

• Laboratory and pilot scale biorefinery facilities
  and instrumentation (bioconversion and thermal
  processing)
• Integrated interdisciplinary team for bio-based
  polymer synthesis, processing, and product design
• Renewable materials handling and storage

10
MU - Strengths and Resources

• Bio-based products research facilities
• Soybean and corn genomics
• Biodiesel applications research

11
ISU - Strengths and Resources

• Thermochemical processing
• Economics and policy
• Soybean Corn genomics

12
UNL - Strengths and Resources

• Production scale research facilities expertise
  for research in environmental sustainability
• Catalysis for bioconversions
• Soybean genetics and biotechnology for improved
  biodiesel production

13
Biorefinery

• Biofuels and biobased materials, transportation
  fuels. Fine chemical synthesis, biomass is the
  feedstock of the future.
• Biomass to biocrude preliminary steps in
  biorefining (cellulose breakdown, lignin
  processing, oil separation).
• Second generation biofuels (mixed alcohols, fatty
  acid cracking).
• Subregional approach to diversified biofuel
  generation
• Byproduct utilization (these byproducts are now
  going to be produced on huge scales (like
  glycerol), how do we turn these byproducts into
  useful products?
• Thermochemical processing of biomass.

14
Feedstocks for Energy Production

• Optimization of agricultural production for
  energy
• Production systems development
• Distributed direct conversion of biomass to high
  value liquid fuels
• Carbon sequestration
• Genetics

15
Funding Opportunities

• Pooled State Funds
• Farm Bill
• DOE
• NSF
• Private Foundations
• Industry

16
Resource Needs

• Current capabilities are not integrated
• IT infrastructure for data transfer
• Memorandum of understanding among the
  universities
• Multi-institutional curricular agreements

17
Infrastructure

• Cyberinfrastructure (teaching and on-line process
  optimization)
• Seminar series
• Retreat for faculty
• Existing agricultural production facilities
• Biomaterials laboratories

18
Sustainability

• Role of agriculture in global climate change
• Environmental sustainability of biofuels
• Verifiable reduction in green house gas emissions
• Soil and water quality
• Energy efficiency
• Transportation
• Methodology development for assessing
  environmental impact at the systems level