A new wave of innovation is advancing the commercialization of cellulosic biofuels. This has been prompted in part by the need to diversify our nation’s energy supplies away from imported oil, and in part by the rising costs of gasoline, diesel and other fuels.
Cellulosic biofuels offer unique opportunities to turn inexpensive feedstocks into energy without competing with traditional food sources, drawing on anything from forest waste to plants grown specifically for this market.
With NextEnergy’s help, key Michigan stakeholders are advancing the research and development of new technologies and processes in this emerging industry.
If you are engaged in similar activities, contact us to ask how we can help you.
Cellulosic Biofuels from Plant Products
With funding from the US Department of Defense, NextEnergy is working with the Defense Logistics Agency and the company Working Bugs to develop scalable pretreatment and fermentation processes to produce fuel-grade butanol and ethanol.
The system uses non-pathogenic bacteria to convert sugars in the feedstocks to create the biofuels. Feedstocks can vary from row crops and root crops to grasses and woody biomass.
For more information, please
read more here.
Biomass Gasification
With funding from the US Department of Energy, NextEnergy is partnering with the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the University of Michigan, and Energy Technology Consultants to develop gaseous hydrogen fuels for fuel cell applications.
The project includes the development, design, construction and operation of a prototype modular reforming reactor configuration capable of converting gasified product streams of varying composition into hydrogen rich SOFC-quality syngas, and to develop a conceptual design of a small-scale, compact, modular reactor system integrating the reforming reactor with upstream components capable of converting feedstocks from a wide variety of locally-accessible sources into hydrogen.