Date and Time
Location
Join the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) for a meeting on “Biomanufacturing for Bio-Advantaged Fuels,” August 16, 2022, 12–3 p.m. ET.
Biofuel molecules commercialized to date primarily rely on high-flux metabolic pathways to native products, including short-chain alcohols and long-chain fatty acid derivatives. These pathways are well-suited for rapid deployment but result in a limited suite of biofuel candidates and associated fuel properties.
Continued advances in synthetic biology create the potential for enhanced tunability of molecular structures, leveraging the specificity of biological pathways for targeted improvements to chemical properties. These improvements can yield performance advantages over incumbent bio- and petrochemical fuels, including enhancements to:
- Energy density
- Cold flow
- Research octane number
- Soot formation
- Octane sensitivity.
Alternatively, new fuels may be engineered for production advantages, including reduced toxicity or enhanced separability. To illustrate these possibilities, researchers at LBNL will describe recent advances in:
- Bio-advantaged fuel production
- Coupling fuel properties modeling
- Metabolic engineering
- Process development
- Scale-up.
The meeting will be moderated by Eric Sundstrom, research scientist at LBNL’s Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU), and will feature the following speakers:
- David Carruthers, postdoctoral researcher, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) will provide an overview of the development of performance and production-advantaged isoprenoid alcohols and isoprenoid alcohol esters.
- Carolina Barcelos, senior process engineer, (LBNL-ABPDU) – Will discuss the scale-up of volatile product capture for sustainable aviation fuels and precursors.
- Pablo Cruz Morales, senior researcher, Technical University of Denmark Biosustain (formerly project scientist at LBNL) will speak to biosynthesis of ultra-high energy density polycyclopropanated fatty acid methyl esters (POP-FAMEs).
Register for this meeting.