The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced on May 22, 2024, that it awarded $2.18 million in funding to four additional projects as part of the Feedstock-Conversion Interface Consortium (FCIC) 2023 Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) call. BETO states that the FCIC, funded and led by BETO, is a consortium of researchers at nine national laboratories dedicated to reducing the technical risks of biorefinery scale-up. BETO notes that this funding opportunity included competitively selected CRADAs between FCIC partner laboratories and partners from industry and academia interested in leveraging the capabilities of the FCIC.

Partnering laboratory researchers will collaborate with award recipients to understand, quantify, and mitigate the impact of feedstock variability across the bioenergy and bioproduct value chains. The following projects were selected:

• Alder Renewables and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will work together to understand the impact of feedstock variability on bio-oil produced in the Alder Renewable Crude process;
• Novastus will work jointly with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to understand better the impact of municipal solid waste (MSW) variability in Novastus’s unique drying process;
• VERDE Nanomaterials will collaborate with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and NREL to improve VERDE’s novel lignocellulosic nanofibril production process; and
• West Biofuels and NREL will team up to investigate the impact of feedstock variability on the performance of the West Biofuels fluidized-bed gasification system.