On May 16, 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that up to $10 million in funding is being given to six projects that are creating innovative solutions to advance bioenergy development. The work will support the Bioenergy Technologies Office's (BETO) goal of developing non-food biomass competitive biofuels with reduced technical investment risks. The selected projects are:
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Arizona State University, a project engineering cyanobacteria to produce ethyl laurate;
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Arizona State University, a project developing heat-tolerant mixtrophic algae that can consume both carbon dioxide (CO2) and cellulosic sugars;
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Duke University, a project to reduce construction costs for commercial scale biorefineries by making smaller reactors more productive;
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Lygos Inc., a project to develop microbial catalysts to produce renewable aspartic acid from cellulosic sugars;
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White Dogs Labs, a project to develop metabolic pathways to increase the yield of acetone from microorganisms; and
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LanzaTech Inc., a project to manufacture acetone from biobased syngas.