Energy Department Awards $7 Million to Advance Bioenergy Feedstocks

The Energy Department on December four announced up to $7 million for 2 plans aimed at developing and demonstrating ways to reduce the cost of delivering bioenergy feedstocks to biorefineries. Examples of bioenergy feedstocks include corn stover, switchgrass, and woody biomass. The projects, located in New York and Tennessee, will focus on developing advanced machinery for efficient and low-cost harvesting, collection, and transportation of high-quality bioenergy feedstocks. The plans are:

• The State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, will gain up to $3.5 million to lower the delivered cost of short rotation woody crops; rapidly, accurately, and reliably assess feedstock quality; and enhance harvest and preprocessing operations to produce feedstocks that meet key biorefinery partner specifications.

• The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, will gain up to $3.5 million to study how blending feedstocks could play a role in increasing the amount of accessible feedstock within a given delivery radius. The plan will develop and demonstrate a state-of-the-art biomass processing depot to reduce sources of variation along the supply chain of multiple, high-impact biomass sources (pine and switchgrass) and deliver a consistent feedstock optimized for performance.

See the Energy Department news release.

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