Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium (ChemCatBio)
Overcoming Catalysis Challenges for Emerging Bioenergy Technologies
With more than 1 billion tons of non-food biomass predicted to be available annually by 2030, there is a vast opportunity to convert this domestic resource into biofuels and bioproducts, thus providing jobs, generating revenue, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Catalysis plays a central role in converting these biomass and carbon-rich waste feedstocks into fuels and chemicals; however, critical catalysis challenges exist that are limiting commercialization of emerging bioenergy technologies. By leveraging unique U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory capabilities and expertise, the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy consortium seeks to overcome these catalysis challenges and accelerate the catalyst and process development cycle. The foundation of the consortium consists of an integrated and collaborative portfolio of catalytic and enabling technologies, which positions ChemCatBio to address both technology-specific and overarching catalysis challenges across the development cycle from discovery to scale-up. The core catalysis projects target technological advancements for specific conversion processes, such as catalytic upgrading of biochemical process intermediates, catalytic fast pyrolysis, indirect liquefaction, and CO2 upgrading, while the enabling technologies provide access to world-class capabilities and expertise in computational modeling, materials synthesis, advanced in situ and in operando catalyst characterization, and catalyst design tools.