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R&D Magazine annually selects 100 technologies as the
most significant innovations of the preceding year. The magazine, not immodestly,
refers to these awards as the "Academy Awards of Science." The awards are very
prestigious and have recognized many of the most significant inventions of the
last few decades. The National Bioenergy Center of the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL) is proud to have winners of or participants in the following R&D
100 Awards.
2004 R&D 100 Award: "Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Biomass Cellulose to Sugars (for the production of fuels and chemicals)," Genencor International, Novozymes Biotech Inc., National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The NREL/DOE Biomass Program process design for breaking biomass down to sugars for subsequent fermentation to ethanol and other fuels and chemicals is based on enzymatic rather than thermochemical hydrolysis of cellulose. Our studies indicate this has greater potential for reduced effective cost in the long run. A key element of that reduced cost is lower cellulase enzyme cost. We therefore contracted with two major enzyme producers to reduce the cost of their respective cellulase mixtures. Both companies met their goals of reducing enzyme cost ten-fold, a very key contribution to biorefinery technology.
2000 R&D 100 Award: "Real Time Biomass Analysis," R. Meglen,
S. Kelley, B. Hames (NREL) - This technology uses near-infrared spectrometry and multivariate
analysis for rapid and inexpensive characterization of the chemical and mechanical
properties of biomass materials. Biomass can be in its native (standing trees, corn
kernels or baled stover), processed (pulp, logs, veneer sheets, ground biomass or
hydrolyzate for ethanol), or finished form (dimensional lumber, plywood, paper or
animal feed). The technology can be employed on moving conveyer belts to provide real-time
analyses for potential process control applications. Cost for these analyses could be as much
as 50 times lower than for conventional wet chemical methods. The Biofuels Program is already
using this technology to analyze stover of various corn varieties to determine suitability for
ethanol production.
1998 R&D 100 Award: "High Throughput Biomass Gasifier." Battelle Memorial
Institute, Burlington Electric Department, NREL, and Future Energy Resources Corporation
shared an award for developing a more efficient biomass to electricity technology. The
technology, which would lead to increasing the efficiency 10% over a standard biomass power
plant, is being evaluated in Burlington, Vermont for commercial application.
1997 R&D 100 Award: "Production of Chemicals from Biologically Derived
Succinic Acid," B. Davison, N. Nghiem, B. Suttle (ORNL); S. Tsai, M. Donnelly, C. Mallard, C.
Wu (ANL); J. Frye, T. Werpy, Y. Wang (PNNL); R. Landucci (NREL); M. Griffin (Applied
Carbochemicals, Inc.)-The petrochemical industry transforms petroleum and natural gas into a
myriad of different valuable products by first breaking them down into their basic building
blocks and then creating polymeric materials from them. Similar or equally valuable polymers
can be produced from sugars derived from biomass. This award was presented for developing a
hybrid biological/chemical process that produces succinic acid by fermenting glucose sugar
from corn at a lower cost than current petrochemical production. Succinic acid can be used
as a chemical feedstock for making a variety of products including polymers, clothing fibers,
paints, inks, and food additives.
1995 R&D 100 Award: "Method for Making Silicon Carbide Powder by
Carbon Coating Silica." This award was presented jointly to NREL and Coors Ceramics/Golden
Technologies for development of an innovative process for making high quality silicon carbide
powders, for use in the manufacture of ceramic materials by sintering, at substantially lower
cost than previous methods. This activity also won a Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for
technology transfer in 1996.
1995 R&D 100 Award: "Single-Fermenter Cellulosic Biocatalyst," S.K. Picataggio, M.
Zhang, K. Deanda, M. Finkelstein (NREL)-Fibrous plant material contains cellulose, hemicellulose,
and lignin. Both cellulose and hemicellulose are long chains of sugar molecules that can
be fermented to ethanol, but they are made up of different sugars. Cellulose, although
more difficult to break down into sugars, is made of six-carbon glucose molecules that are
readily fermented by standard yeasts. Hemicellulose is easier to break down, but is made
of xylose and other five-carbon sugars that are not as easily fermented. This invention
genetically transferred the ability to ferment xylose from another bacteria into the
bacteria Zymomonas mobilis, which already had the capability to ferment glucose. By
making it possible for both types of cellulosic sugars to be fermented in a single
process, NREL's metabolically engineered Z. mobilis makes possible substantial
decreases in capital equipment and operating costs for cellulosic ethanol production.
This award reflects NREL's genetic engineering expertise and focus on reducing the cost
of biomass-to-ethanol technology.
1993 R&D 100 Award: "Ethanol from Corn Fiber," NREL and New Energy Company of Indiana—Most fuel ethanol currently produced in the
United States is made from the starch in corn kernels. Producing nearly 2 billion gallons
of ethanol per year—primarily as a fuel oxygenate additive for gasoline—the corn
ethanol industry is a major contributor to the U.S. economy and to the reduction of carbon
monoxide and other air pollution. This NREL/New Energy collaboration demonstrated that
NREL's cellulosic ethanol technology could also economically produce ethanol from the
fiber remaining after the dry-mill corn ethanol process. This technology could easily
be extended to the cobs, husks, and stalks (stover)—that would all be readily available
near corn ethanol plants. This award reflects the emphasis that NREL and the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) place on corn stover as a potential principal feedstock for a
cellulosic ethanol industry—one that could expand from supplying fuel additives to
supplying base automotive fuel.
1992 R&D 100 Award: "Solar Detoxification of Hazardous Organic
Pollutants." This technology uses concentrated sunlight and a titanium dioxide catalyst to
destroy hazardous organic substances in groundwater and industrial waste water. Specifically,
the technology employs a mirrored parabolic trough solar collector to focus sunlight onto a
glass tube running the length of the trough. As contaminated water is passed through the tube,
the sunlight causes a chemical reaction to destroy the contaminants. For example, this system
can reduce concentrations of trichloroethylene—TCE, a common industrial solvent—from
200 parts per billion (ppb) to less than 5 ppb at treatment rates as high as 15 gallons per
minute.
1990 R&D 100 Award: "Inexpensive Phenol Replacements from Biomass."
Phenol is a chemical feedstock typically synthesized from petrochemicals and used as an
ingredient in adhesives and resins for engineered wood products or plastics. By using fast
pyrolysis technology with biomass materials, particularly wood or agricultural residues,
NREL was able to demonstrate the production of pyrolysis oils that contained phenolic
compounds that could be employed as direct replacements for as much as 50% of petrochemically
derived phenol in these applications with no loss of performance. This activity also won a
Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for technology transfer in 1990.
1982 R&D 100 Award: "High Pressure Oxygen Blown Biomass Gasifier." NREL
researchers won this award for the design, fabrication, and operation of a one-ton per day
stratified downdraft biomass gasifier capable of operating at 100 psi on pure oxygen. Operation
on oxygen eliminated the dilution effects of air while higher operating pressure shifts the
ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide to 1:2. With this ratio the resulting gas stream can be
fed directly to a methanol conversion reactor.
2001 Outstanding New Ideas in Science and Technology Award: Each year,
the Battelle Memorial Institute offers a competition for the outstanding new ideas in Science
and Technology. In 2001, Luc Moens of NREL was one of five recipients of this award for his
work, "The use of ionic liquids as new reaction solvents for chemical synthesis."
2001 and 1999 Tom Miles Award for Excellence in Bioenergy: This award
is presented at the biennial Biomass Conference of the Americas. In 2001 Dr. Ralph Overend of
NREL was selected to receive the award; the award was conferred on Dr. Tom Milne of NREL in
1999.
1999 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award: "Economic Conversion of
Cellulosic Biomass to Chemicals." A consortium of two small businesses, Biofine Corporation
and Chemical Industry Services, with NREL, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and New York
State Energy Research Development Authority combined to develop a new process to convert waste
sludges from paper processing into value-added chemicals. This green process produced a
platform chemical, levulinc acid, that could be converted into herbicides, fuel oxygenates,
or plastics.
1999 Outstanding Achievement Award: The American Forest and Paper
Association, in concert with DOE's Office of Industrial Technologies, presents awards for
Outstanding Achievement. In 1999 this award was conferred on Dr. Robert Meglen of NREL.
1994 Federal Laboratory Consortium Award: This award was presented
to NREL for its role in transferring technology developed in the laboratory to the private
sector. NREL was a key partner in the Pyrolysis Materials Research Consortium (PMRC), a
group of companies attempting to commercialize resin technology based on extracting phenolic
compounds from biomass pyrolysis liquids. NREL staff worked directly with engineers at
Interchem Industries to produce detailed design and engineering drawings for scaling a
vortex pyrolysis reactor from 0.5 ton/day to 15 ton/day.
The work of scientists and engineers at the National Bioenergy Center leads
to many discoveries and inventions. NREL patents many of the inventions as valuable intellectual
property that can be licensed to fuel and chemical manufacturers or other appropriate industries
for use in making commercial products, thus moving the fruits of NREL's biomass research and
development advances into the U.S. economy. More than 25 patents have been granted to National
Bioenergy Center researchers since 1994. Some of these have already been licensed (exclusively
or nonexclusively), but most of them, and some applied-for patents, are technologies available
for licensing. If your company
can make good use of one of these technologies, please contact us.
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