Lignocellulosic Biomass for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts: Workshop Report, Washington, DC, June 23-24, 2014
- The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
- Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
- USDOE Office of Science, Washington, D.C. (United States)
Multiple societal benefits underlie the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) support for a viable and sustainable domestic lignocellulosic advanced biofuels and bioproducts industry. These benefits include ensuring future energy security, lowering greenhouse gases to mitigate climate impacts, diversifying the range of available products, producing less toxic chemicals and byproducts, creating jobs in rural areas, and improving the trade balance. A DOE workshop sought ways to realize these benefits by accelerating the emergence of a robust, new cellulosic ethanol industry. The resulting report, Breaking the Biological Barriers to Cellulosic Ethanol (U.S. DOE 2006), outlined a path toward this future, emphasizing integrated research from feedstock development to conversion technologies. Since then, DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), operating within the Office of Science, has supported transformational bioenergy research through the vertically integrated DOE Bioenergy Research Centers and development of biomass feedstocks and biofuels-relevant microbes. A number of important breakthroughs have resulted from this fundamental research and include the (1) demonstration that lignin composition and deposition can be genetically engineered to reduce plant cell wall recalcitrance without impacting plant viability; (2) development of effective pretreatments that can be adapted commercially to lower costs; (3) discoveries of novel microbes and enzymatic pathways for more efficient deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass; (4) proof-of-concept research for consolidated bioprocessing (CBP; i.e., production of ethanol and other biofuels by naturally cellulolytic microbes); (5) metabolic engineering of microorganisms and plants for biological production of numerous advanced biofuels or their immediate precursors; and (6) identification of hundreds of new plant genes and developing an understanding of their role in cell wall biosynthesis.
- Research Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Washington, D.C. (United States). Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI ID:
- 1471542
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/SC-0170
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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