| The Synthetic Biology Engineering
Research Center (SynBERC), funded by NSF and based at the University of
California, Berkeley, and the Joint BioEnergy Institute recently initiated
the Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Facility. This facility
will enable the translation of biofuels technologies from the laboratory
scale to commercial operation. The User Facility will have capabilities
for pilot-scale pretreatment of biomass and production of enzymes for biomass
deconstruction.
Most importantly to SynBERC
and its Microbial Chemical Factories testbed, the User Facility will have
fermentation capacity for ethanol, butanol, advanced biofuels, commodity/specialty
chemicals production, and purification in quantities at the 1-300 liter
scale sufficient for engine testing—which is required for commercial adoption
of advanced biofuels.
This new facility will enable
SynBERC and its associated projects within the Joint BioEnergy Institute
to translate the ERC’s research to the industrial community, where it will
be commercialized. The facility will have capabilities for testing
a range of biomass types (e.g., grasses, woody biomass), using current
and newly emerging pretreatment methods.
SynBERC has associated research
activities directed toward the production of more conventional biofuels
such as ethanol and butanol, as well as advanced biofuels such as linear,
branched-chain, and cyclic alkanes, alkenes, alcohols, and esters to be
used as direct replacements for several or all petroleum-derived components
in gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels. The biofuels demonstration plant
represents an important opportunity for SynBERC’s Microbial Chemical Factories
testbed to produce ethanol, butanol, and advanced biofuels using synthetic
biology approaches. |
