The US Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center: Midwestern Biomass as a Resource for Renewable Fuels
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The US Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center: Midwestern Biomass as a Resource for Renewable Fuels Steven Slater & Kenneth Keegstra & Timothy J. Donohue
Published online: 3 February 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2010
Abstract The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center is one of three Bioenergy Research Centers establish by the US Department of Energy and the only one based at an academic institution. The Center’s mission is to perform basic and applied science to enable economically and environmentally sustainable production of liquid fuels derived from biomass. The research is focused on converting plant biomass into soluble sugars and the sugars into fuels. A large group focused on sustainability informs and guides the applied research to ensure that new technology will provide the required environmental benefits. Keywords Bioenergy . Biofuels . Sustainability
Introduction Plant biomass is one of the earth’s primary means for capturing and storing solar energy, and this energy has S. Slater (*) : T. J. Donohue DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1550 Linden Dr., Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. Keegstra DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA K. Keegstra DOE-Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA T. J. Donohue Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
traditionally been released by humans through direct combustion of wood. But plant biomass is mainly composed of polymeric sugars (cellulose and hemicellulose) that can be depolymerized and converted, through biological or chemical means, to liquid fuels and related chemicals. A 2006 study by the US Department of Energy suggests that over a billion tons of plant biomass is potentially available for conversion to liquid fuel, enough to replace 30% of annual US gasoline consumption [14]. However, these processes are neither easy nor inexpensive, so exploiting this potential requires new technology to grow, harvest, deconstruct, and convert plant biomass to fuels. It will also require new agricultural and economic models and potentially new distribution systems. Enabling this nascent biofuels landscape is the objective of the DOE Bioenergy Research Centers, which were funded in 2007 by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center is one of three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) and the only one based at an academic institution (the other two are based at DOE National Laboratories [17]). All three centers share a common directive from DOE: to perform missionrelevant basic science that enables development of liquid fuels derived from cellulosic biomass. Great Lakes Bioenergy is led by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with Michigan State University as the major partner. Additional scientific partners include DOE National Laboratories (Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge National La
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