Feedstock Improvement

Tomorrow's biorefineries will use commodity and dedicated bioenergy crops to produce advanced fuels, energy, industrial chemicals and biobased products with improved performance properties and better conversion efficiencies. Institute scientists focus on three important resources for biofuels and biobased products - starch, vegetable oils and lignocellulose. The development of cellulosic feedstocks is a major challenge for the Institute - but one of the most important for the future. The Institute has capabilities in the following areas:

Starch

  1. Advanced Technologies for Converting Corn Grain to Ethanol
  2. Advanced Technologies for Converting Corn Grain to Butanol
  3. Increasing the Values of Co-products in Ethanol Production
  4. Raw Material Supply-chain Enhancements
  5. Economic/Engineering Tools to Evaluate Advanced Corn-to-Biofuels Technologies

Oils

  1. Enhancing Plant Oil Yields for Biofuels and Biolubricants
  2. Altering the Chemistry of Soybean Oil for Enhanced Applications as Biodiesel and Biolubricants
  3. Biological Hydrocarbons - A Green Petroleum

Lignocellulose

  1. Altering Cell Wall Cross-linking to Enhance Biomass for Biofuel Production
  2. Altering the Ratio of Cellulose to Hemicellulose in Biomass to Improve the Efficiency of Biofuel Production
  3. Joint Improvement in Populus deltoides Wood Quality and Biomass Yield

Partnerships