SBIR-STTR Award

Direct to Phase II

The United States Department of Defense is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world. Transportation of food, equipment, weapons, and supplies account for a significant portion of the U.S. DoD’s energy consumption. Such large amounts of energy usage produces significant amounts of waste and greenhouse gases. The U.S. DoD recognizes this as a major problem and continues to implement programs to reduce overall logistical burden by recycling goods at the point of consumption. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”) has established a ‘ReSource Program’ to convert waste into a reusable form, which has the potential to substantially reduce logistical burden of all branches of the U.S. DoD. One of the projects initiated by DARPA is to convert plastic waste into edible biomass and then make it palatable and personalized using a 3D food printer system. Under this project, BeeHex and its team will design and develop a compact, lightweight, efficient, rugged and DoD customer specific 3D food printer system that will prepare appetizing, delicious, personalized, and on-demand meals using edible biomass. BeeHex will work with a research consortium at the Michigan Technological University (“MTU”), who successfully developed a technology to convert plastic into biomass. MTU will supply purified biomass to BeeHex throughout this project. BeeHex is the most advanced 3D food printer manufacturing company in the world. BeeHex has identified system and subsystem level gaps to bring our current state of technology for the U.S. DoD’s field use.