The Department of Energy has a mission to ensure America's prosperity and security by addressing energy and environmental challenges. The bioenergy technology office has a goal to use available biomass to produce renewable energy in an economic method. To alter our path towards environmental responsibility, we must decrease our use of and dependence on fossil fuels, the number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Former research has demonstrated the domestic, economic and environmentally responsible production of biofuels from brown grease, a waste to energy process that not only provides an alternative fuel to petroleum diesel, but also reduces the burden and cost associated with the disposal of billions of gallons of waste grease to landfills & incinerators annually. CF Technologies, Inc. proposes to further clean and advance the biofuel process to produce high quality, certified biodiesel for use in trucking, home heating and marine fuel. Brown grease is an abundant, low value waste material with high energy concentrations. Brown grease is not currently suitable as a biodiesel feedstock due to the contamination levels, primarily sulfur, which must be 15 ppm or less to become certified. Previously, CF Tech demonstrated that brown grease can be converted into a biofuel, primarily fatty acid methyl esters, but with sulfur contamination, could not become a certified biodiesel. This award will allow CF Technologies, Inc. to explore the sulfur compounds, separation of the compounds based on critical fluid solubility and to integrate this operation into their existing biofuel pilot plant. In future development work, the pilot will be modified into a larger capacity mobile demonstration system to host demonstrations at the point of generation or consolidation at 1,000 hour cycles for scaleup opportunities. Commercial application and benefits of this successful technology will be an increased access to locally produced biodiesel at a lower price, an increase in clean energy employment opportunities, a reduction in greenhouse gases, reduction of landfilling and incineration of the waste while producing high value biodiesel to displace petroleum diesel products in transportation, home heating and marine industries. The industry is searching for additional resources and we have unlocked that door.
