Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) Number: DE-FOA-0001689, Integrated Biorefinery Optimization

The summary for the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) Number: DE-FOA-0001689, Integrated Biorefinery Optimization grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Golden Field Office, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) Number: DE-FOA-0001689, Integrated Biorefinery Optimization: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announce a joint funding opportunity to support Integrated Biorefinery Optimization. DOE has funded biorefinery technology development projects since 2002 to meet two EERE performance goals: 1) reduce dependence on imported oil, thereby enhancing energy security; and 2) spur the creation of a sustainable domestic bio-industry. USDA-NIFA has funded programs and projects that target vital topical areas related to the development of regional systems for the sustainable production of biofuels, industrial chemicals, biopower, and biobased products; as well as investing in America's scientific corps and developing workforce in bioenergy, bioproducts, and the bioeconomy. Robust scale-up of commercially viable biorefinery technologies will help USDA-NIFA meet two important goals: 1) to enhance energy security through the reduction in the dependence on foreign oil; and 2) to spur the creation of a sustainable domestic bioeconomy. This work supports NIFA's mission to accelerate deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to strengthen U.S. energy security, economic vitality, and environmental quality. Federal support for first-of-a-kind Integrated Biorefineries (IBRs) could significantly reduce the technical and financial risks associated with new technology deployment, thus accelerating the growth of the U.S. bioeconomy, reducing costs to consumers, enabling reductions in environmental pollution in the transportation sector and improving energy security. There are still unresolved technical and non-technical challenges within the IBRs that need to be addressed in order to achieve reliable and continuous operation that effectively competes with the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries. Many of these challenges are related to: • Complexity and variability of non-food feedstocks; • Operational difficulties encountered with handling of solids in the production process; • Recalcitrance of feedstocks to efficiently convert into products; • Inhomogeneity of intermediates resulting in non-uniform heat and mass transfer during the manufacturing processes; • Complex multi-step separation and purification steps; • Non-monetization of byproducts and residual streams; • Difficulties in translating bench-scale and pilot-scale learnings to the next step in scale-up such as demonstration-scale or pioneer-scale commercial level; • Non-competitive cost of bioproducts due to higher capital and operational expenses; and • Shortage of capital for long-term industrial projects. As a result of these barriers, there are only a few pioneer-scale commercial IBRs in early stages of commissioning, start-up, and/or production, and a wider deployment of highly-efficient IBR facilities is still a goal to be realized. A number of the challenges result in schedule delays, increased capital (CapEx) and operational (OpEx) expenses, and scale-up complications. The FOA will identify, evaluate, and select applications proposing projects to address challenges encountered with the successful scale-up and reliable continuous operation of IBRs for the manufacture of Advanced or Cellulosic Biofuels (see Definitions) and associated higher value bioproducts. The FOA seeks applications for projects focused on addressing these challenges, reducing risks, and providing resources to accelerate commercialization of biofuels and bioproducts. The FOA includes four topic areas as follows: • Topic Area 1: Robust, continuous handling of solid materials (dry and wet feedstocks, biosolids, and/or residual solids remaining in the process) and feeding systems to reactors under various operating conditions; • Topic Area 2: High value products from waste and/or other under-valued streams in an IBR; • Topic Area 3: Industrial separations within an IBR; and • Topic Area 4: Analytical modeling of solid materials (dry and wet feedstocks, and/or residual solids remaining in the process) and reactor feeding systems. The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. Applications must be submitted through the EERE eXCHANGE website to be considered for award. The applicant must first register and create an account on the EERE eXCHANGE website. A User Guide for the EERE eXCHANGE can be found on the EERE website https://eere- exchange.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx after logging in to the system. Information on where to submit questions regarding the content of the announcement and where to submit questions regarding submission of applications is found in the full FOA posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website.