U.S. pushes to develop commercially-viable bio-oil

October 24, 2013, Oklahoma City, Okla. – The U.S. Department
of Energy is providing a $3 million grant to fund research on the development
of a commercially-viable bio-oil.

The multi-disciplinary research team have been charged with
developing a biomass conversion process to obtain bio-oil compatible with
refinery options.

Led by a team from the University of Oklahoma, the project
will be a collaboration that will include research team at the Idaho National
Laboratory, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin.

The approach proposed by OU provides
significant improvement over existing commercial and previously proposed
technologies. Existing processes have limitations that result in low-carbon
yield or high-hydrogen consumption. A fundamental problem with these
technologies is that the complex bio-oil presents different problems that
cannot be solved with a single solution.

Daniel Resasco, professor in the OU
School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, and his team have
gained invaluable experience in this area through previous research and a grant
from the DOE EPSCoR program, but the research focused mainly on the chemistry
required to produce bio-oil. In the current grant, the chemistry will be
applied in the development of a marketable product.