(132a) Towards Carbon-Negative Bioenergy and Bioproduct Systems using Renewable Electricity

While U.S. production of energy products from the shale gas and oil boom have markedly grown in the last ten years, we remain a net importer of petroleum. Just as technology advances in shale gas and oil recovery processes have decreased our reliance on imports, technology advances in renewable and sustainable approaches are needed to further address national security, rural prosperity, and climate change issues. However, support for their development and commercialization has not fully breached our collective cognitive dissonance. Beyond cellulosic ethanol, for which recent implementation should be commended, approaches that integrate biomass energy with alternative electrical energy to produce domestic liquid fuels offer the potential to be our next technological breakthrough. As DOE’s Billion-ton Report reminds us that domestic renewable carbon is limited, carbon efficient bioenergy strategies are preferable when considering the scale of fossil fuel displacement that is needed. Because hydrocarbon compounds are uniquely capable of forming energy containing covalent bonds, retaining carbon in the fuel product stream is paramount, especially when coupling renewable electrical energy through electrocatalytic hydrogenation. When joined with fast pyrolysis in small rurally deployed depots, this “energy upgrading” method enables agricultural and forested communities to gain access to higher value markets for their feedstocks. Co-product biochar, upgraded using low cost, low energy plasma, will also be described for entering high-end activated carbon markets. Alternatively, biological conversion approaches are also able to make fuels and chemicals using renewable electricity. Toward this aim, an acetone-platform biorefinery will be described as one example of a carbon-negative bioenergy system that uses a microbial process to convert carbohydrates and electrocatalysis to valorize lignin.