In the Bioenergy session, the panelists Johathan Burbaum and Eric Toone went into some detail about the role ARPA-E sees itself playing in getting advanced energy technologies to market.
In summary: ARPA-E wants to to fund application of technology more than pure science. Many ARPA-E programs revolve around a startup cooperating with a university; universities are often where pure science is first happening, and first
demonstrations of technology are going to happen at the spinout
companies so it's natural that way. Two-thirds of ARPA-E funding has gone to universities and
startups, but there have been other big investments by ARPA-E as well, and there is no intention to exclude anyone. A company would need to be in
that transition space, developing technology too early to warrant investment
from the company itself; ARPA-E doesn't want to displace private dollars. ARPA-E is trying to position itself between the pure research/science and scaling/applied programs.
Other notes:
Petro: Plants Engineered To Replace Oil - program area
Concept behind the PETRO program: developing dedicated biofuel crops. Three research areas: photosynthesis optimization, metabolic engineering, heritable traits. Four broad feedstock areas: oilseed, C4 grasses, trees, other.
Ability to use pine trees as a biofuel source: for example the loblolly pine - take paper industry and turn it into fuel industry with paper as a byproduct.
Sorghum engineered to produce fuel: engineering plants to create fuel instead of sugar.
Q&A: what about algea as a biofuel? Biggest need is in the broad area of bioreactors. They are very interested in photosynthetic organisms, and concerns are around deployment in an economic fashion. The biggest barrier is in photobioreactors, and the ability to deploy algae over the area required. Technologies that look at shortcomings of any technologies should be an areas of focus.
With algae, you need to have a low cost but highly
efficient light capture and carbon capture landscape to get efficient
generation. One area of interest is to have capture and synthesis in
one organism - a new path to alternative fuels with both in one plant.
Suggestion from audience: Energy densification of biomass for farms.
From the Energy Related Materials panel - panelists Mark Johnson and Amul Tevar.
Better electrolytees will be transformative - high-temperature electrolytes for vehicle battery.
Rapid charging for batteries is also needed, combined with energy storage of 20-30 miles per minute of charge.
Other areas of ARPA-E interest (thanks Dr. Kohli):
Self-assembly
Metal extraction
Materials genome
Electronic wastes
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