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Preface

Fossil fuels have long been a source of energy through out the world. Crude oil is currently the source of 38% of the world’s energy. While coal and natural gas provide 25% and 22%, respectively. That’s a total of 85% of the world’s energy supplied by fossil fuels. 75% of the world’s oil supply is located in the Middle East, while only 5% is located in the United States. Therefore, the U.S. is both economically and strategically vulnerable to disruptions in its fuel supplies. In addition, these fuels are increasingly attacked as atmospheric pollutants and contributors to global climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Biomass, both agricultural wastes and dedicated energy crops, can provide an alternative supply of fuel that is both environmentally-sound and domestically produced, thus contributing positively to the U.S. economy, while protecting the environment from further degradation.

It is the primary goal of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fuels Development Biofuels Program to develop cost-effective, environmentally suitable technologies for production of alternative transportation fuels, additives and lubricants from biomass and to promote the commercialization of these technologies with low-cost biomass waste and residues in the near-term (year 2000) and dedicated energy crops in the mid- and long-term (year 2005-2020).

The day to day research activities for the Program are conducted and managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A host of University, industry and cooperative research programs are associated with the efforts to commercialize these technologies. The research is primarily focused on fuel ethanol made from renewable domestic crops and biodiesel, a domestically produced diesel substitute made from the combination of alcohol with naturally occurring oils.

With the year 2000 rapidly approaching, the Program has stepped up its efforts to commercialize the technologies under development and is working aggressively at improving the economics of the processes, and developing new methods for producing and recovering the crops.

Important to the efforts of the Program are the niche opportunities to demonstrate the technologies under development. DOE, in partnership with industry and the agricultural sectors, is addressing these niche opportunities, such as the decrease in rice straw burning allowable in Northern California, and the fuel loading (forest fire) problems of the Western U.S. Demonstration of biomass conversion in these situations, eliminates a problem, while in turn increasing the biofuels knowledge base available to researchers. These collaborative efforts will continue to build a strong U.S. biofuels industry.

The project summaries in this volume account for the research sponsored by the DOE Office of Fuels Development during FY 1996 and FY 1997.

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File Created: October 13, 1997; Last updated: Tuesday, 19-Dec-2000 10:47:44 EST