The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have teamed up to promote the renewable energy technologies invented at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The effort includes the new cleantech technology section on the WARF Web site: www.warf.org. It features summaries of 46 technologies developed by the university, some in collaboration with the GLBRC, including technologies for biofuels production, low energy processes, natural resource conservation, remediation, solar technologies and waste and pollution reduction.
“By making these technologies more visible, we will be better able to support the efforts of the GLBRC and UW-Madison to develop innovative and sustainable sources of energy” said Michael Falk, WARF’s general counsel, in a statement.
One of the university’s inventions spun off into a start-up company, Virent Energy Systems Inc. The company has attracted investors such as Honda and Cargill inc., and has a strategic investment partnership with Royal Dutch Shell plc, according to the university. The technology is an aqueous phase reforming (APR) process that generates hydrogen from sugar. Virent has enhanced the process since it started in 2002 to create a process called BioForming, which combines APR with other catalytic technologies, such as catalytic hydrotreating or condensation, to produce renewable liquid fuels, fuel gases and other chemicals, according to the company. The process uses feedstocks such as glucose and sucrose, glycerol, starches, polymers of glucose contained in cellulose, and C5 and C6 sugars, according to the company. Feedstock options include traditional food crops and nonfood sources.
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“We’re working with Royal Dutch Shell to commercialize production of biogasoline,” said Mary Blanchard, director of marketing for Virent. The company plans to build a 1 MMgy to 2 MMgy commercial demonstration plant, followed by a 100-million-gallon per year commercial plant, expected to be operational in 2015, according to Blanchard.
UW-Madison leads the GLBRC in close partnership with Michigan State University with a goal to remove the technological bottlenecks that prevent efficient conversion of plant biomass to biofuel, according to the UW-Madison. The GLBRC is one of three research centers set up by the U.S. DOE to collaboratively work to develop a new generation of biofuels. The other members of the GLBRC are Iowa State University, Illinois State University and the University of Toledo, along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Lucigen Corp., according to UW-Madison.