California Project to Build Biofuel and Bioproduct Database

A group investigating how to make better use of the diverse agricultural waste in California’s Northern San Joaquin Valley received funding for a project to create a database and support technology for sustainable bioproducts and biofuels. The group, “Building the Circular Bioeconomy in the North San Joaquin Valley” or BioCircular Valley, is co-led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, and BEAM Circular, with partners at UC Merced, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Almond Board of California, and USDA Agricultural Research Station in Albany. The project will catalog and characterize agricultural waste products such as nut shells, fruit peels, and orchard trimmings, to make it easier for companies to use these agricultural feedstocks to make polymers, chemicals, materials, and fuels. The project will also explore improvements to the conversion process that breaks down feedstocks into usable forms. The new funds for the project come from the Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future, a partnership between Schmidt Sciences and the Foundation for Food & Agriculture that supports collaboration on research to transform biomass into alternative feedstocks for biomanufacturing.