Turning agricultural trash to treasure

In California’s Northern San Joaquin Valley, agricultural leftovers such as almond shells, fruit peels, and orchard trimmings can potentially be converted into sustainable bioproducts and biofuels – with the right technology. Today, Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future awarded new funding to a group investigating how to make better use of the diverse agricultural waste in the region.

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 (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley, and BEAM Circular, with partners at UC Merced, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Almond Board of California, and USDA Albany Agricultural Research Station.

“California has this incredible diversity of materials, but they aren’t well understood – and this makes it difficult to know how to extract the most value out of them,” said Corinne Scown, a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley and one of the project leads. “We want to characterize them and make that information available so companies can more easily figure out which feedstock is a good match for them, and then use that agricultural residue to make everything from bio-based polymers and chemicals to sustainable materials and aviation fuels.”

One of the group’s goals is to build a publicly accessible database and user-friendly map full of information about different feedstocks, the raw plant materials and biomass that can be broken down and used to make bioproducts. That includes where feedstocks are located, when they are available, how they are currently disposed of, how they perform in different bioreactors, how much sugar or lignin they contain, whether they can be processed with other feedstocks, their greenhouse gas footprint, the potential cost, and much more.

The project will also test ways to improve the flexibility of the conversion process, which breaks down feedstocks to prepare them to make bioproducts. Researchers will apply artificial intelligence to their lab-generated data to improve predictions of how feedstocks can be processed most efficiently or blended together. Being able to use the same technique on different (or mixed) kinds of plant matter would open up ways for companies to make bioproducts more easily. 

“Our region has a fantastic combination of diverse and large-scale agricultural activities alongside manufacturing expertise, making this a great place to scale up bioeconomy innovation,” said Karen Warner, CEO of BEAM Circular. “This project will allow us to reduce barriers to using our region’s abundant waste streams in more sustainable and valuable ways, so that we can create the products that people need with renewable inputs that are better for the planet.”

The project builds on ongoing efforts to establish biomanufacturing capabilities in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, which includes San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced counties. Providing better data on how to convert the valley’s millions of tons of agricultural waste into valuable products may spur biomanufacturing companies to build facilities nearby, minimizing how far the raw materials have to be moved and generating new jobs.

“This project is designed to benefit a region that has massive potential but has so far been economically left behind, and to develop a new industry that can provide improvements in air quality, water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions as well as significant opportunities in economic equity and the creation of new jobs,” said Blake Simmons, director of Berkeley Lab’s Biological Systems and Engineering Division and the BioCircular Valley project lead. 

“This kind of research started as basic science, and now we’re bringing information and solutions to people who can use them. And the knowledge generated through this project will advance not only the ability of the NSJV to make use of its own regionally available future feedstocks, but will also accelerate the understanding of feedstocks relevant across California and across the U.S.”

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. The award is one of five announced today, which total $47.3 million over five years. It is expected that the five teams will collaborate to share best practices and knowledge to boost the bioeconomy at the national level.

“We are grateful for Schmidt’s generous support that will help deploy advanced technologies on the ground,” said Alicia Chang, interim president of Berkeley Lab Foundation. “The foundational research and expertise developed through work for the Department of Energy sets the stage for this team to apply their capabilities to bring jobs and lift the community and the economy in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.”

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to delivering solutions for humankind through research in clean energy, a healthy planet, and discovery science. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

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