DE-FOA-0000996 - RENEWABLE CARBON FIBERS

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The Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), seeks to enable a wide range of renewable energy and energy efficient technology advancements to ensure a clean and secure domestic energy future. The EERE Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative (CEMI), launched in 2013, has the goal of enhancing United States (US) competitiveness in clean energy technologies, and aims to improve existing manufacturing processes and to stimulate the manufacturing of new energy products in the United States. The mission of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) within EERE is to develop and transform biomass resources into commercially viable, high performance biofuels, bioproducts, and biopower through targeted research, development, demonstration, and deployment supported through public and private partnerships. This FOA seeks to address both the EERE CEMI aims and to fulfill EERE BETO's mission by demonstrating a new technology pathway to produce high performance and low cost renewable carbon fibers. The FOA seeks to develop a cost competitive pathway to produce high performance carbon fiber for vehicle lightweighting from renewable non-food biomass. Carbon fiber composites are lightweight, yet strong, materials that can greatly improve vehicle fuel efficiency when incorporated into structural and non-structural components. Carbon fibers are polymers that are typically made from petroleum and natural gas feedstocks (propylene and ammonia, respectively) that react to form acrylonitrile (ACN) which is then polymerized and spun into polyacrylonitrile (PAN). The volatility of the raw material prices and the energy intensive processes used in the manufacturing contribute to high cost carbon fibers (>$10/lb), which deter widespread use by the automotive industry. The objective of the FOA is to identify and develop a cost-competitive technology pathway to high performance carbon fibers using biomass as a starting raw feedstock and biomass derived ACN (bio-ACN) as a target produc t. The goal is to produce bio-ACN at a modeled cost of $1.00/lb to enable the overall manufacturing of carbon fiber at $5.00/lb by 2020. The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. Applications must be submitted through the EERE eXCHANGE website to be considered for award. The applicant must first register and create an account on the EERE eXCHANGE website. A User Guide for the EERE eXCHANGE can be found on the EERE website https://eere- exchange.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx after logging in to the system. Information on where to submit questions regarding the content of the announcement and where to submit questions regarding submission of applications is found in the full FOA posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website.

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