Our Network
Working with Herty provides our clients and cooperative development partners direct access to Herty’s extensive network — State- and Federal-level agencies as well as leading universities — that can support your business development needs. Examples include:
Consortium for Advanced Wood-to-Energy Solutions (CAWES)
The Herty Center is a founding partner of the Consortium for Advanced Wood-to-Energy Solutions (CAWES). The consortium’s goal is to spearhead development of commercially-viable, advanced wood-to-energy products that can be produced from low-value trees and forest residues, which can compromise forest health and increase the frequency of wildfires. Founding Partners are:
- The US Endowment for Forestry and Communities
- USDA Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory
- Herty Advanced Materials Development Center
Logistics for Enhanced-Attribute Feedstock (LEAF)
Delivering secure sources of low-cost biomass feedstocks to biorefineries is critical to the success of the emerging bioeconomic sector. LEAF—a DOE-sponsored research program—brings together:
- Auburn University
- NC State University
- The University of Tennessee-Knoxville
- The Idaho National Laboratory
- The Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Genera Energy
- PerkinElmer
- Herty Advanced Materials Development Center
Together we develop and demonstrate a state-of-the-art biomass merchandising and processing depot based on multiple, high-impact biomass sources. Work will target new practices that manage biomass variability to deliver a consistent feedstock optimized for performance in specific technology platforms. Through this research, the team will demonstrate a large-scale, integrated system for recovering an underutilized resource from harvest of mature pine stands and developing switchgrass production areas in the Southeastern US. Most importantly, this proposed feedstock system has the potential, through blending of biomass sources to produce engineered bioenergy feedstocks, to:
- Reduce the overall cost of the feedstock by removing inefficiencies in the biomass distribution system.
- Improve the quality of the biomass feedstocks by sensing and SPC techniques during processing and blending to reduce the variability in physical and chemical properties.
- Increase the profitability of the biorefineries by demonstrating the utility of blending various biomass sources to produce a least-cost biomass feedstock blend.
This least-cost biomass blend concept can allow biorefineries to purchase and convert a much larger amount of biomass within their procurement radius (e.g. the southeast U.S., which has both pine and herbaceous biomass available in the same area), thereby allowing larger scale, and more economically feasible biorefineries to be constructed and operated.
Last updated: 3/30/2016