Alion Science and Technology was contracted by the Biotechnology Research and Development Center (BRDC) for the development of models to assess options for converting pennycress seeds into biofuels. Pennycress is viewed as having a high potential as a biofuel source crop, as it produces double the oil per acre as soybeans and can utilize the existing farm infrastructure without displacing any food crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is supplying the funding in support of Arvens Technology Inc (ATI), which aims at establishing geographically dispersed advanced biofuel production plants utilizing the pennycress seeds. Under the contract agreement, Alion will produce a set of models used to assess the feasibility of multiple processing technologies, while simulating overall process performance, in addition to providing cost evaluations for construction and operation of pennycress processing plants.

Pennycress seeds, when harvested, hold roughly 36 percent oil. Once the oil is extracted and converted to biodiesel, the presscake—the remaining material—can be burned, gasified or pyrolyzed to bio-oil. The extracted oil, as well as the presscake is then considered to be “value-added” products. One acre of pennycress is estimated to produce 95 gallons of biodiesel and another 95 gallons of bio-oil. Pennycress is easy to grow and helps prevent soil erosion.

“Alion’s development of these models will lead to an analytical tool that will help determine specific design features for pennycress processing plants and how to best apply development dollars,” stated Damon Griggs, Alion Senior Vice President and Manager of the Business Solutions Group. “Our scientists and engineers have performed similar analyses for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and our process engineering and manufacturing expertise makes us ideally suited to perform this work.

“The results of Alion’s work will help establish the suitability of pennycress for production of biofuels by guiding the selection of equipment and process options,” Griggs continued. “This work is also important to the agricultural industry as pennycress can potentially generate over $200 million annually in new farm income per million acres cultivated.”