Source: Comstock, Inc. 10/4/2024
World Class Innovation Team Set Sights on 100% Renewable Sustainable Aviation Fuel and Fossil Parity
Comstock Inc. (NYSE: LODE) (“Comstock” and the
“Company”) today announced the execution by Comstock’s wholly-owned
subsidiary, Comstock IP Holdings LLC, of an Exclusive License Agreement
(“ELA”) and Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (“CRADA”)
with Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC (“Alliance”), the managing and
operating contractor of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (“NREL”), involving technologies developed
by NREL and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”) for
conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into aromatic sustainable aviation
fuel (“SAF”). NREL and MIT are separately party to an
Inter-Institutional Agreement that appointed NREL the exclusive right to
license NREL’s and MIT’s joint intellectual properties, and Comstock IP
Holdings previously granted Comstock Fuels Corporation the master
exclusive rights for commercialization of its existing and new renewable
fuels technologies.
Comstock’s Existing Process
Comstock
Fuels offers advanced lignocellulosic biomass refining solutions that
produce market-leading yields of cellulosic ethanol, gasoline, renewable
diesel, SAF, and other renewable fuels at extremely low carbon
intensities. The Comstock Fuels process generally involves: (1)
solvolytic digestion and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass, (2)
bioconversion of cellulose into Cellulosic Ethanol, (3) esterification
of lignin and other derivatives into Bioleum Oil, (4) hydrodeoxygenation
of Bioleum Oil into Hydrodeoxygenated Bioleum Oil (“HBO”), (5) refining
of the resulting intermediates into ASTM compliant renewable fuels, and
(6) gas-to-liquids emissions capture and fuel conversion. The first
five of these processes are proven to produce up to 125 gallons of
renewable fuel per dry metric ton of feedstock (on a gasoline gallon
equivalent basis, or GGE), depending on feedstock, lignin content, site
conditions, and other process parameters, with extremely low carbon
intensity scores of 15. The sixth step has the potential to increase
bulk biomass conversion yields even further, to more than 140 GGE and
more than 70% of the theoretical maximum yield from most forms of woody
biomass.
Integrated Process
Comstock
IP Holdings is focused on continuously improving the proven performance
and operations of Comstock Fuel’s commercial refining solutions,
including by increasing feedstock diversity, bulk conversion yields, and
product quality for use in SAF while decreasing total variable costs.
The
technologies covered by the NREL license have the proven potential to
contribute to each of those objectives, including by depolymerizing and
stabilizing intermediates, by reforming feedstock derived water to
decrease reliance on fossil hydrogen, and by removing oxygen in a way
that favors high concentrations of aromatic hydrocarbons for use in SAF.
David
Winsness, President of Comstock Fuels, said, “Our existing commercial
process unlocks and converts wasted, unused, and purpose grown woody
biomass into renewable fuels at extraordinary yields and carbon
intensities, essentially creating an endless oilwell hidden in plain
sight. Our planned commercial facilities have been designed to tap into
that oilwell to produce an array of intermediates and fuels. However,
further developing and integrating the NREL technologies into our
process could give us the remarkable additional ability to maximize
aromatic content and quality specifically for high value use in
addressing the recent global surge in demand for SAF.”
World Class Team
The
terms of the CRADA involve a three-year scope of work to jointly
develop an integrated process based on Comstock’s existing process and
the NREL technologies for the solvocatalytic refining of woody biomass
into aromatic SAF and other renewable fuels. Comstock will fund the
research and contribute staff, equipment, and use of its pilot facility
in Wisconsin. The joint work will be supported by a world class team,
including Gregg Beckham, David Brandner, Mickey Stone, and Michelle Reed
of NREL, Yuriy Román-Leshkov, MIT’s Robert T. Haslam Professor in
Chemical Engineering, and Joshua Heyne, Director of the Bioproducts,
Sciences, and Engineering Lab at Washington State University. The CRADA
is anticipated to culminate in construction of a pre-commercial pilot
system to validate the requirements needed to rapidly scale-up the
resulting process into Comstock’s already planned 50,000 metric ton per
year commercial demonstration facility.
Gregg
Beckham, Senior Research Fellow for NREL, said, “An integrated process
based on Comstock’s and NREL’s technologies would have remarkable
potential in decarbonizing liquid fuels. Comstock’s established market
leadership and commercial scale-up plans for its existing process
provide an exciting opportunity to accelerate commercialization of
NREL’s technology. Our respective teams from NREL and MIT are delighted
to work with Comstock to scale-up this technology for low-carbon fuels
and products.”
“Comstock’s mission is to enable
systemic decarbonization, starting with transportation,” said Kevin
Kreisler, Comstock’s chief technology officer. “Our plan to do so
involves developing and commercializing highly profitable new processes
that bootstrap the Earth’s natural carbon cycle while enabling
stakeholders at all levels of the mobility supply chain to produce and
use enough renewable fuels to decarbonize at globally meaningful scales.
Our existing commercial process launches that effort, but we believe
that we can maximize the breadth and rate of global market adoption with
continued innovation to produce the world’s first 100% renewable SAF at
costs that approach parity with fossil fuels. We believe that feat to
be achievable by integrating Comstock’s and NREL’s technologies, and
we’re excited to get to work.”
The ELA provides
Comstock IP Holdings with the exclusive worldwide right to use the NREL
technologies in the processing and conversion of seed plants to
renewable fuels and renewable fuel feedstocks, including native, hybrid,
and transgenic phenotypes, and derivatives thereof, excluding
switchgrass, big bluestem, miscanthus, and the leaves, stalks, and husks
produced during the harvesting of corn, subject to limited geographic
restrictions, in exchange for royalty and other fees linked to sales of
licensed products and sublicensing.
NREL’s and
MIT’s prior work on the NREL technologies was initially funded by the
Center for Bioenergy Innovation, a DOE Research Center supported by the
Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of
Science, and the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office on the Lignin
Conversion to Sustainable Aviation Fuel Blendstocks project. More
information on the technologies is available online in the articles
titled Catalytic Process With Lignin Could Enable 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel, Making Aviation Fuel from Biomass, and Continuous Hydrodeoxygenation of Lignin to Jet-Range Aromatic Hydrocarbons.
Technology Readiness Level
Comstock
uses the technology readiness scale to estimate the readiness of
technology from conception to commercialization, iterating sequentially
as follows: (i) TRL 1 (basic principles observed and reported); (ii) TRL
2 (technology concept and application formulated); (iii) TRL 3
(analytical and experimental proof of concept); (iv) TRL 4 (validation
in laboratory environment); (v) TRL 5 (pre-pilot scale validation in
relevant environment); (vi) TRL 6 (pilot prototype demonstration in
relevant environment); (vii) TRL 7 (scaled-up commercial prototype in
operational environment); (viii) TRL 8 (commercial system
demonstration); (ix) TRL 9 (commercial maturity).
The
NREL technologies covered by the Comstock license have been validated
at TRL 4. The scope of work under the CRADA involves rapid validation of
an integrated TRL 3 process based on Comstock’s and NREL’s
technologies, followed by construction of a TRL 6 pre-commercial pilot
system. Once complete, a modular TRL 7 scale-up of the integrated
process would be added to Comstock’s recently announced 50,000 metric
ton per year demonstration facility to provide the data required for
scale-up in Comstock’s planned 1,000,000 metric ton per year commercial
facilities at TRL 8.
About Comstock Inc.
Comstock
Inc. (NYSE: LODE) commercializes innovative technologies that
contribute to global decarbonization and the clean energy transition by
efficiently converting under-utilized natural resources, primarily,
woody biomass into low-carbon renewable fuels, end-of-life metal
extraction and renewal, and generative AI-enabled advanced materials
synthesis and mineral discovery for sustainable mining.
