Risk Minimization in Scale-Up of Biomass and Waste Carbon Upgrading Processes.

Improving the odds and pace of successful biomass and waste carbon utilization technology scale-up is crucial to decarbonizing key industries such as aviation and materials within timelines required to meet global climate goals. In this perspective, we review deficiencies commonly encountered during scale-up to show that many nascent technology developers place too much focus on simply demonstrating that technologies work in progressively larger units ("profit") without expending enough up-front research effort to identify and derisk roadblocks to commercialization (collecting "information") to inform the design of these units. We combine this conclusion with economic and timeline data collected from technology scale-up and piloting operations at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to motivate a more scientific, risk-minimized approach to biomass and waste carbon upgrading scale-up.