NREL's National Bioenergy Center (NBC) was honored with two "Notable Technology Development" Awards.

Golden, Colo., Sept. 13, 2005 - The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) has recognized the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with two regional awards for technology transfer activities.

NREL's National Bioenergy Center (NBC) was honored with two "Notable Technology Development" Awards. The first award recognizes the Clean Fractionation, an innovative technology and process designed to effectively separate organic materials such as corn, wheat, oat hulls, and waste from cotton, and other lignocellulosic material, into pure streams of value-added chemicals such as lignin, cellulose and dissolved sugars (hemicellulose). These pure streams are valuable because they can be used to produce chemical products for a variety of industries such as pulp and paper, chemical, food, and packaging. Additional value is generated in that a variety of organic, clean (no net greenhouse gas) material feedstocks can be used to produce a variety of chemicals. Xethanol is currently commercializing the technology under a NREL license agreement.

Another research team in the NBC was recognized for developing key innovations to cultivate the world's first fully integrated "biorefinery". Biorefineries are analogous to petroleum refineries, in that they are capable of producing a range of fuels, chemicals, and value-added products from a variety of low-cost plant-material or biomass feedstocks. NREL has several industrial partnerships related to this technology, including a $7.7 million cooperative research and development agreement and license agreement with DuPont.

The FLC is the nationwide network of federal laboratories that provides the forum to develop strategies and opportunities for linking the laboratory mission technologies and expertise with the marketplace. More than 700 major federal laboratories and centers and their parent departments and agencies are FLC members.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by Midwest Research Institute and Battelle.