The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a $53,000 grant to the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology to continue a feasibility study of building an alternative fuels facility in rural north-central Connecticut, CCAT announced.
CCAT received $100,000 in USDA funding last fiscal year to conduct the first phase of the study. Now, CCAT said it will focus on refining details of the facility’s operations, which would produce jet fuel, diesel fuel and heating oil from non-petroleum materials.
In the first phase of the study, the nonprofit economic development organization collaborated with several companies that make alternative fuel technology.
They included Westinghouse and Solena, which use plasma gasification technology, and Fiberight, which uses enzymatic hydrolysis and anaerobic digestion.
CCAT said it will evaluate other systems in the second phase, including steam reforming to convert municipal solid waste to fuels and a technique called “bubbling fluidized bed gasification.”
