TABLE OF CONTENTS Most of the R&D effort in the area of petroleum biorefining has been concentrated on biodesulfurization (BDS), with a few scattered reports on bioconversion (BCK) and more recently, new findings being reported on biodenitrogenation (BDN) and biodemetallization (BDM). Enchira Biotechnology Corporation and formerly Energy BioSystems Corporation (EBC) spent the most money worldwide on microbial desulfurization research since 1992 until about 2002. The other major spender has been the Petroleum Energy Center (PEC) in Japan. EBC spent more than $50 million isolating, characterizing, and manipulating the desulfurization genes from a variety of microorganisms and developing and testing the reactor, separations, and recovery technology that is required to commercialize BDS. PEC has also been active in this area and, in 1994, pledged $50 million of its own for fundamental research and technology development. While for EBC, as a publicly traded company in the United States, its expenditures are easy to calculate based on annual reports, for PEC, which is a Japanese government-industry consortium, it is difficult to determine any actual spending amount. The multitude of collaborative efforts, exemplified in patents and papers that have appeared over the past 10 years from PEC and its collaborators indicates a substantial and ambitious program.
The U.S. government, through the ongoing support of several academic and government labs, has spent about $15 million since 1990. This effort includes:
a $3-million Advanced Technology Program (ATP) grant to EBC for crude oil desulfurization
steady participation of DOE in cooperative R&D arrangements at the Oak Ridge...
