Mission

Consortium for Applied Fundamentals and Innovation (CAFI) is multi-institutional consortium funded by DOE to develop comparative information on  cellulosic biomass pretreatment by leading pretreatment options with common source of cellulosic biomass (corn stover/ Hybrid Poplar) and identical analytical methods. CAFI recognizes that pretreatment operates as a part of system in lignocellulosic feedstock based biorefinery that includes hydrolysis and fermentation as downstream processes. CAFI has been founded by leading researchers in biofuels area with following objectives:

 î Develop information and a fundamental understanding of biomass hydrolysis that will facilitate commercialization.

 î  Accelerate the development of next generation technologies that dramatically reduce the cost of sugars from

     celulosic biomass.

 î Train future engineers, scientists and managers..  

Brief History

CAFI was organized in early 2000 by pretreatment researchers from Auburn University, Dartmouth college, Purdue university, Michigan state University, Texas A&M University & NREL. It was funded by USDA Initiative for future agriculture and food systems (IFAFS) program. During the project period from 2000-2003, which is called CAFI-I, following tasks have been accomplished:

 î  Applied leading pretreatment technologies to prepare biomass for conversion to products.

 î  Characterized resulting fluid and solid streams

 î  Performed material and energy balance for each pretreatment process

 î  Determined cellulose digestibility and liquid fraction fermentability/toxicity

 î Compared performance of pretreatment technologies on corn stover on a consistent basis.

Second phase of CAFI ,called as CAFI-II, was funded by US-DOE (Office of Biomass Program). Period of CAFI-II is 2004-2007

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