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Terragia Biofuel
Terragia Biofuel is a New Hampshire climate-tech startup turning non-food plant waste into cost-competitive, low-carbon ethanol using engineered thermophilic bacteria. Its consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) approach skips the expensive enzymes and thermochemical pretreatment that have historically sunk cellulosic biofuel economics, promising an 8x shorter payback period at 10x smaller scale. Spun out of Professor Lee Lynd's decades of research at Dartmouth, Terragia aims to make biofuels for hard-to-electrify transport - aviation, shipping, and long-haul trucking - that can actually compete with fossil fuels.
Lee Lynd
Lee Rybeck Lynd is a biochemical engineer and microbiologist who has spent four decades figuring out how to make plants pay for themselves as fuel. He is the Paul E. and Joan H. Queneau Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth, co-founder and CTO of Terragia Biofuel, and the scientist most associated with consolidated bioprocessing, the one-pot fermentation idea that uses heat-loving bacteria like Clostridium thermocellum to chew through crop residue and spit out ethanol.