What is a Hackathon? A "Hackathon" is an event where developers, designers, innovators, data scientists, and other domain experts get together for a sprint-like event to collaborate on intense projects to solve specific problems.
You've probably not heard of hackathons, but unless you're involved in the tech industry, you're likely wondering - What exactly is a "Hackathon" or, for that matter, what is a "Biofuel Hackathon"?
The original "Biofuel Hackathon" for commercial automobile uses began in the 1920s when Rudolf Diesel introduced the high-speed diesel engine. After introducing the "Diesel Engine," the race to find the perfect fuel started.
When the founders started the Community BioRefineries, an R&D company, 35 years ago, the goal was to solve a specific problem in creating an affordable biofuel. Finding a solution to the problem was akin to a “mini-Manhattan Project” type of collaboration project; a “Biofuel Hackathon”. Like the Manhattan Project Hackathon from 1942 to 1946, the CBR resulted from an enormous collaborative effort between CBR and many universities, the U.S. government, and other participants from the industrial, engineering, and scientific sectors.
A Footnote
We have often been asked how we managed to come up with the CBR process and why it took so long to accomplish. For some time, we had described the process development as a “Grand Collaboration” among ourselves, several major universities, and the federal government - to includes the USDA and the Oak Ridge National Laboratories. As far as why so long – it took many failures for each portion of the process until discovering how it will work. Much like Edison and his light bulb. Also, there were those with felonious intent who tried to take it all away from us for themselves. While we had to pause to defend ourselves and our past R&D investors, we prevailed over all of them.
More recently, though, we found that a more direct and contemporary method of describing it was to refer to it as a “hackathon” – a term familiar to engineers and technical folks everywhere.
The Biofuel Hackathon
In general, the Community BioRefineries Hackathon was looking far beyond just biofuel. To make a biofuel competitive to petroleum, you to look beyond the C-6 sugar in the corn kernel; we needed a Hackathon to look at the whole plant, from root to grain. We wanted to Hack every molecule to make value-added products. Finding a solution to the problems required different hackathons to resolve a process issue or financial issue. Here's an overview of what each one is.
Our sprint-like Hackathon event utilized several universities' skills, knowledge, and expertise; the federal government collaborated on our major Hackathon as well. In our 35-year quest to solve the challenge of producing an affordable biofuel. A hackathon aimed to create a proof of concept for producing biofuels, such as the ideal feedstock(s) to the best fermentation process.
From this first major hackathon, several others grew from it as solution discoveries were made – along with the creation of other related problems in need of solving:
1. What can we do to make the production of this new biodiesel more cost efficient?
2. How can multiple feed stocks or biomass be used – or can they?
3. What else can be gleaned from the process to help offset the cost of bio diesel production (i.e., value-added products)?
4. How can such a fuel and its derivatives (value-added stuff) be produced to keep the costs down.
5. Can local communities be incentivized to want to have a production facility nearby to help keep costs down?
In the 35 years of research and development, there have been many trial and error results; however, we have also we have made incredible advancements and successes in the fuel and food industries and the bio-based products industry to lower biofuel's overall cost.
The Biofuel Hackathon
In general, the Community BioRefineries Hackathon was looking far beyond just biofuel. To make a biofuel competitive to petroleum, you to look beyond the C-6 sugar in the corn kernel; we needed a Hackathon to look at the whole plant, from root to grain. We wanted to Hack every molecule to make value-added products. Finding a solution to the problems required different hackathons to resolve a process issue or financial issue. Here's an overview of what each one is.
Our sprint-like Hackathon event utilized several universities' skills, knowledge, and expertise; the federal government collaborated on our major Hackathon as well. In our 35-year quest to solve the challenge of producing an affordable biofuel. A hackathon aimed to create a proof of concept for producing biofuels, such as the ideal feedstock(s) to the best fermentation process.
From this first major hackathon, several others grew from it as solution discoveries were made – along with the creation of other related problems in need of solving:
1. What can we do to make the production of this new biodiesel more cost efficient?
2. How can multiple feed stocks or biomass be used – or can they?
3. What else can be gleaned from the process to help offset the cost of bio diesel production (i.e., value-added products)?
4. How can such a fuel and its derivatives (value-added stuff) be produced to keep the costs down.
5. Can local communities be incentivized to want to have a production facility nearby to help keep costs down?
In the 35 years of research and development, there have been many trial and error results; however, we have also we have made incredible advancements and successes in the fuel and food industries and the bio-based products industry to lower biofuel's overall cost.
What did we do at the Biofuel Hackathon?
Every Hackathon is organized slightly different, depending on the desired outcome; here's how the Biofuel Hackathon was structured:
1. The Community BioRefineries organized a set of well-defined objectives for the Biofuel Hackathon. For example, the aim might be for participants to form teams and generate use cases around new technology, product, or problem within 48 hours.
2. Once the Biofuel Hackathon started, the universities and other scientists collaborated to form teams. Strong hackathon teams typically consist of participants with complementary skill-sets and usually consist of 4-6 people.
3. Next, the groups worked together with their teams to build a prototype of their idea that solves a specific problem.
4. Upon completion of the prototype, the overall process was subjected to an independent third-party engineering firm for evaluation and validation. This evaluation/validation was to verify that the process worked the way we claimed it would, produced the products we said it would, and its demo scale was suitable for commercial scale.
The specifics of how a Biofuel Hackathon was organized depended on the sequence flow of the overall process. Our founder was the overall “ring master” providing input as necessary but also overseeing all the efforts. Since all the universities required Non-Disclosure Agreements, our founder made sure no sensitivities were violated during the processes. The USDA was no different with its requirements. As a result, some aspects of the efforts were known only to certain participants and not the entire group. Ergo a further comparison to the Manhattan Project.
Perhaps 35 years does not suggest our hackathons were “sprint-like” events as the definition suggests, but our main event spawned a host of related smaller events until all the pieces fit together.
As we make clear throughout our website, what began as a biofuel hackathon resulted in a host of different products far beyond what our founder originally envisioned. Our focus is to make total use of every feed stock and biomass introduced into the system by utilizing every molecule from root to seed. No waste. We made sure that full attention was paid to environmental concerns as well. Our process is a cold and closed process; no heat is applied, no nasty or noxious odors come from the process. Nothing is dumped into the local streams, rivers, or lakes. Our final “waste water” is recycled back to the beginning of the process. An EPA official once stated: “Why doesn’t everyone operate like
you guys…?”