Ten years ago, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the opening of a brand new, 15,000-square-foot facility full of stainless steel state-of-the-art bioprocessing equipment – what we now know as the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit, or ABPDU, was officially open for business.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, ABPDU set out to provide a boost to the development of advanced biofuels – renewable fuels that produce at least 50% less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels. ABPDU’s facility would serve as an industry-scale proving ground for biofuel discoveries made at lab bench-scale.