A team of researchers from Iowa State led by Robert Brown and supported by the DOE’s Biomass Technologies Office is aiming to demonstrate the liquefaction of forest biomass for hydrocarbon fuels, as a viable path to stable intermediates for hydrocarbon fuel blendstocks. In many ways, this project inherits work developed at Catchlight Ventures that at one […]
Improving hydrogen utilization and carbon recovery, as a pathway to higher efficiency bio-oil production using thermochemical process? That’s the focus for a project from RTI International that picked up significant DOE support in the search for #3 per gallon hydrocarbon biofuels. The researchers aim to increase hydrogen utilization from hydrodeoxygenation during in-situ catalytic pyrolysis, to […]
Can you build a catalytic process to produce alpha, omega diols from lignocellulosic biomass? Such a process, using inorganic catalysts for conversion of biomass into 1.5 pentanediol (PDO) and 1,6 hexanediols could reduce the cost of cellulosic biofuels. In this DOE-supported project, a team led by George Huber at the University of Wisconsin is developing […]
The Brazil Bilateral is a co-operative R&D effort between Brazil’s Petrobras and the US National renewable Energy Laboratory. It aims to demonstrate technical and economic feasibility of co-processing raw fast pyrolysis oil in Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) operation, establish collaborations with credible commercial partners, generate co-processing yield data at steady-state from FCC unit at Petrobras […]
Not long ago, DuPont Industrial Biosciences and Archer Daniels Midland announced a new breakthrough process in producing FDME from fructose, with “the potential to expand the materials landscape in the 21st century with exciting and truly novel, high-performance renewable materials”, the companies said in a joint release. FDME is furan dicarboxylic methyl ester. The technology has […]
Asimov has spun out of MIT aimed at detecting and responding to customer needs in applying biocircuit design to real-world opportunities. “It is literally a programming language for bacteria,” says Christopher Voigt, an MIT professor of biological engineering. “You use a text-based language, just like you’re programming a computer. Then you take that text and […]
The Sustainable Bioeconomy for Arid Regions (SBAR) is a multi-level research project that will cultivate two desert-dwelling crops, guayule and guar, for a sustainable bioeconomy. Scale up to profitable production, however, requires feedstock improvements, expansion of cultivation, agronomic knowledge and practices, and economic crop residue utilization. Researchers from The University of Arizona (UA), Bridgestone Americas, Inc., […]
To date, North America is the most active of all regions in terms of deploying advanced technology — whether it is cellulosic ethanol, isobutanol for fuels and chemicals, or renewable chemical plants, you see the first and the most, here. There are three drivers for that: 1. Continued and robust technology development, from Silicon Valley […]
Sometimes, what an engine needs to roar to life is a spark. Or a SPARC, as in this case. As in the Southeastern Partnership for Advanced Renewables from Carinata (SPARC), a consortium consisting of the University of Florida (lead), the University of South Florida, the University of Georgia, Auburn University, and other institutions, government agencies, […]
The 2014 Farm Bill provides for support of Advanced Biofuels, Renewable Chemicals, and Biobased Product Manufacturing by providing loan guarantees for up to $250 million. USDA has funding available and is actively looking for new applications. These illuminating slides on the USDA process come from Todd Hubbell, Chief, Technology Branch, USDA Rural Development as presented originally at ABLC […]
