In North Dakota, a study by North Dakota State University’s the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics, The Center for Social Research, says the state’s ethanol industry added $623.4 million to the economy during 2015 including 234 FTE direct jobs and another 873 FTE secondary jobs. Secondary impacts from the ethanol industry were $411.1 million for the state’s economy. […]
In California, Stanford researchers recently innovated a renewable method of producing the fuel additive, ethanol. This method simply delivers water, carbon dioxide and electricity through a copper catalyst. This innovation has enticed scientists and current state-of-the-art electrocatalysts will be improved in product selectivity and energy efficiency to make this alternative solution viable for the future. […]
In Illinois, University of Illinois – Urbana researchers are implementing a pilot program based on a three-year study that showed nearly $2 million in energy could be recovered by harvesting more than 100,000 acres of unpaved public land along highways and other rights-of-way full of weeds and grasses that can be converted to biofuel. It […]
In the UK, scientists are warning the UK kelp biofuel industry to beware of viruses. Whilst known to infect certain types of seaweed, a new study published in the ISME Journal is the first to describe viruses in kelps, which are important both ecologically and commercially. Researchers from the Marine Biological Association (MBA) and University […]
In India, researchers at the Bhavnagar-based Central Salt and Marine Research Institute (CSMRI) have developed a method to produce functionalized carbon material from sugar production and distillery waste that can be used to make electrodes, sensors and supercapacitors. After the carbon is removed from the waste wash, it can then be further treated through a combination […]
In California, Sandia National Laboratories is testing whether one of California’s largest and most polluted lakes can transform into one of its most productive and profitable. Southern California’s 350-square-mile Salton Sea has well-documented problems related to elevated levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff. Algae thrives on these elements — a fact that causes […]
In Iowa, DuPont Pioneer and Evogene Ltd announced that they have entered into a multiyear collaboration. The scope of the agreement includes the research and development of microbiome-based seed treatments in corn. The goal of the collaboration is to provide farmers with innovative bio-stimulant seed treatment products that protect and maximize corn yield by leveraging […]
In Idaho, researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory are taking alfalfa contaminated with inorganic bromide and figuring out what farmers can do with the otherwise useless bales, like biomass fuel. The alfalfa was contaminated from methyl bromide, a highly toxic pesticide after a potato pest issue led to its spraying on fields, but that meant […]
In Iowa, the phrase “a double-edged sword” describes something that is beneficial in some ways but problematic in others. One example is removing maize stover (the husks, stems and leaves of corn plants) from fields. Maize stover is used to make cellulosic ethanol, a renewable biofuel. And renewable biofuels are beneficial to the environment. However, […]
In Tennessee, using a novel, reusable carbon material derived from old rubber tires, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team has developed a simple method to convert used cooking oil into biofuel. The team’s approach combines modified, recovered carbon with sulfuric acids, which is then mixed with free fatty acids in household vegetable oil to […]
