In Virginia, a new study conducted by Virginia Tech on the disposal of wood pallets at landfill sites reveal that 95% of wooden pallets are being recycled. Wooden pallets get used, reused, and when they are no longer useful, they are converted to mulch, animal bedding or biofuel. Both municipal and solid waste (MSW) and […]
In Belgium, EU researchers designed and tested cell structures, cellulosomes, that help breakdown abundant biomass waste to produce value-added chemicals, such as advanced biofuels. Key to producing advanced biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass is the efficient conversion of the cellulose contained within cell walls into fermentable sugars – a major bottleneck for large-scale production. Efficient breakdown […]
In Massachusetts, researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute have determined that “red mud,” a waste product of aluminum refining, boosts energy recovery from food waste to 80% from the average 25% recovery using hydrothermal liquefaction or the 40% recently achieved using a metal oxide catalyst called cerium-zirconia. With a third of the food produced annually on […]
In Turkey, a European Union-funded project is helping researchers from Turkey, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Germany and Latvia to further develop technology to produce biofuels from olive oil processing wastewater. The Rhodolive project looks to ferment the organic load of olive mill wastewater that can then be turned into biodiesel, animal feed and higher value products […]
In the UK, shipping industry needs to move to renewable and alternative fuels to reduce the sector’s impact on the environment. But there is no widely available fuel to manage climate change and local pollutants according to a recent study by researchers at The University of Manchester. How the shipping industry’s need to radically reduce […]
In Illinois, a new study from the University of Illinois shows that the unobtrusive perennial vine native to Australia, called Glycine tomentella, could hold the key to substantially increase soybean yields. “We saw yield increases of 3.5 to 7 bushels per acre in soybean lines derived from crossing with Glycine tomentella,” said Randall Nelson, study […]
In Illinois, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture has announced a grant for $1 million to support research led by a University of Illinois scientist. The research will address the need for better-adapted and higher-yielding biomass cultivars ready to plug into the biofuel supply chain in the United States. Researchers at U of […]
In Texas, researchers at Tufts University have created a genetically modified yeast that can more efficiently consume a novel nutrient, xylose, enabling the yeast to grow faster and to higher cell densities, raising the prospect of a significantly faster path toward the design of new synthetic organisms for industrial applications, according to a study published […]
In Illinois, with feed costs and the worldwide demand for meat growing, livestock producers are increasingly turning to co-products from the ethanol and human food industries. Research from the University of Illinois is helping to determine the feed value of wheat middlings and red dog, two co-products of the wheat milling process that can be […]
In New Jersey, researchers at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment use light to enhance the production of biofuels, drugs and commercial chemicals in bioreactors, which contain microorganisms such as yeast that have been metabolically engineered to make biological products. The team uses a technology called optogenetics—involving light to control cellular processes—to turn […]
