In Washington state, it may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants across the United States may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to new research at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The technology, hydrothermal liquefaction, mimics the geological conditions the Earth uses to create crude oil, using high […]
In Wisconsin, researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have incorporated an exotic gene conferring weak bonds into the plant’s lignin, the hard-to-process compound that gives plant cell walls their sturdiness but makes them difficult to process in an industrial setting. The resulting lignin, dubbed zip-lignin, readily breaks down under simple chemical conditions. This […]
In Missouri, researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have discovered a way to make algae better oil producers without sacrificing growth. The findings were published Sept. 6, in a paper titled, “Synergism between inositol polyphosphates and TOR kinase signaling in nutrient sensing, growth control and lipid metabolism in Chlamydomonas,” in The Plant Cell. They […]
In Tennessee, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have published a study in the American Chemical Society’s Energy Fuels journal evaluating the compatibility of neat bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis with six elastomer types, two fluorocarbons, six acrylonitrile butadiene rubbers (NBRs), and one type each of fluorosilicone, silicone, styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), polyurethane, and neoprene. […]
In Virginia, Logos Technologies announced a partnership with the Ohio Soybean Council to further develop the production process of NatSurFact, an environmentally friendly biosurfactant for personal care, household and industrial cleaning products as well as other applications. The joint project, which aims to convert hundreds of liters of soy oil into similar quantities of NatSurFact, […]
In the Netherlands, saving up excess solar and wind energy for times when the sun is down or the air is still requires a storage device. Batteries get the most attention as a promising solution although pumped hydroelectric storage is currently used most often. Now researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology reporting in ACS’ […]
In Thailand, researchers from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi have developed a method to produce ethanol from water hyacinth and are working to scale it up so it at be produced commercially. Demand for sugarcane, cassava and palm oil for biofuel feedstocks have created shortages, creating the need to find other feedstocks that wouldn’t […]
In India, researchers at CSIR-NIIST have produced a cellulose enzyme complex originating from Western Ghat soil they say will bring the cost of cellulosic ethanol production thanks to its increased efficiency. It can produce 5 to 10 liters of ethanol from 70 to 80 kilograms of biomass, be it sugarcane bagasse or various kinds of […]
In Switzerland, in a new method by EPFL chemists, the simple addition of formaldehyde could turn lignin into the main focus. Because it is difficult to process, lignin is usually discarded during biofuel processing. EPFL scientists have now turned lignin from a nuisance to an important source of biofuel by simply adding a common chemical, converting […]
In Missouri, James Umen, Ph.D., associate member at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and colleagues have discovered a way to make algae better oil producers without sacrificing growth. Umen and his team found the oil-accumulating mutation in Chlamydomonas, called vip1-1, while investigating how two conserved signaling systems interact with one another. One system involves a […]
