In the Netherlands, a team of scientists charted greenhouse gas emissions resulting from biofuel production, presenting them as global maps. Dedicated crops grown on grasslands, savannahs and abandoned agricultural lands could provide around 30 exajoules per year (i.e. a third of current global energy consumption for transport) with relatively low CO2 emissions measured over the […]
In Kansas, thanks to an international and interdisciplinary collaboration, faculty at Kansas State University’s Institute of Computational and Comparative Medicine and bioenergy researchers at Yangzhou University in China have marked a significant milestone for the production of ethanol fuel from wheat straw. Their study, “Predictive temperature modeling and experimental investigation of ultrasonic vibration-assisted pelleting of […]
In Washington state, a University of Washington team is trying to make poplar a viable competitor to fossil fuels by testing the production of younger poplar trees that could be harvested more frequently—after only two or three years—instead of the usual 10- to 20-year cycle. These trees, essentially juveniles compared with fully grown adults, are […]
In the UAE, a group researchers led by UAE University found that date pits hold nearly 12% oil that is suitable for biodiesel production at about 90% efficiency. The study Biodiesel Production from Oils Extracted from Date Pits, appears in the journal Green and Sustainable Chemistry. “It’s a waste material. It’s not a valuable material we’re looking […]
In Russia, scientists from Skoltech and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Joint Institute for High Temperatures proposed a new way to convert food waste into biofuel via hydrothermal liquefaction – a thermal depolymerization process used to turn wet biomass into oil. Other researchers use carbohydrates fermentation or fat transesterification for biofuel production but since only […]
In Wisconsin, a new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin shows that crop expansion in the US between 2008 and 2012 emitted 115 million tons of CO2 and that much of that can be attributed to biofuels because it was during a period of policy-driven biofuel production increase. The paper says that the […]
In Brazil, the director of the Center for Research and Development of Soils and Environmental Resources at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas has been awarded the Norman Borlaug Award on World Fertilizer Day by the International Fertilizers Association for developing a method of sugarcane cultivation that reduces GHG emissions. The method integrates urease inhibitors that […]
In California, a new study led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), demonstrates the importance of microbial communities as a source of stable enzymes that could be used to convert plants to biofuels. The study, recently published in the journal Nature Microbiology, […]
In Finland, micro-organisms found in the wildfire-prone dry tropical forests of India are an exciting prospect for biochemical production, as they are accustomed to the challenging conditions following a forest fire. The enzymes they produce are likely to also have a higher-than-normal resistance to the substances released from biomass in high-temperature industrial processes. An EU and […]
In Tennessee, researchers from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture have received a $225,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin a three-year project to perform a multitude of techno-market analyses of U.S. biorefinery supply chains from feedstock to alternative jet fuels. This research is part of the Aviation Sustainability Center (ASCENT) project—a […]
