In Ireland, the Teagasc Tillage Sectoral Energy Crop Development Group has released a report showing the potential for energy crops in the country. Currently 3,000ha of energy crops are currently grown but that could reach 67,000ha if the right incentives were put in place. Doing so would also go a long way in helping the […]
In Jamaica, research by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica shows that a variety of castor been that comes from China, Zibo 8, could be the most productive for local production. Following two years of variety trials under the Scale Biodiesel Pilot Project, Zibo 8 had the highest oil yield. A Brazilian variety had slightly higher […]
In the US, the Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s new “Today in Energy” brief looks at the jump since 2007 in the number of service stations selling gasoline containing 85% ethanol. While Minnesota continues to dominate the market with 336 E85 retail locations, California and New York have sent he biggest amounts of growth. Across the […]
In Tennessee, Vertimass LLC, a California-based start-up company, has licensed an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology that directly converts ethanol into a hydrocarbon blend-stock for use in transportation fuels. The ORNL technology offers a new pathway to biomass-derived renewable fuels that can lower greenhouse gas emissions and decrease U.S. reliance on foreign sources of oil.
In South Carolina, a doctoral student at Clemson University is feeding crude glycerin to algae to increase biomass and lipid production. Using it as a carbon substrate, the three-carbon sugar alcohol helps the algae to produce about 60 percent oleic acid, Omega-9 fatty acid, under lab conditions.
In Finland, VTT and UPM announced that the tests they’ve been performing on UPM’s renewable diesel since last May have shown that the fuel works just as well as fossil diesel. The tests used a 20% blend of UPM’s BioVerno on four Volkswagen Golf 1.6 TDI cars that traveled 20,000 km each during the course […]
In Michigan, a multi-institutional team reports that it can increase sugarcane’s geographic range, boost its photosynthetic rate by 30 percent and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production. Working first with the laboratory-friendly plant Arabidopsis and later with sugarcane, the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant. They increased […]
In Finland, the first fleet tests of UPM’s renewable diesel proved that UPM BioVerno works in cars just as well as regular diesel. The fleet tests, conducted through last year, focused on investigating UPM’s renewable diesel in terms of fuel functionality in engine and fuel consumption. At a 20% blend level, fuel consumption matched that […]
In Michigan, a team of Michigan State University scientists has invented a new technology that increases the odds of helping algae-based biofuels cross that gap and come closer to reality. The current issue of Algal Research showcases the team’s invention — the environmental photobioreactor. The ePBR system is the world’s first standard algae growing platform, one […]
In France, researchers from the Laboratoire de Chimie-Physique at the Universite Paris-Sud have demonstrated the use of Streptomyces, a soil bacterium known for making antibiotics, for producing biofuels. The researchers used atomic force microscopy combined with infrared spectroscopy, a method that could be used by others to determine other microbes for biofuel production.
