In Canada, Methes Energies recently won the New Producer of the Year award from the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association for their work using their technology, available at the pipeline or full facility level, that enables a wide variety of feedstocks to be converted to biodiesel. Their Ontario facility has been recently commissioned for 13 mmgy […]
In Tennessee, a genetic engineering research effort led by a University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture plant scientist is among 66 award-winning projects selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as potentially transformational in its field. The DOE award is for just over $441,000 for one year. On November 28, DOE announced this award and […]
In Colorado, the DOE has awarded a $2 million grant to Colorado State University to develop a system that will allow plants currently unable to be genetically modified to be genetically modified for use as biofuel feedstock such as sorghum, which currently is difficult to use in biofuel production.
In Illinois, researchers at the University of Illinois have located a bacterium in a garbage dump that they believe can be used to break down both cellulose and hemicellulose. The researchers are very excited about the enzymes that this bacterium because it contains all of the proteins and enzymes needed to break down xylan, which […]
In Colorado, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) combined different microscopic imaging methods to gain a greater understanding of the relationships between biomass cell wall structure and enzyme digestibility, a breakthrough that could lead to optimizing sugar yields and lowering the costs of […]
In New York, a $910,000 grant from the DOE was awarded to a Cornell research team working on an algae project aimed at redesigning a bioreactor that delivers light efficiently. The “optofluidic reactor” will deliver light to algae growing on low-cost sheets and then collect fuel through porous tubes; the reactor will be able to […]
In Washington, the USDA announced that scientists working as part of an international team have completed a shotgun sequencing of the wheat genome, a paper published in the journal Nature reported today. The achievement is expected to increase wheat yields, help feed the world and speed up development of wheat varieties with enhanced nutritional value. […]
In California, researchers at UC San Diego have demonstrated that salt water is just as viable as fresh water for producing algae for biodiesel, opening up vast new opportunities for off-shore algae production and reducing competition for land.
In Denmark, Danish researchers jointly with the US and Thailand have identified how plants high in lignin and hemicelluloses – lignocellulosic biomass – contain high levels of pentose sugars that cannot easily ferment into fuels compared to plants with hexose sugars. Led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the researchers in this study decided to […]
In the UAE, researchers at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology are researching the microbes found in camels’ stomachs to determine which produce the most methane and could therefore be the most beneficial for biogas production. Waste from the date production process is seen as a key feedstock for biogas production in the region.
