In Ireland, researchers at the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority are leading a European project analyzing grasses that can be grown on marginal land but are also suitable for biofuel production. The GrassMargins project is analyzing tall fescue, cock’s foot (also known as orchard grass) and canary reed grass, all native to Europe. For […]
In New York state, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a new way to regulate the production of phenols, a class of plant products with a wide range of applications for humans. These compounds serve as an important source of flavors, fragrances, and pigments; some are of interest for […]
In the UK, researchers led by the University of Newcastle have developed a holistic high-throughput methodology for assessing sweet Sorghum bicolor feedstocks at 10 days post-anthesis for total fermentable sugar yields including stalk biomass, soluble sugar concentrations, and cell wall saccharification efficiency. This methodology has been demonstrated as an efficient and effective way to screen […]
In New York, F-box proteins have a negative effect on plant phenols’ production, according to recent research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. With this information, the lab hopes to engineer a new way to regulate the production of phenols which influence biomass to biofuel conversion efficiency. “This strategy of increasing PAL degradation to reduce cell-wall […]
In Germany, a study published in Nature on Tuesday, describes the sugar beet reference genome sequence generated by researchers both from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and the University of Bielefeld, in cooperation with other centres and plant breeders. Sugar beet accounts for nearly 30% of the world’s […]
In Washington state, engineers have created a continuous chemical process that produces useful crude oil minutes after they pour in harvested algae — a verdant green paste with the consistency of pea soup. The research by engineers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was reported recently in the journal Algal Research. A biofuels […]
In the UK, the Dept. for Transport commissioned a report from E4Tech that is a first holistic analysis of the whole list of potential advanced biofuel feedstocks to determine which should be considered for multiple counting under blending mandates. It gathers consistent information and defines a rationale for including feedstocks within Annex IX using a […]
In Texas, researchers at Rice University said that blending more ethanol into fuel to cut air pollution from vehicles carries a hidden risk that toxic or even explosive gases may find their way into buildings. Those problems would likely occur in buildings with cracked foundations that happen to be in the vicinity of fuel spills. […]
In California, researchers from the DOE-Office of Science funded Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), in conjunction with staff from the DOE-Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy funded Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published the paper, “Scale-Up and Evaluation of High Solid Ionic Liquid Pretreatment and Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Switchgrass,” in […]
In North Carolina, Novo Synthetix is working on bringing a ricin-free castor plant back to the US fields, an endeavor which won them North Carolina’s Biotech Center’s Ag Biotech Entrepreneurial Showcase earlier this year. A prototype plant is expected to be ready within six months to one year. The project will work with Precision Bioscience to […]
