In Montana, a researcher at Montana State University has discovered a fungus from an extreme zone in Yellowstone, fond of eating algae, that could become a future participant in biofuel production. When the fungus is dried out, it oozed an oil of high percentage lipids contained a ratio of oleic and steric acids that’s nearly […]
In Cyprus, the ministry of agriculture is starting to explore the possibility of producing biofuels from microalgae since the island doesn’t have enough land to use for arable-based biofuels. The research is part of a six country, 12 organization research project 90% funded by the European Commission.
In Spain, Cepsa is researching the viability of producing biodiesel from microalgae in Huelva with the cooperation of Centro Internacional de Estudios y Convenciones Ecológicas y Medioambientales (Ciecem), the University of Huelva and the University of Cadiz. The project, begun in 2010, has already moved beyond lab scale and is now being implemented in indoor […]
In Singapore, JOil says cutting edge science and biotechnology processes that could increase the present productivity of Jatropha from the less than 1 ton of oil/hectare to 3 tons/hectare using breeding, tissue culture and genetic engineering processes.
In Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S. Coast Guard have embarked on a three year project to determine the highest acceptable levels of biobutanol in gasoline engines, and biodiesel in their diesel plants. The U.S.C.G. has chosen to use biobutanol instead of ethanol in their small gasoline engines. The project will also […]
In Illinois, researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a computer model to run simulations on how to grow biofuel crops and convert them into fuel, optimizing operations to bring down costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or achieve other goals. The model took into account regional attributes such as weather, crop yield, farm size […]
In California, UC Davis has teamed with the University of Tokyo in Japan in a project jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Japan Science and Technology Agency to develop bioenergy. All four projects, with a total of $12 million in grants, are based on metabolomics, an approach that uses high-tech analysis […]
In the UK, a researcher from the University of York has teamed with The Carbon Trust and the University of Sao Paulo to develop biofuel from wasted orange peels in Brazil using microwave technology. The lab-scale version of OPEC (Orange Peel Exploitation Company) can process 30kg of citrus peels per hour. Project proponents say that […]
In Washington, the EPA says November sales of biodiesel reached a whopping 108 million gallons, bringing the year-to-date total to a record 908 million gallons, up from the previous record of 690 million gallons in 2008. The National Biodiesel Board says that this year’s volume represents about 95% of the biomass diesel requirements under the […]
In Sweden, the Swedish DOE (Energimyndigheten) has awarded $1.2 million in support of a shared 2nd generation ethanol research project to Taurus Energy AB in cooperation with the Department of Chemical Engineering at Lund University and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The purpose of the project is to further develop the process technology for […]
