In Massachusetts, Altranex Energy has teamed with Brown University to develop biofuels that work well in cold climates. Brown University’s Jason Sello, assistant professor of chemistry at the university, and Aaron Socha, a post-doctoral associate in Sello’s lab, have worked on a solid catalyst-based production process for biodiesel. Together with Altranex they are developing what […]
In California, at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) based in San Francisco, researchers have developed a wiki for the biofuels research community to help streamline cost-efficient biorefinery operations by simulating such critical factors as production costs and energy balances under different processing scenarios. The wiki runs a technoeconomic model to help with the simulation. In […]
In Illinois, researchers from the University of Illinois have published a study in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy that shows growing energy grasses in southern Illinois and Missouri could do better than growing corn and soybeans. The study explores the socioeconomic and biophysical aspects of miscanthus and switchgrass on a county-by-county. The researchers used […]
In the UK, researchers Sarah Pilgrim and Mark Harvey, publishing in Sociological Research Online, found that in the case of indirect land use change (ILUC), “the development of NGO policy has been driven more by narrow political opportunities for influence than by broader and more coherent policy responses to global climate change or economic development, […]
In Washington, the Center for New American Security (CNAS) released a 36-page study entitled Fueling the Future Force: Preparing the Department of Defense for a Post-Petroleum Era (PDF). The authors suggest that DOD should ensure that it can operate all of its systems on non-petroleum fuels by 2040. The report also offers 12 guiding principles […]
In Hawai’i, the Center for Microbial Oceanography officially opened at the University of Hawaii Manoa, with 10-year budget of up to $90 million from the University of Hawaii, the National Science Foundation, and grants from private foundations. The Center will focus on the study of marine microbes, algal biofuels and ocean thermal energy production. Thermal […]
In California, iDiverse announced that it has successfully modified yeast to be highly resistant to a number of lethal stresses normally encountered in the bioproduction of fuel ethanol. In doing so, iDiverse has enabled the yeast to generate significantly more ethanol. The technology keeps cells alive in extreme conditions like those found in biofuel production […]
In Georgia, in a study published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, a team from Georgia Tech determined that Algenol’s algae-to-ethanol technology produces fuel with greenhouse gas emissions between 67% and 87% less than gasoline, depending on whether CO2 is sourced from fossil fuels or from and industrial source. More on the story.
In Rhode Island, researchers at Brown University have developed a process to produce biodiesel from WVO in a single reaction, by switching to bismuth triflate and scandium triflate catalysts and utilizing a microwave reactor. Traditionally, sulfuric aicid is used as a catalyst for free fatty acids while potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide are used as […]
In Tennessee, a study by the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has found that “minimal to zero indirect land use change was induced by use of corn for ethanol over the last decade,” based on an analysis of empirical data between 2001 and 2008. The review of the data found that feedstock for ethanol expansion […]
