In Tennessee, a new, $1.5 million Department of Energy grant brings together experts from three institutions to parse the metabolism of a blue-green algae that holds great promise for biofuel production. The team, led by Vanderbilt University, will take a systems biology approach to identify how cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can be engineered […]
In California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and their collaborators are leveraging the power of 3D printing to improve the performance of electrochemical reactors used to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) to useful energy sources, chemicals and material feedstocks. Working under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with Stanford University and oil and gas […]
In the UK, Green Fuels Research, in partnership with the School of Chemical Engineering, Hà Nội University of Science and Technology (HUST) has been awarded grant funding by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, under Energy Catalyst 8 to conduct a feasibility study into the conversion of pangasius (catfish) mortalities and processing waste into a […]
In Colorado, researchers in the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment (BOTTLE) Consortium, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Portsmouth, identified using enzymes as a more sustainable approach for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic in single-use beverage bottles, clothing, and food packaging. The concept, […]
In India, the Hindu newspaper reports researchers from ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute are looking at cassava as a potential ethanol feedstock as the country diversifies the crops it uses for ethanol to include more starches such as rice and cereals rather than just sugarcane-based. In the late 1990s, a cassava-based ethanol plant was set […]
In California, researchers from Carnegie Science and Stanford University were awarded a $900,000 grant this spring from the university’s public-private partnership Strategic Energy Alliance to research the synthesis of biofuels from a species of green microalgae called Botryococcus braunii. Scientists from a diversity of research areas, including plant and algal biologists, are all applying their […]
In India, the Hindu newspaper reports researchers from the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University are scaling up to commercial scale biodiesel from poultry slaughter waste and dead poultry following success pilot plant stage and approval of a patent from the Indian Patent Office. Already a rendering facility in Coimbatore has signed an MOU to […]
In Texas, Science News reports that University of Houston researchers have developed a more resilient yeast to convert corn stover into ethanol that has yields on a par with producing ethanol from corn kernels. By genetically modifying baker’s yeast, the aldehydes byproduct of the feedstock preprocessing that often kills yeasts and has thus far limited […]
In South Korea, scientists from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology proposed a reaction for the highly selective production of 1-butanol, a valuable alternative fuel, by electrochemical reduction using copper phosphide electrodes. Their findings offer a new insight on the use of Cu-based electrocatalysts for the electroreduction of CO2. The team of scientists reported […]
In New Zealand, University of Canterbury engineering researchers are developing a carbon-neutral – even carbon-negative – way to create clean ‘green’ hydrogen to power our world more sustainably. They are focusing on using renewable biomass – such as tree and plant waste from New Zealand’s forestry and agriculture sectors – to make green hydrogen. This […]
