By Gretchen Miller Special to The Digest Meghan Pawlowski crawled through the tall, dense sugarcane jungle, glass vials in hand, searching for her next sample site while she kept her eye out for the scurry of cane spiders. Up to four inches across, these usually harmless creatures are nonetheless an unpleasant one-on-one encounter while tangling in […]
These are excerpts from a complete review of ABLC by Raymond James Senior VP Pavel Molchanov, which you can read here. While the tone (on the whole) is no longer worsening, it is far from being as optimistic as it had been in the early years of this decade. This has little to do with the […]
By Douglas L. Faulkner, “The Cleantech Conservative” Special to The Digest Robert McNally, the author of the new, critically-acclaimed book, “Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices”, believes that global oil markets are entering an epic, structural shift to a protracted new era of wildly fluctuating crude prices. The reason is […]
By Markus Rarbach, Head of Start-up Business Biofuels and Derivatives, Clariant Special to The Digest In an article published by novaCana.com on January 26th entitled; “Dilema do Etanol 2G: os desafios da matéria-prima celulósica” pre-treatment was identified as the key challenge for the six current commercial cellulosic ethanol plants worldwide. Our approach at Clariant when developing […]
By Lorenz Bauer, Ph.D., Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest The explosion of interest in using biomass to produce chemicals and fuels has motivated a renewed search for improved methods for pretreatment that enable efficient conversion of the raw materials. The molecules in cellulosic materials, and particularly lignocellulosic material, are intertwined and held together […]
By Charles Loos, PE Lee Enterprises Consulting, Inc. Special to The Digest From an operations standpoint, a wood-fired power plant can be described as a fuel handling system first, and a power plant second. The biggest challenges stem from the fuel itself – procurement, supply, handling and combustion. By contrast, the steam turbine and power cycle […]
By John Diecker, Lee Enterprises Consulting, Inc. Special to The Digest World rice production for the 2016/2017 crop year is estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture to total 481.5 million tons. The vast majority of this will come from Asia where, in addition to being a major food crop, its cultivation has strong […]
by Bruce Comer, Ocean Park Advisors Special to The Digest The North American biofuels industry continues trend of increased mergers and acquisitions activity. For the second straight year, the North American biofuels industry experienced year-over-year growth in merger and acquisition transactions. In 2016, we saw 12 M&A transactions, the most in 5 years. In total, […]
By Dr. Markus Rarbach, Head of Biofuels & Derivatives, Clariant Special to The Digest Cellulosic ethanol is no longer a topic solely discussed in scientific papers or conferences, or by the academic world. It has made its way through the stages of technology development, from lab scale to pilot, to demo and now to commercial-scale plants. […]
By Mark Warner, PE, Founder, Warner Advisors LLC Special to The Digest As companies consider options to commercialize their advanced biotechnologies, they are faced with the decision to either build their own demonstration scale facility or utilize existing contract manufacturing operations (CMOs). There are benefits and pitfalls to both approaches, with the correct decision founded in […]
