Researchers are looking more closely at sweet sorghum as a feedstock for ethanol, as the price of corn continues to soar. With yields of up to 600 gallons per acre, researchers at Oklahoma State and the University of Nebraska also say that sweet sorghum uses less water, and that leftover stalk, or bagasse, can be […]
Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory have updated the GREET model for estimating emissions benefits from conversion to biofuels. The newest update will allow scientists to model combustion of ethanol produced from Brazilian sugarcane and used by U.S. automobiles; production and use of bio-butanol as a potential transportation fuel; and production and use of […]
Biofuels Digest readers will receive 50 percent off at the Second Generation Biofuels Development Summit in Maryland. The event features two back-to-back meetings: Innovations in Biofuels 2008 (May 13-14) and Accelerating the Commercialization of Second Generation Biofuels (May 15-16). Organizations that frequently appear in the Digest such as DuPont, Gevo, Mascoma, US Department of Energy, […]
In Belgium, EU Agricultural Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said that investments in commodity indexes had risen from $10 billion in 1998 to $142 billion last year, and that an all-time high of 140 commodity-based financial products were launched in the month of February, double the pace from 2007.
The EU is facing a stalemate over implementation […]
In Washington, Iowa State University economist Bruce Babcock testified before a US Senate committee yesterday that if all ethanol subsidies were halted immediately, the price of a bushel of corn would drop 13%, but only have an effect on food prices of a few percentage points.
Meanwhile, a study from the International Food Policy Research Institute […]
In California, the Energy Biosciences Institute named the first recipients of $20 million in biofuels research funding. The institute received a $500 million grant from BP last year. A total of 49 projects received funding, 19 from the University of California. 19 projects focused on finding better ways to isolate sugar molecules, while 17 focused […]
In New Mexico, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute and Los Alamos National Laboratory said that the biomass-degrading fungus Trichoderma reesei has an array of enzymes for cellulosic ethanol production. The fungus attained notoriety for its fabric-rotting capability in South Pacific operations during the Second World War.
“Improved industrial enzyme ‘cocktails’ from […]
In Vietnam, researchers have developed techniques to extract oils for biodiesel from oilseeds growing on wild sesame trees. The seeds have a 31-37 percent oil content, and grow on perennial trees located in the central provinces of Lam Dong and Ninh Thuan provinces.
A change in Chinese meat consumption habits since 1995 is diverting eight billion bushels of grain per year to livestock feed and could empty global grain stocks by September 2010, according to a new study from Biofuels Digest, now available for download here in an expanded version.
The Study, “Meat vs Fuel: Grain use in the […]
In Florida, PetroAlgae said that it hoped to reach its commercial production stage next year, as algae producers begin to differentiate over varying methods of getting past the algae “shade wall” and other issues in achieving commercial scale. The shade wall refers to algae’s tendency to bloom so rapidly in large scale deployments that it […]
