In Brazil, members of the The Grease Project team, competing at this year’s MIT IDEAS Competition, will undertake training of catadores, or “wastepickers,”, an underclass in Brazil numbering up to 500,000 persons that make their living from picking through trash. The group intends to train the catadores to produce biodiesel from waste vegetable oil that […]
In Nebraska, Green Plains Renewable Energy announced that it completed the previously-announced acquisition of Global Ethanol, LLC. The addition of the two Global plants increases Green Plains’ capacity by 31% to approximately 657 million gallons per year. Green Plains now expects to market and distribute more than one billion gallons of ethanol on an annual […]
In Virginia, the US Navy conducted a full power demonstration of a Riverine Command Boat powered by alternative fuel, at Naval Station Norfolk, in a demonstration dubbed “the Mean Green Riverine Machine” by HamptonRoads.com. Testing and evaluation of alternative fuels from the 49-foot fast and agile RCB-X boat supports the Secretary of the Navy’s efforts […]
In Spain, the national government will mandate an increase in biofuels content to 6.1 percent in 2013, up from 5.83 percent today. Reuters is reporting that the increase will be implemented in a step-up to 5.9 percent in 2011, and 6.0 percent in 2012. The EU has set a target of 10 percent biofuel content […]
The Biofuels Digest Index™ (BDI), a basket of public biofuels stocks, edged up 0.05 percent to 74.69 as advanced biofuels gains offset ethanol losses. For the day, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) gained 0.33 percent to $33.54, while BP fell 0.37 percent to $40.50. Among other equities, BlueFire Renewables (BFRE.OB) recovered 7.84 percent to $0.55. Overall, […]
EI_EcoNewsfeed: Hot Issues: interlocking “climate troika” of REDD+, biofuels & geoengineering Gengulf: In the next 5 yrs non-cellulosic ethanol will be the next big thing in the energy sector stephdreyer12: Oil vs Ethanol: DTN compares support 4 both. Oil gets $133-$280 billion/year from taxpayers, credits and more wide_awake1: RT @ishtarmuz: Anyone that doesn’t think biofuels […]
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 Washington, representatives from national and regional agriculture, food and feed organizations withdrew en masse this week from the Leonardo Academy’s sustainable agriculture standard setting initiative citing “fatal, systemic limitations and chronic biases” within the Leonardo effort. A letter addressed to Michael Arny, Leonardo Academy president, was signed by ten national agricultural-organization voting members on […]
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, recently named by Digest readers to the #1 position in the “100 Top People in Bioenergy” gave a major policy speech on bioenergy in Washington, in which he outlined that the final rules on the Biomass Crop Assistance Program will be published in the Federal Register today. The BCAP […]
In Louisiana, New Oil Resources announced that it has developed a process that uses hot, pressurized water to treat the biomass in a process commonly referred to as hydrothermal liquifaction or thermal depolymerization. According to the research team, “algae can be processed without dewatering and all the carbon is converted to fuels, not just the […]
