In Washington, here’s a look at some of the more interesting biofuel-related patent applications logged at the US Patent and Trademark Office in recent weeks. The USPTO’s archive is not for the faint of heart, or those with a love of simple, plain language, but certainly provides copious evidence that biofuels inventiveness is all around […]
In California, Solazyme, which was ranked #1 in the 2009-10 “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” by Biofuels Digest readers and selectors, announced that it has raised $52 million in its Series D financing round. Braemar Energy Ventures and new investor Morgan Stanley which includes Lightspeed Venture Partners, The Roda Group, Harris and Harris Group, VantagePoint […]
In Minnesota, Gevo announced it has agreed to acquire the 21 Mgy Agri-Energy ethanol plant in Luverne, and will commence mechanical retrofitting of the plant to produce isobutanol. The company said that during most of the retrofit process, the facility will continue to produce ethanol, and that the conversion will be complete by Q1 2012. […]
In Canada, New Energy Farms has released two new four-row planters for Miscanthus – an ‘Automatic’ planter has a ‘separation’ system in the rhizome storage hopper to tease apart the individual rhizomes before they are delivered into furrows, and the other a ‘Precision’ planter system. Miscanthus, a perennial grass which is harvested each year for […]
For some time, cellulosic ethanol producers have been aghast that the cellulosic ethanol mandates within the Renewable Fuel Standard are being annually waived down to insignificance by the EPA. “What’s the point of a cellulosic ethanol mandate if obligated parties can escape their obligation by simply doing nothing to organize capacity?” goes the thinking. “Especially […]
Back in 2008 the death watch began on Imperium Renewables. Though its 100 Mgy multi-feedstock plant in Grays Harbor was, at the time, the largest and most modern biodiesel facility in the US, the company lost its CEO, withdrew a planned IPO, and was forced to cancel a potentially lucrative Hawaiian development project that would […]
Sweden’s got a common problem: too many bunnies, breeding like, well, rabbits. Sweden’s got an unusual solution, trap ’em, kill ’em, and burn ’em to generate power. A perfect ecologically pure power source for plug-in electrics…oh, not really. Eew. We profiled the common problem and the icky solution in this story from last October. Apparently, […]
Algal biofuels were proposed last year as an answer to the stalled Filene’s construction site at Downtown Crossing in Boston. The Eco-Pod, as designed, is a vertical algae bioreactor built with custom prefabricated modules. According to Höweler + Yoon, the proposed pods would serve as biofuel sources and as micro-incubators for other research and development […]
Though dollars for commercializing biofuels are as scarce as water on Mars, two projects have found R&D funding to look at opportunities for growing biofuels in space. Last August, we covered a group at NASA’s Ames Research Center who are working to convert space-based plant residues, from plants grown by astronauts to provide food and […]
“God Loses Monopoly: Synthetic Genomics creates first synthetic bacterial cell,” went the headline in our May feature on the creation of a synthetic life form by a team at Synthetic Genomics. Her formal name is M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 – you can call her Syndi. In a publication in Science, Daniel Gibson, Ph.D. and a team […]
