In Washington, American Oversight filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force the release of communications with investor and White House advisor Carl Icahn, along with calendars and phone logs for Administrator Scott Pruitt and other top agency officials. Icahn owns 82 percent of CVR Refgining and has been outspoken in radically re-shaping […]
In Tennessee, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and North Carolina State University used a a combination of X-ray and neutron scattering to revealed new insights into how a highly efficient industrial enzyme is used to break down cellulose. Their results are published in the journal Angewandte ChemieInternational Edition. Producing biofuels like […]
In Washington, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has propsoed to rescind the 2015 Clean Water Rule and with it, a series of Clean Water Act protections for wetlands, streams and other waters originally aimed at improving the drinking water supply. The EPA’s move prompted strong reaction from environmental and farmer interests. “The goal of the Clean […]
In Indiana, Xylogenics released a new strain design for its patented GX-1 yeast production and fermentation process. The efficiencies created by the newest strain design will have an immediate impact on industries that rely on micro-organism technologies, most notably the ethanol industry wherein individual production plants are planning to invest upwards of $350 million annually […]
Omega-3s are a great thing, but here’s the bottom line: the current applications stink. Not as in, they-don’t-work. We mean, literally. Check out this comment at drpermutter.com. I’ve been taking two tabs/day of a fish oil concentrate containing 500mg DHA and 250mg EPA. After my wife complained about my body odor I cut back to […]
Omega-3s are a great thing, but here’s the bottom line: the current applications stink. Not as in, they-don’t-work. We mean, literally. Check out this comment at drpermutter.com. I’ve been taking two tabs/day of a fish oil concentrate containing 500mg DHA and 250mg EPA. After my wife complained about my body odor I cut back to […]
The DOE completed an illuminating workshop on Carbon Capture and Sequestration with relation to algae-based technologies, and The Digest has prepared a selection of key slides presented by AquaFiber, Pacific Northwest National Lab, University of South Florida, Algenol, Montana State University, University of Toledo, NREL, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and RTI.
Rudolf Diesel in 1892 received a patent for a compression ignition reciprocating engine. However, his original design, which used coal dust as fuel, did not work as planned. To put things in context – thirty-three years prior, in 1859, crude oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. The first product refined from crude was lamp oil […]
Terpenes may be the most unloved class of energy molecule of all time, if you compare R&D spending to potential. Even ARPA-E, the home of high-risk, high-reward government research into energy, hasn’t delved into terpenes since 2012’s OPEN invite, where Allylix picked up a single $467,6905 award to develop a “Renewable Platform for Production of […]
In Illinois, a team of researchers writing in Nature Communications concluded California’s indirect land use change factors in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, applied nationally, would imply that the cost of reducing a ton of carbon is 20 percent higher than the avoided damages from those emissions. Lead researcher Madhu Khanna found that “It penalizes […]
