By Sam A. Rushing. Background As of 2011, without the deployment of new merchant CO2 plants, there are about 36 standing CO2 plants today which are only fed by ethanol by-product raw gas. This represents about 32% of the total number of fermentation plants serving the merchant sector. The total number of merchant CO2 plants […]
The NRC says biofuels will not meet US mandates at current rate of progress. Too pessimistic? Stating the obvious? The Digest looks at the pace of development, and the problems of peering into the future. In Washington, the National Research Council released a study on the potential for biofuels production that has ruffled feathers throughout […]
Like to quickly understand the surge in renewable chemicals and one of the hottest companies in the hottest sector of the bioconomy? Here’s our 10-minute version of the IPO from Elevance Renewable Sciences. Complete with the risks, translated into English from the original SEC-speak. In Illinois, Elevance Renewable Sciences filed its S-1 registration statement relating to a […]
When Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather ascended to their anchor chairs between 1978 and 1982, 95 percent of Americans who watched network television news preferred to watch the big three. PBS’s broadcast was widely available, but seldom watched. CNN’s telecasts were new and hard to find on cable systems. The other cable networks […]
At Pearl Harbor, Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class Lee Soucy, crewman aboard USS Utah, first heard about Pearl Harbor before the first bombs fell. He had just had breakfast and was looking out a porthole in sick bay when someone said, “What the hell are all those planes doing up there on a Sunday? “Someone else […]
One week ago, the RAND organization published a report assaying and critiquing the military efforts to develop advanced biofuels – in particular focusing on Fisher-Tropsch renewable fuels, fuels from algae and fuels from oilseed crops. The renewable fuels industry and the US Navy were, in particular, aghast at the report’s findings. In particular, the algal […]
In Washington, the RAND Corporation, the national defense research institute, released a study on the use of alternative fuels in military applications. RAND has highlighted that “If the U.S. military increases its use of alternative fuels, there will be no direct benefit to the nation’s armed forces,” and said that “To realize the national benefits […]
The old joke in cellulosic ethanol is that it is five years away from commercialization…forever. So when a company in the know, like Novozymes, pushes back its cellulosic ethanol commercialization timelines to 2014 or 2015, it sounds like Deja Vu all over again. The supporters of cellulosic ethanol say that unlucky timing is the root […]
