In Finland, micro-organisms found in the wildfire-prone dry tropical forests of India are an exciting prospect for biochemical production, as they are accustomed to the challenging conditions following a forest fire. The enzymes they produce are likely to also have a higher-than-normal resistance to the substances released from biomass in high-temperature industrial processes. An EU and […]
In Tennessee, researchers from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture have received a $225,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin a three-year project to perform a multitude of techno-market analyses of U.S. biorefinery supply chains from feedstock to alternative jet fuels. This research is part of the Aviation Sustainability Center (ASCENT) project—a […]
In Illinois, NASA and challenge partner Bradley University opened Phase 3 of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for registration. The Centennial Challenges competition is seeking ways to create or develop the technologies needed to create such habitats on-site, and challenges citizen inventors to lead the way. The 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge is divided into phases. The Phase 1: Design Competition […]
In Colorado, DMC Biotechnologies was awarded a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant for $600,000 to commercialize their proprietary high throughput metabolic engineering platform that enables the rapid development of microbial hosts for the production of a broad diversity of bio-based products. The comapny also recently picked up a National Institute […]
In California, Sandia National Laboratories-led team has demonstrated faster, more efficient ways to turn discarded plant matter into chemicals worth billions. The team’s findings could help transform the economics of making fuels and other products from domestically grown renewable sources. The team’s first new conversion method is a multi-stage process that begins by pre-treating lignin […]
In Minnesota, coal fueled the Industrial Revolution, but it took eons to form. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota-Duluth has introduced what might be called “instant coal”: an energy-dense biofuel made from wood and agricultural waste in the Natural Resources Research Institute’s (NRRI) Renewable Energy Lab. The new biofuel’s vital statistics […]
In India, researchers developed a comprehensive database of known enzymes with proven or potential applications in biofuel production through text mining of PubMed abstracts and other publicly available information. A total of 131 enzymes with a role in biofuel production were identified and classified into six enzyme classes and four broad application categories namely ‘Alcohol […]
In Texas, Exxon’s head of R&D told Bloomberg that commercial algae production is at least another 10 years away, although the company has already been investing in the technology for eight years. The algae investment and its work with the Renewable Energy Group using microbes to produce biodiesel from crop waste that was recently extended […]
In India, a new low-cost method for producing biofuels using crude glycerol was developed thanks to researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. The team used the algal based crude glycerol, which is a low-cost organic carbon source and the main by-product of the biodiesel production process as a main feedstock for microalgae cultivation […]
In Pennsylvania, researchers at Penn State are investigating the role of giant clams as “solar transformers” because they are capable of absorbing bright sunlight at a very high rate and scattering it over a large surface area. When the light is distributed evenly among the thick layer of algae living inside the clam, the algae […]
