In Missouri, a computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a way to coax cells to do natural things under unnatural circumstances, which could be useful for stem cell research, gene therapy and biofuel production. Michael Brent, the Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, […]
In Germany, microbes are already used on a wide scale for the production of fuels and base chemicals, but for this most of them have to be “fed” with sugar. However, since sugar-based biotechnology finds itself in competition with food production, it is faced with increasingly fierce criticism. Carbon dioxide has meanwhile become the focus […]
In India, the Advanced Biofuel Center says it has developed a new varietal of Moringa tree seed after several years research and trials. This varietal has been named Maru-Moringa(MOMAX3) due to the location of its discovery. The MOMAX3 cultivar is noteworthy for producing a very high quality of Moringa oil with five times more quantity […]
In Germany, UFOP reports that the average price farmers received for rapeseed was at just under EUR 380 per tonne free storage facility, a level not seen since May 2014. The factors that contributed to supporting the rapeseed price originated, first and foremost, from overseas. German rapeseed prices have climbed continuously since the 2016 harvest […]
In Washington state, it may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants across the United States may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to new research at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The technology, hydrothermal liquefaction, mimics the geological conditions the Earth uses to create crude oil, using high […]
In Wisconsin, researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have incorporated an exotic gene conferring weak bonds into the plant’s lignin, the hard-to-process compound that gives plant cell walls their sturdiness but makes them difficult to process in an industrial setting. The resulting lignin, dubbed zip-lignin, readily breaks down under simple chemical conditions. This […]
In Missouri, researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have discovered a way to make algae better oil producers without sacrificing growth. The findings were published Sept. 6, in a paper titled, “Synergism between inositol polyphosphates and TOR kinase signaling in nutrient sensing, growth control and lipid metabolism in Chlamydomonas,” in The Plant Cell. They […]
In Tennessee, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have published a study in the American Chemical Society’s Energy Fuels journal evaluating the compatibility of neat bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis with six elastomer types, two fluorocarbons, six acrylonitrile butadiene rubbers (NBRs), and one type each of fluorosilicone, silicone, styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), polyurethane, and neoprene. […]
In Virginia, Logos Technologies announced a partnership with the Ohio Soybean Council to further develop the production process of NatSurFact, an environmentally friendly biosurfactant for personal care, household and industrial cleaning products as well as other applications. The joint project, which aims to convert hundreds of liters of soy oil into similar quantities of NatSurFact, […]
In the Netherlands, saving up excess solar and wind energy for times when the sun is down or the air is still requires a storage device. Batteries get the most attention as a promising solution although pumped hydroelectric storage is currently used most often. Now researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology reporting in ACS’ […]
