In Missouri, loss of fertile topsoil from agricultural fields is an economic problem for modern farmers. When runoff water washes topsoil from agricultural fields in areas with claypan soils under the topsoil, including parts of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas, farmers are often left with an exposed subsoil clay layer that creates difficult […]
In Illinois, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that the Midwest saw 173 ethanol spills in 2015, up from 36 in 1985 but below 2013’s high of 2011, bringing the average to about one spill every second day. Illinois has seen more than 1,100 spills since 1985, the most in the region, coming in […]
In the UK, hand held DieselProve technology from Salunda Limited has been developed for the accurate determination of the biofuel content of diesel blends used in a wide range of automotive and industrial power applications. The tool is designed to provide a fast and simple diagnostic tool to assess the biofuel content in biodiesel fuels, […]
In Washington state, Washington State University research shows that consumers are willing to pay a premium of approximately 11 percent over conventional fuel. “We were surprised the premium was that significant,” said Jill McCluskey, WSU professor in the School of Economic Sciences. “We wanted to study people in different regions of the country, to make […]
In Illinois, new research at the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus could significantly change ethanol production by lowering operating costs and simplifying the dry grind process. “There are currently more than 200 dry grind plants that are processing corn to produce ethanol,” says Vijay Singh, director of IBRL and […]
In Washington state, researchers at Washington State University Tri-Cities have been awarded a National Science Foundation I-Corps grant to explore the market potential of their biojet fuel research. The team has successfully demonstrated a new, water-based process for deconstructing and recovering lignin from biomass and converting it into jet fuel-range hydrocarbons. These could be certified […]
In the UK, students Rachana Halasabele and Alessia Xu from The University of Manchester in the UK recently triumphed with their innovative and practical winning solution to a real-life industry problem set by Cargill’s ethanol experts at their starches and sweeteners plant in Trafford Park, Manchester. The UK-wide competition, open to all Universities, is the […]
In Japan, the country’s first privately owned rocket to potentially reach an altitude of 100km is to be powered by ethanol. Interstellar Technologies, founded by maverick Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie, could launch the rocket in January and will collect atmospheric data during its four-minute flight before falling into the Pacific Ocean. Although ethanol provides less […]
In California, researchers have revealed new atomic-scale details about pesky deposits that can stop or slow chemical reactions vital to fuel production and other processes. This disruption to reactions is known as deactivation or poisoning. The research team employed a combination of measurements, including X-ray experiments at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory […]
In Wisconsin, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin has spun out a company called Lactic Solutions to advance a judo-like remedy for lactic acid production during ethanol fermentation: using genetic engineering to transform enemy into friend. Instead of killing lactic acid bacteria with antibiotics, he’s spliced in genes for ethanol production so these organisms […]
