In North Carolina, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, aided by a $1.87 million federal grant, has embarked on a three-year project to study the production of sorghum as biomass for fuel and high-value chemicals in the Mid-Atlantic region. The project, involving scientists at land-grant universities in two Southeastern states and numerous industry partners, is enabled by […]
In Wisconsin, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) have found a way to nearly double the efficiency with which a commonly used industrial yeast strain converts plant sugars to biofuel. The newly engineered “super yeast” could boost the economics of making ethanol, specialty biofuels and bioproducts. Though […]
In California, Microvi has been awarded a grant from the US Department of Energy for a new groundbreaking biocatalytic technology that converts methane and carbon dioxide in biogas into valuable liquid chemicals, the company announced today. The new technology, based on Microvi’s MicroNiche Engineering Platform Technology, can convert biogas that is created at facilities like […]
In Tennessee, in a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous. The team used a […]
In Arizona, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service is experimenting with a giant electronic scanner to study the individual characteristics of thousands of energy sorghum plants growing underneath it in work funded by the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) known as Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture (TERRA). The work in Maricopa aims to speed […]
In Colorado, CU Boulder engineers have developed an innovative bio-manufacturing process that uses a biological organism cultivated in brewery wastewater to create the carbon-based materials needed to make energy storage cells. This unique pairing of breweries and batteries could set up a win-win opportunity by reducing expensive wastewater treatment costs for beer makers while providing […]
In California, two Stanford faculty are part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers who will share a $24 million Science and Technology Center grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant will found a bioengineering research and education center. SINDY TANG, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, said work at this center will reveal how […]
In the Netherlands, Reverdia and Dezhou Xinhuarun Technology (Xinhuarun) agreed to jointly develop and promote Biosuccinium-based microcellular polyurethane (PU) foams. These new microcellular foams will be used in soles for footwear and further applications. Based in China, Xinhuarun’s products are exported across Asia, America, Europe and the Middle East. Produced since 2012, Biosuccinium is sold globally. The […]
In Washington, the website E85prices.com, managed by the Renewable Fuels Association, is including E15 in its services. The website, a crowdsourced service, now allows consumers to toggle between E15 and E85, locating information and reporting prices on either fuel blend. The improvements also allow consumers to review E15 prices reported by others, price spreads for each state, […]
In New Zealand, there is no doubt that Pigeons are one of the most interesting family of birds. A new study has highlighted that Pigeons (specifically Columba livia) can be trained to separate real words from non-words. According to researchers from University of Otago, the pigeons learn to differentiate based on the orthographic properties that […]
