In Illinois, new research has identified regions in the United States where bioenergy crops would grow best while minimizing effects on water quantity and quality. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used detailed models to examine impacts on water quantity and quality in soils that would occur if existing vegetation was replaced by […]
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In Mississippi, an associate professor at Mississippi State University believes that if half of the sludge produced at the country’s wastewater treatment facilities was used as feedstock for biodiesel, about 2 billion gallons could be produced annually. It’s only 0.5% of domestic diesel demand but it is something from currently nothing. With a pilot plant […]
In Washington state, Matrix Genetics and Proterro will jointly produce high-value nutritional products in Spirulina. Matrix will develop the Spirulina strains and Proterro will grow these strains on their proprietary production system. Matrix was the first company to offer rapid and efficient genetic methods for modifying Spirulina, which unlocks this organism’s high protein content, rich […]
In California, researchers report in the journal Science on Feb. 18 that anaerobic gut fungi from goats, sheep and horses perform as well as the best fungi engineered by industry in their ability to convert plant material into sugars that are easily transformed into fuel and other products. “Nature has engineered these fungi to have […]
In Tennessee, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) created one of the largest biomolecular simulations to date—a 23.7-million atom system representing pretreated biomass (cellulose and lignin) in the presence of enzymes. The size of the simulation required Titan, the flagship supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility […]
In Washington, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement on two recent research reports supported by USDA focused on ethanol and other renewable fuels, one published by USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist and another published by the University of Missouri: “These research reports demonstrate, once again, that America’s renewable energy industry has quickly expanded […]
In Michigan, an assistant research specialist at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) has designed a new strain of yeast that could improve the efficiency of making fuel from cellulosic biomass such as switchgrass. Both the yeast strain and the method of its design could help overcome a significant bottleneck in the biofuels pipeline — namely, […]
In California, researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed two novel biosynthesis pathways for five-carbon alcohol (isopentenol or 3-methyl-3-buten-1-ol) from mevalonate that reduce the energy demand and cost of earlier applications of the mevalonate pathway by using genetically engineered host cells, whose culturing stage can happen both in anaerobic […]
In Iowa, engineers at Iowa State University have found a way to combine a genetically engineered strain of yeast and an electrocatalyst to efficiently convert sugar into a new type of nylon. Previous attempts to combine biocatalysis and chemical catalysis to produce biorenewable chemicals have resulted in low conversion rates. That’s usually because the biological […]
