Category: Research

Portuguese researchers recognized for cellulosic biodetergent development

January 13, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Portugal, researchers at MIT Portugal have recently won the Jerónimo Martins/Green Project Award, a prize given by Quercus, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), and GCI, to reward and foster sustainable development for “Green Detergents: Biosurfactants from lignocellulosic biomass.” The mannosylerythritol lipids (MEL), which are glycolipids with biosurfactants properties, are produced biologically by gender Pseudozyma […]

University of Illinois researchers says energy crops can reduce GHG without displacing food

January 12, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Illinois, second-generation biofuel crops like the perennial grasses Miscanthus and switchgrass can efficiently meet emission reduction goals without significantly displacing cropland used for food production, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Illinois and collaborators published their findings in the inaugural edition of the journal Nature Energy. The researchers call it […]

University of Illinois estimates average of 7 cents per gallon ethanol profitability

January 11, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Illinois, the University of Illinois farmdoc estimates the average Iowa ethanol plant saw an average of 7 cents per gallon profit in 2015, with 10 cents during the beginning of the year, 3 cents towards the later half of the year, and losses the last four weeks of the year primarily due to low […]

EU oilseed meal prices have firmed up, says UFOP

January 10, 2016 | Jim Lane

In Germany, UFOP advises that prices of soybean meal and rapeseed meal recovered at the end of December 2015, after downward for several months. However, pressure continues to be large. At the beginning December 2015, overabundant supply and slack demand sent oilseed meal prices on the cash market skidding to a four-year low. Rapeseed meal […]

Researchers discover how two bacterial enzymes work together to break lignin

January 7, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Texas, in a study that could point the way to biofuels processes of the future, scientists from Rice University, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Joint BioEnergy Institute at Emeryville, Calif., have discovered how two bacterial enzymes work as a team to break apart lignin. The original […]

NREL senior scientist awarded for work with ethanol-producing bacterium

January 6, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Colorado, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Senior Scientist Min Zhang has a special relationship with Zymomonas mobilis, a rod-shaped bacterium that has bioethanol-producing capabilities. Of her 80 peer-reviewed papers and 21 U.S. patents in the field of biochemistry and biofuels, many reference this sugar-eating ‘bug.’ Their fortuitous pairing began shortly after the Chinese-born U.S. […]

Evogene looks beyond plant genomics to bacteria for pest resistance

January 5, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Israel, Evogene is looking beyond its traditional research areas of plant genomics and will now look at bacteria genomics as well in hopes of unlocking resistance to pests. The idea is take a different tack as creating pest resistance in plants that doesn’t lead to increased pest resistance to those methods as they mutate. […]

Indiana University researchers use bio-catalysts to produce hydrogen

January 4, 2016 | Meghan Sapp

In Indiana, scientists at Indiana University have created a highly efficient biomaterial that catalyzes the formation of hydrogen—one half of the “holy grail” of splitting H2O to make hydrogen and oxygen for fueling cheap and efficient cars that run on water. A modified enzyme that gains strength from being protected within the protein shell—or “capsid”—of […]

NREL team uncovers new metabolic pathway for cellulosic sugars to biofuel, chemical precursors

January 3, 2016 | Jim Lane

In Colorado, NREL researchers have discovered that a metabolic pathway previously only suggested to be functional in photosynthetic organisms is actually a major pathway and can enable efficient conversion of carbon dioxide to organic compounds. NREL scientists engineered a cyanobacterium, Synechocystis, that is unable to store carbon as glycogen into a strain that could metabolize […]

€1.6M “Pathway” consortium launches in EU, in search of lower celluase costs