In Massachusetts, a team of MIT researchers wants to make plants even more useful by augmenting them with nanomaterials that could enhance their energy production and give them completely new functions, such as monitoring environmental pollutants. In a new Nature Materials paper, the researchers report boosting plants’ ability to capture light energy by 30 percent […]
In Virginia, Pellet Fuels Institute Executive Director Jennifer Hedrick explained the Northeast’s high pellet fuel demand recently with weather considerations. Average temperatures have been the coldest in four years, requiring many residential pellet appliance owners to use a greater volume of pellets, reducing supplies. “Americans are increasingly turning to pellet appliances to heat their homes. […]
In Georgia, since 2007, researchers at the BioEnergy Science Center, one of three Department of Energy-funded research centers, have partnered to figure out how to break down plants so that they easily release the simple sugars that can be processed into biofuels. It’s a breakthrough that could make biofuels cost competitive with gasoline. Now, University […]
In Ireland, researchers at the University of Limerick are taking on the challenge to improve the viability of biomass processing. The UL team are part of a consortium involved in the €4 million project ‘CellulosomePlus’ involving nine private and public-sector partners. Dr Damien Thompson, Department of Physics leads the UL research team involved in this […]
In Ireland, the Teagasc Tillage Sectoral Energy Crop Development Group has released a report showing the potential for energy crops in the country. Currently 3,000ha of energy crops are currently grown but that could reach 67,000ha if the right incentives were put in place. Doing so would also go a long way in helping the […]
In Jamaica, research by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica shows that a variety of castor been that comes from China, Zibo 8, could be the most productive for local production. Following two years of variety trials under the Scale Biodiesel Pilot Project, Zibo 8 had the highest oil yield. A Brazilian variety had slightly higher […]
In the US, the Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s new “Today in Energy” brief looks at the jump since 2007 in the number of service stations selling gasoline containing 85% ethanol. While Minnesota continues to dominate the market with 336 E85 retail locations, California and New York have sent he biggest amounts of growth. Across the […]
In Tennessee, Vertimass LLC, a California-based start-up company, has licensed an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology that directly converts ethanol into a hydrocarbon blend-stock for use in transportation fuels. The ORNL technology offers a new pathway to biomass-derived renewable fuels that can lower greenhouse gas emissions and decrease U.S. reliance on foreign sources of oil.
In South Carolina, a doctoral student at Clemson University is feeding crude glycerin to algae to increase biomass and lipid production. Using it as a carbon substrate, the three-carbon sugar alcohol helps the algae to produce about 60 percent oleic acid, Omega-9 fatty acid, under lab conditions.
In Finland, VTT and UPM announced that the tests they’ve been performing on UPM’s renewable diesel since last May have shown that the fuel works just as well as fossil diesel. The tests used a 20% blend of UPM’s BioVerno on four Volkswagen Golf 1.6 TDI cars that traveled 20,000 km each during the course […]
