In Michigan, Michigan State University researchers show that looking at the big picture other than just yield allows other biofuel crops, such as native perennial grasses, to score higher as viable alternatives. The researchers compared three potential biofuel crops: corn, switchgrass, and mixes of native prairie grasses and flowering plants. They measured the diversity of […]
In the UK, Europe has 13.4 million too few honeybee colonies to properly pollinate its crops, according to new research from the University of Reading. The discovery, made by scientists at the University’s Centre for Agri-Environmental Research (CAER), shows that demand for insect pollination is growing five times as fast as the number of honeybee colonies […]
In Massachusetts, Aphios Corp. has announced that it was granted U.S. Patent No. 8,540,847 entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Processing Cellulosic Biomass,” for its Aosic enabling technology platform. In the Aosic process, biomass is contacted with SuperFluids such as carbon dioxide with or without small quantities of polar cosolvents such as ethanol, both sourced from […]
In North Carolina, research at North Carolina State University have developed a simple, effective and relatively inexpensive technique for removing lignin from the plant material used to make biofuels, which may drive down the cost of biofuel production. The work was recently published in the journal Green Chemistry. Specifically, the researchers use protic ionic liquids […]
In Kansas, researchers from Kansas State University studied biomass particle size and enzymatic hydrolysis sugar yield in two different sugar yield definitions (cellulose-based and biomass-based) and found they were not consistent depending on how sugar yields were defined.
In Tennessee, researchers at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have discovered that an enzyme from a microorganism first found in the Valley of Geysers on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia in 1990 can digest cellulose almost twice as fast as the current leading component cellulase enzyme on the market. If the enzyme […]
In North Carolina, researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a simple, effective and relatively inexpensive technique for removing lignin from the plant material used to make biofuels, which may drive down the cost of biofuel production. The researchers began by making a number of liquid salts called “protic ionic liquids” or PILs. These […]
In Maryland, a researcher from Morgan State University received a $100,000 Maryland Innovation Initiative grant to begin development of a method to produce biofuel from cyanobacteria in naturally available salt water. Dr. Sitther will lead a team of bioengineers in developing a salt tolerant strain, which when scaled-up, will offer a sustainable, efficient, environmentally conscious, […]
In Montana, as the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA) analysis of western Montana finishes up, the Bioenergy Alliance of the Northern Rockies (BANR) is gearing up to study the northern Rocky Mountain region. “We’re looking at forest residuals – post-harvest residuals – and BANR is focusing on the beetle-killed areas,” said NARA spokesman Charles Burke, […]
In Michigan, researchers from Michigan State University and Ford tested 12 potential biofuel compounds in mixtures with three diesel fuels and one jet fuel to determine the effects of different functional groups on low temperature properties. Functional groups evaluated include diesters, esters, ketones, and ethers; alkanes were used for comparison.
