In Brussels, the European Commission granted $34.4 million (SEK 222 million) under EU state aid rules to Sweden to support the Gothenburg Biofuels Gasification (GoBiGas) research and development (R&D) project. Göteborg Energi AB, a Swedish energy company, will manage the project, which will be carried out by its subsidiary, GoBiGas AB. The 10-year project aims […]
In Indiana, a researcher says that focus on waste-to-ethanol technology is a waste of local resources because the process produces an inferior fuel. John Regalbuto, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former researcher and adviser for the National Science Foundation, said given various limitations of trash and the […]
In Germany, Bayer CropScience AG and Evogene have entered into a five-year collaboration to accelerate the development and introduction of improved wheat varieties. Improvements will be pursued for wheat yield, drought tolerance, fertilizer use efficiency and certain other wheat traits utilizing a combination of advanced breeding and state of the art genetic modification methods. Bayer […]
In Texas, CABI and Hart Energy Consulting have released Biofuels and Land Use Change: A Science and Policy Review, which reviews key research that has been conducted on the subject and analyses where the gaps in knowledge lie. Marginal, abandoned, degraded and unused lands are really the only possible sources of significant land for biofuel […]
In Japan, Toyota has developed a technology to analyze sugarcane DNA that will shorten the time required to improve varieties for ethanol production to about four years, half of the time it takes now. The technology was jointly developed with the National Agricultural Research Center for Kyushu Okinawa Region. More on the story.
In China, South Korea’s Chosun University has signed a deal to introduce its photobioreactor technology for algae biofuels production to the Shandong Provincial Academy of Sciences. The cooperation could lead to 1000 square meters of algae production within the next two years. The photobioreactor technology from Chosun University would be used to stimulate growth of […]
In Washington, NASA announced that they have discovered a new microbe in California’s Mono Lake, that can use arsenic as a fundamental building block in its DNA. While it has been known that microbes can survive in high arsenic environments, this is the first known case of a microbe that uses arsenic to replace phosphorus […]
In Tennessee, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered that by using a high-intensity dose of ultrasonic energy, they can remove or prevent the formation of precipitates, or solids, in biofuels. “Biodiesel forms invisible precipitates at temperatures approaching 41 degrees Fahrenheit,” researcher Mike Kass said. “These precipitates cause plugging of filters and lines and […]
In Montana, researchers have published a report in Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, concluding that camelina-based biojet fuel reduces CO2 emissions by 75 percent compared to traditional petroleum-based jet fuel. The research, in collaboration with UOP, a Honeywell company, was conducted at Michigan Tech University, a leading research university. The study was based on camelina […]
In the United Kingdom, researchers at the University of Warwick’s Department of Life Sciences have uncovered the genetic basis of remarkable broad-spectrum resistance to a viral infection, Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV), that, in some parts of the world, is the most important pathogen affecting leafy and arable brassica crops including: brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, […]
