In Singapore, a new study released by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore says up to 6% of CO2-absorbing peatlands in Malaysia, Borneo, and Sumatra were converted to palm oil plantations by the early 2000s, leading to a decline in biodiversity (16 species of birds in Sumatra alone) and the […]
In Tennessee, researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory are concluding a three-year project using supercomputers at Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories for simulations to reduce the cost and time of building commercial-scale gasifiers. “High-performance computing is allowing us to reveal and study features of the gas-solids flow in a gasifier to a degree […]
In the Netherlands, Eindhoven University researcher Anna Sues calculated that “even if all available biomass in Europe is used in the most efficient possible way for the transport industry, a biofuels proportion of no more than 9.5% would be achievable,” and added that achieving such a goal is nowhere near achievable in practice. The researcher […]
In California, researchers led by assistant professor Michelle Chang at Berkeley have engineered bacteria to produce n-butanol at about 10 times the rate of competing microbes, in work that will be published in the Nature Chemical Biology. It has been long known that some Clostridium bacteria can naturally produce n-butanol. Other groups had been able […]
In Texas, researchers at Rice University have discovered that using fertilizer at the same rates as corn for food as corn for ethanol can actually make it more difficult for biofuels processing because that additional nitrogen speeds up the production of lignin—getting in the way of cellulosic ethanol production. The researchers found that lignin yields […]
In Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is working on bringing supercomputer simulations and experimental results closer together by identifying common “fingerprints.” ORNL’s Jeremy Smith collaborated on devising a method that reconciles the different signals between experiments and computer simulations to strengthen analyses of molecules in motion. The research will be published in the Proceedings of […]
In Virginia, researchers at Virginia Tech researchers have discovered an enzyme mixture that works in the presence of the toxic infused liquid biomass (hydrolysate), meaning that the detoxification step is unnecessary, reducing the cost of producing biofuels as well as increasing biofuel yields by avoiding the production of by-products and synthesis of cell mass. “Enzymes […]
In Tennessee, a research team at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Georgia Tech and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a strain of switchgrass that produces about 33 percent more ethanol than conventional switchgrass. The key – decreasing the presence of lignin by one-eighth – thereby reducing the strain’s resistance – or recalcitrance – to […]
In California, SG Biofuels and Brookhaven National Laboratory released results of a study revealing that crude Jatropha oil can be blended with residual oil without any problems in separation or modifications to existing burners. Testing also reveals that crude Jatropha oil has less than 3 percent of the sulfur content of typical heating oil resulting […]
In Tennessee, a researcher and his students at Austin Peay State University have produced molecular hydrogen from glycerol using the bacterium Enterobacter aerogenes. They say the conversion process is ready for practical application. What’s the big deal? Higher biodiesel production puts excess glycerol on the market – meanwhile, affordable, renewable sources of hydrogen are generally […]
