In Kentucky, a long-standing switchgrass trialing and research project from the Kentucky Forage and Grassland Council and University of Kentucky Plant and Soil Science Department is drawing to a close, but the East Kentucky Power Cooperative, which partnered in the project, is expected to continue burning switchgrass for power generation. EKPC officvials said that they […]
In Illinois, Yong-Su Jin, a University of Illinois faculty member and assistant professor of microbial genomics at the Institute For Genomic Biology has developed a strain of yeast capable of fermenting galactose from red seaweed. Jin stated, “… making biofuels from red seaweed has been problematic because the process yields both glucose and galactose, and […]
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 […]
