Algal biofuels were proposed last year as an answer to the stalled Filene’s construction site at Downtown Crossing in Boston. The Eco-Pod, as designed, is a vertical algae bioreactor built with custom prefabricated modules. According to Höweler + Yoon, the proposed pods would serve as biofuel sources and as micro-incubators for other research and development […]
Though dollars for commercializing biofuels are as scarce as water on Mars, two projects have found R&D funding to look at opportunities for growing biofuels in space. Last August, we covered a group at NASA’s Ames Research Center who are working to convert space-based plant residues, from plants grown by astronauts to provide food and […]
“God Loses Monopoly: Synthetic Genomics creates first synthetic bacterial cell,” went the headline in our May feature on the creation of a synthetic life form by a team at Synthetic Genomics. Her formal name is M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 – you can call her Syndi. In a publication in Science, Daniel Gibson, Ph.D. and a team […]
DARPA is funding this one: A military vehicle that forages for fuel. According to its creators, the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) will travel 100 miles per 68 pounds of vegetation — 17 percent more than a modern car generating 25 miles per gallon on E85 ethanol (with an ethanol conversion rate of 100 gallons […]
Many are the uses of algae, but none perhaps so beneficial in terms of greenhouse gas reduction than a strain developed in Australia, which showed a 40 percent reduction in cattle belching when used as a feed. Bizarre, but not at all crazy. That reduction would translate to the equivalent reduction of 13.2 million tons […]
6. Right up there with “bunnies from biofuels” in the ewe factor, was this R&D advance reported by Applied Clean Tech and Qteros, which reported the development of high yield ethanol opportunities with liquid solid waste. The companies said they are the first to demonstrate commercial success in creating ethanol from the cellulose in municipal […]
