In Massachusetts, Boston College chemists have developed an approach that uses light to transform lignin into sustainable plastics, the team reported recently in the journal ACS Central Science. “We developed a catalyst that can selectively break down specific chemical bonds in lignin when it is exposed to light, such that the lignin is converted into […]
In Washington, scientists from the University of Washington School of Medicine/UW Medicine have used machine learning to create brand-new enzymes, which are proteins that accelerate chemical reactions. This is an important step in the field of protein design as new enzymes could have many uses across medicine and industrial manufacturing. The research team devised deep-learning, […]
In California, members of the Ben Harvey High-Performance Fuels fan club will applaud the appearance of a most interesting paper on designer jet fuels, these are derived from Isoprene and α-Olefins — what’s most interesting from the gang at the Navy’s China Lake R&D center are some of the net heat and low-temp viscosities of […]
In Massachusetts, a team of researchers at MIT says they may have found the key to a truly efficient and inexpensive removal mechanism to remove CO2 from seawater. The findings were reported recently in the journal Energy and Environmental Science. The existing methods for removing carbon dioxide from seawater apply a voltage across a stack […]
In Illinois, next time you drive past farms or prairies and ponds on a rural road, look around. They are a rich source of biomass. That includes corn, soybeans, sugar cane, switchgrass, algae and other plant matter. These carbon-rich materials can be converted to liquid fuels and chemicals with many possible applications. There is enough […]
In France, thirty-five academic and private partners from across Europe and China are now working together on the AgriLoop project, which will develop sustainable processes to convert agri-food residues into high-value, eco-friendly products for use in food, feed and bio-based materials. This new collaboration will find new uses for agri-food residues: currently an underexploited resource […]
In Minnesota, researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, US, have developed what they say is a new catalyst technology that can convert renewable feedstock, such as corn, into acrylic acid and acrylates, which can be used the traditional applications including paints, coatings and superabsorbent polymers used in disposable nappies. Publishing their research in the […]
In Spain, the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) said that a team of researchers from UPM and the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) have used waste from the fruit industry to extract orange oil and analyze its potential as a fuel for bioreactors. The results obtained show that this oil is a viable alternative to […]
In Germany, the plastic materials polyurethane and polyvinyl alcohol can now be degraded under mild conditions with the help of enzymes as biocatalysts. Scientists from the University of Greifswald have developed corresponding methods together with the German company Covestro and teams from Leipzig and Dublin, as recently published in the journal Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., […]
In Germany, researchers asked how can chemicals for the bioeconomy be produced on a large scale from regional residues. This question is being investigated by a team of researchers from the Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum (DBFZ) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) together with industrial partners in the new “CapUp” project. The aim of the […]
