Mar
5
Mini Ethanol Plants to be Built This Year
March 5, 2010 | 4 Comments
The entrepreneurs at eFarms LLC believe they have an answer for farmers with crop overproduction, high fuel costs and the need for quality animal feed. Build a farm size mini ethanol plant.
eFarms Operations Manager Richard Edmonds says, “This is a stand-alone machine that a farmer can put in a 24-by-24 pole barn and run it [...]
Mar
3
A Breakthrough In Biomass Production
March 3, 2010 | 1 Comment
Stanford University molecular biologist Sharon Long says, “We have discovered a new biological process, by which leguminous plants control behavior of symbiotic bacteria. These plants have a specialized protein processing system that generates specific protein signals. These were hitherto unknown, but it turns out they are critical to cause nitrogen fixation.” This is a critical [...]
Mar
1
A New Way to Make Fuel
March 1, 2010 | 2 Comments
James Dumesic, the Steenbock Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with postdoctoral researchers Jesse Bond and David Martin Alonso, and graduate students Dong Wang and Ryan West have published details of a highly efficient, environmentally friendly process that selectively converts gamma-valerolactone, a biomass derivative, into the chemical equivalent of gasoline [...]
Feb
22
DARPA Cracks the Oil Out of Algae
February 22, 2010 | 6 Comments
Late last week saw Suzanne Goldenberg return from her visit with the new special assistant for energy at DARPA, Barbara McQuiston with news DARPA has solved the algae oil production problem. If you saw the original piece at The Guardian, my contact at Darpa is saying it’s accurate other than the timeline. DARPA expects to [...]
Feb
1
A Bug to Make Bio Diesel In Just One Step
February 1, 2010 | 3 Comments
Using E. coli, a well-studied microorganism whose natural ability to synthesize fatty acids and exceptional willingness to be genetically modified, LS9 Inc., the University of California at Berkeley, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from cellulosic biomass in a one-step process.
The [...]
Jan
20
Seawater Fed Bio Jet Fuel Research Underway
January 20, 2010 | 8 Comments
UOP LLC, a Honeywell owned company, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Boeing and Etihad Airways announced Monday an agreement to establish a research institute in Abu Dhabi dedicated to pioneering sustainable energy solutions. The project is being called the Sustainable Bioenergy Research Project (SBRP). SBRP will use integrated saltwater agricultural systems (ISAS) to [...]
Jan
7
A Catalyst to Remove Water From Biofuels
January 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
Daniel E. Resasco leads an Oklahoma University research team including Steven Crossley, Jimmy Faria, and Min Shen that has published a paper in Science where they have found a way that stabilizes water-oil emulsions and catalyzes reactions at the liquid/liquid interface. Or more succinctly, they can separate out the main liquid components in biofuel processes. [...]
Jan
6
The First Genome for Bacteria And Archaea Goes Online
January 6, 2010 | 1 Comment
Researchers have published the first volume of ‘Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea’ (GEBA) that should lead as a resource for optimizing biofuel production, efforts at bioremediation and perhaps if the climate guys can restore some credibility, maybe carbon capture.
The researchers are from the U.S. and Germany with the first volume built out of the [...]
Dec
31
A 20% More Ethanol Production Process
December 31, 2009 | 2 Comments
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researcher Agricultural Engineer Esha Khullar has found with close study that alternative ethanol production processes can produce more accessible products with better quality, a 20% boost in ethanol production plus saving waste and better efficiency. The choices for ethanol producers for profiting and answering product demands can be broader and [...]
Dec
11
Breakthrough Bacteria That Makes Butanol From CO2
December 11, 2009 | 2 Comments
UCLA researchers at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide in a set of steps to produce the liquid fuel isobutanol. Isobutanol is a form of the alcohol butanol, a favorite for many in a transition away from fossil fuels as butanol based products [...]
