Aug
20
Meet The Introns of Your DNA and How They Might Help Make Fuels
August 20, 2010 | 2 Comments
Alan Lambowitz a Professor of Molecular Biology and Director of the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Texas at Austin, explains: “Introns are mysterious elements in evolution. Until the 1970s it was believed that genes in all organisms would be continuous and that they would make a continuous RNA, which would then get [...]
Aug
19
Cracking Vegetable Oil Into Gasoline
August 19, 2010 | 2 Comments
TU Delft in the Netherlands and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Spain researchers have a concept developed for the efficient catalytic cracking of unsaturated vegetable oil to greatly increase the production of gasoline and light olefins such as propane and butane. The scientists’ paper on their work was published in the journal ChemSusChem on Aug [...]
Aug
17
What Plants for Cellulosic Biofuel Production?
August 17, 2010 | 3 Comments
In an article titled “Feedstocks for Lignocellulosic Biofuels” published in Science, Chris Somerville of the University of California, Berkeley, and Deputy Director Steve Long of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with bioenergy analysts Caroline Taylor, Heather Youngs and Sarah Davis at the Energy Biosciences Institute suggest that a diversity of plant species, adaptable to [...]
Aug
10
A Sugar to Fuel Genetic Code is Found
August 10, 2010 | 7 Comments
Researchers at LS9 have discovered an alkane biosynthesis pathway, a metabolic pathway that produces alkanes in cyanobacteria for a direct, simple conversion from plant sugar to hydrocarbon fuels. Alkanes are the major hydrocarbon constituents of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Using the bacteria E. coli, with the newly identified alkane operon genetics expressed, the bacteria [...]
Jul
19
A Local Biofuel Process Development
July 19, 2010 | 6 Comments
Purdue University chemical engineers are proposing the creation of mobile processing plants that would rove the Midwest to produce the fuel with a newly developed method to process agricultural waste and other biomass into biofuels. Rakesh Agrawal, the Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering said, “What’s important is that you can process all [...]
Jul
12
Culturing Cyanobacteria for Biofuel
July 12, 2010 | 2 Comments
Hyun Woo Kim and Raveender Vannela, researchers at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University are perfecting the means to culture cyanobacteria, a potentially rich source of biofuels and biomaterials in greater abundance. Cyanobacteria are among the oldest organisms in nature, responsible for generating the atmospheric oxygen we breathe today. The pair’s work is meant [...]
Jul
7
Competition for Algae from Bacteria
July 7, 2010 | 3 Comments
Algae enjoy the highest potential of all the biological organisms for using sunlight to reform CO² and water into fuel products. But now scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have engineered photosynthetic bacteria to produce simple sugars and lactic acid. This innovation could lead to new, environmentally friendly methods for producing commodity [...]
Jul
1
Making Carbohydrates from Lignin with Ozone
July 1, 2010 | 4 Comments
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new way to free the carbohydrates from plant lignin. By exposing the plant matter to gaseous ozone, with very little moisture, the NC team is able to produce a carbohydrate-rich solid with no solid or liquid waste. This may well be the breakthrough. It’s still early, [...]
