Oct

12

Industrial Waste Gas to Jet Fuel

October 12, 2011 | 4 Comments

Waste gases emitted by blast furnaces, coke ovens and BOF (basic oxygen furnace) operations can now be converted into low-cost ethanol and high-value chemicals.  The new fuel production process recycles waste gases that would otherwise be oxidized further to carbon dioxide and released into the atmosphere. Britain’s Virgin Atlantic Airline announced the development of a [...]

Sep

20

The First Synthetic Yeast

September 20, 2011 | 2 Comments

Fermentation has relied on natural yeasts for centuries – now researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine have equipped yeast cells with semi-synthetic chromosomes. It is the first such achievement in eukaryotic, or complex-celled, organisms, and marks a step towards large-scale genome engineering in these cells with synthetic biology. The full paper is now [...]

Sep

14

Get Ready For Microchannel Reactors

September 14, 2011 | 4 Comments

Oxford Catalysts Group, the newest winner of Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award, has a technology called microchannel reactors that enables the small scale and economic production of synthetic fuels via gas-to-liquids (GTL), biomass-to-liquids (BTL) and coal-to-liquids (CTL) via the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reaction. The Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award recognizes noteworthy chemical-engineering technology commercialized anywhere in [...]

Jun

2

Enzyme Found That Makes Hydrocarbons

June 2, 2011 | 1 Comment

Utah State University (USU) biochemists Zhi-Yong Yang and Lance Seefeldt, along with colleague Dennis Dean of Virginia Tech, discovered a molybdenum nitrogenase enzyme capable of converting carbon monoxide into usable hydrocarbons and may lead to motor fuel molecules. This is significant.  Al Fin found the press release and your writer is posting now that the [...]

Mar

31

Using Protein and Bacteria to Make Renewable Petroleum

March 31, 2011 | 1 Comment

University of Minnesota researchers, with a breakthrough from graduate student Janice Frias of figuring out how to use a protein to transform fatty acids produced by bacteria into ketones that can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels has the university filing patents on the process. The ink is barely dry. U of M researchers have [...]

Dec

9

The Path From CO2 to Fuel Improves

December 9, 2010 | 5 Comments

After yesterday’s look at new field of chemistry using palladium to reform CO2 back to fuel University of Illinois’ scientists Dr. Paul Kenis and graduate student Devin Whipple published the accomplishments to date in the field of the electrochemical reduction of CO2 in the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. As in yesterday’s post, the [...]

Dec

8

CO2 Back to Fuel and More

December 8, 2010 | 4 Comments

Liviu M. Mirica, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis may have found and is developing a novel metal catalyst that would be able to turn greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide into liquid fuels without producing more carbon waste in the process. Mirica describes a new metal complex that [...]

Sep

21

Understanding the How in Gasification

September 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Purdue University, funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, has developed a facility aimed at learning precisely how coal and biomass are broken down in reactors called gasifiers. Gasifiers are reactors in which biomass, coal or other carbon rich substances are heated and flooded with steam, oxygen or both.  Simply put, the [...]

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