Biofuels
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Mar 11 | News
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Lab are analyzing 1,000 samples of biomass at a time, finding which one, combined with the right enzyme, most eagerly gives up its sugars to be converted into biofuel. Their work is part of an effort to meet federal regulations that require the U.S. produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022.
Mar 9 | News
Tiny marine isopods called gribbles were for centuries the bane of sailors, whose vessels were quickly devoured. Even today, piers and docks are rapidly gnawed away, and researchers have now been attracted to the enzymes in their gut, which can convert wood into sugars without the help of microbes.
Mar 9 | News
What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter.
Feb 18 | News
Scientists may have just made the breakthrough of a lifetime, turning discarded fruit peels and other throwaways into cheap, clean fuel to power the world's vehicles. Univ. of Central Florida professor Henry Daniell has developed a way to produce ethanol from waste products such as orange peels and newspapers.
Feb 12 | News
Researchers at Queen’s Univ. suggest that policy makers examine greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implications for energy infrastructure as fossil fuel sources must be rapidly replaced by windmills, solar panels and other sources of renewable energy.
Feb 11 | News
As the DOE develops sustainable sources of clean renewable energy, perennial grasses have emerged as major candidates for the commercial production of cellulosic biofuels from feedstocks. In completing Brachypodium distachyon, the Joint Genome Institute has sequenced all three most economically important subfamilies of grasses.
Feb 8 | News
Diesel fuel is the backbone of the U.S. economy, and most of it is imported and derived from petrochemicals. Biodiesel is a significant alternative, but refining it from food stocks is an ethical and economic hazard, and waste grease is rarely clean or convenient. But now, startup BioFuelBox is using an Idaho Lab catalytic process that may crack the bottleneck on this type of fuel.
Feb 1 | News
As climate change challenges continue to crop up around fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide, identifying renewable fuel materials and developing processes that produce environmentally friendly, cost-competitive biofuels are becoming increasingly important. MSU scientists are producing biofuels from cellulose and hemicellulose, the complex sugars that make grasses, plant stems and stalks, and leaves rigid.
Jan 28 | News
A collaboration led by researchers with the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.
Jan 26 | News
Researchers from Purdue Univ. and Cummins Inc. have developed an advanced "closed-loop control" approach for preventing diesel engines from emitting greater amounts of smog-causing nitrogen oxides when running on biodiesel fuels.