Ethanol’s chief benefit is environmental.  …Last summer, there were no smog alerts in the GTA and 5.5 million Canadians breathed easier. Ethanol was a major factor in cleaning the air above Canada’s biggest metropolis.

A lesser-known fact is that the smaller, lighter car engines with high horsepower coming on to the market today require a higher-level octane gasoline. The traditional way to increase octane is to boost the level of aromatics in the fuel, specifically benzene, toluene and xylene. All three of these compounds are carcinogenic. The alternative method of increasing octane is to add ethanol, which has an octane of 114 and delivers plenty of extra power. That’s why Indy and NASCAR racers use ethanol.

Ethanol also reduces the price of gasoline at the pump. With about 15 billion gallons of ethanol in the North American gasoline pool today, gasoline is about 10¢ cheaper per litre in Canada and about 40¢ cheaper per gallon in the United States.  READ MORE

“We do full service restaurant care, which includes grease trap cleaning and maintenance, plumbing, water systems repair, and grease recycling,” Borish said. “The cooking oil is one of the waste streams we bring back to our plant, where we process it, recycle it and sell it to commodities brokers [for use] as feedstock for the biodiesel [industry] or as animal feed,” he continued. Borish estimates that his company currently sells approximately 18,000 gallons of recycled cooking oil into the biodiesel industry each week.  READ MORE

An independent peer review meeting is scheduled for March 14, 2011 in Arlington, VA. [Federal Register Jan 28, 2011] READ MORE  Download Report

The US Navy intends to have a fleet of warships known as the “Great Green Fleet” running on biofuels by 2016, and by 2020 it plans to run half of its entire fleet on alternative fuels.

“The US Navy is meeting institutions in Queensland involved in research and development which could deliver the technology that could be passed on to industry partners, who would ultimately be the suppliers of these fuels on a commercial scale,” QUT’s Professor Sagadevan Mundree said.

Professor Mundree and Dr Ian O’Hara from QUT met with Chris Tindal, the US Navy’s director for operational energy, yesterday afternoon (February 6) in Brisbane to explain the capabilities of QUT’s Mackay Renewable Biocommodities Pilot Plant.  READ MORE

The project, which is projected to cost 2 million euros, is 50 percent funded by the Fund for Support to Innovation of the Energy Agency (Adene).

…The project will research areas including improving plant varieties, harvesting, oil extraction and use of sub-products.

Galp Energia’s jatropha plantations in Mozambique are increasing in size and by 2016 the company expects to have a planted area of 23,000 hectares and production of 30,000 tons of oil.  READ MORE

Both plentiful and a potentially low-cost source of fuel, biomass residuals are also less controversial than traditional corn ethanol because they are not a source of food or feed. Turning stover (the stalks, leaves and cobs that remain in corn fields after the grain is produced) into ethanol or using anaerobic digesters on livestock farms to generate bioenergy from animal manure are seemingly win-win propositions — more income for agricultural producers, new home-grown energy sources, and environmental protections for states and their communities.

But as Steve Brick, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, notes, there are technological, logistical and cost hurdles to overcome in order to expand the use of these energy sources.

And he says states are in a position to help.  READ MORE

The VND2 trillion (US$95.2 million) plant has a yearly designed capacity of 100 million litres of ethanol.

Ho Sy Long, the plant’s director, said 10 per cent of the product would be used to produce Ethanol Fuel E5 while the remainder would be exported to Asean members, especially to the Philippines.

Long added that under its commitment, the plant would contribute to rural economic growth by consuming 17,000 hectares of cassava as soon as it came into stable operation.  READ MORE

The Algal Biomass Organization today launched AllAboutAlgae.com, a new website designed to showcase the potential of algae-based products to provide sustainable and scalable sources of food, energy and fuel. The website, developed in concert with the National Biodiesel Board provides information, videos and photos all about algae-derived products such as biodiesel, aviation fuel, biochemicals, animal feed and nutritional supplements.

AllAboutAlgae.com is the first site designed to showcase algae’s potential for everyone — from those just learning about algae to seasoned algae enthusiasts and entrepreneurs looking for the latest information on the industry’s progress toward meeting challenges in energy security, food production and sustainability.

“With global population expected to reach 9 billion in the next decades, we must find additional sustainable sources of food, energy and fuel,” said Mary Rosenthal, executive director of the Algal Biomass Organization. “Products made from algae have incredible potential to meet these needs, and this website is designed to inform and excite people about algae. AllAboutAlgae.com is a one-stop shop of comprehensive, easy-to-understand information about this exciting industry.”

The site is organized in a way that allows users to navigate between basic and more complex aspects of algae. It answers questions about what algae are and their unique characteristics as a feedstock for fuels, food, feed and more. It includes reviews of the history of algae research, state-of-the-art technology and the latest efforts of the industry to begin large-scale production. Users can review photos of operations, video interviews with industry and academic experts, an FAQ to quickly find information, a quiz that tests their algae knowledge, and more.

“This is a much-needed resource when you consider how quickly this industry is moving. Algae is slated to be a source of many products, including biodiesel, and we are excited that there is now a place for people to learn about its potential,” said Joe Jobe, Chief Executive Officer of the National Biodiesel Board.

AllAboutAlgae.com was funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy.  READ MORE and MORE

…Since first installing its trademarked Grower Harvester bioreactors at the Shenandoah plant in 2009, the project has continually met or exceeded its expectations, with the latest expansion being no exception. The company announced last fall that it planned to construct the five-acre farm in the spring and is now moving ahead as scheduled. But the successful scaling-up process has brought with it unexpected challenges on the demand side.

Last year, Green Plains CEO Todd Becker said that the project was progressing faster than market opportunities were being developed for algae. As a result, the company began participating in market development activities, supplying algae for feed trials and tests for other markets, such as pharmaceutical applications.

…(T)he company wants to play the role of farmer, supplying the wholesale dried algae to companies for their individual purposes. READ MORE

…As CEO of BioVantage Resources, Inc., Sue is responsible for corporate vision, strategy, execution and capitalization of a company pursuing two tracks of development in the algae industry, one as a scale-up specialist, enabling cultivators to advance from lab level to commercial production. And two, being experts in water reclamation, in which they use their own products to facilitate algae nutrient removal and biomass development.

…We chose the scale-up part of the growing system, and water reclamation. There is always that classic build or buy decision, in early-stage businesses especially. We’ve put together a very nice packaged set of products to allow you to grow algae from milligram, to kilogram, to commercial scale in a 21st Century way.

I’ve got some background in manufacturing, and we’ve commercialized a lot of product. So we’ve looked at how to tackle commercialization of systems so that we can really have repeatable and reliable processes. And that is something we’re good at. Anyone who wants to grow algae at volume needs to go through the scale-up process, so we look at that as our biomass business. We’ve built dozens of scale-up systems already, with customers using it for biofuels, biochemicals, for protein, and we’ve just started dialogs about growing for nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals.  READ MORE