by Lisa Gibson (Biomass Magazine) Ten years after NREL’s Aquatic Species Program was shut down, a similar initiative began and now is thriving in its algae research, which includes the evaluation of CO2 recycling.
Between 1978 and 1996, …

(Algae Industry Magazine)  Algae Bioenergy Solutions (ABS), of Augusta, Georgia, has announced preliminary plans to develop a three to five million gallons per year algae oil plant, expandable to forty million gallons a year, to produce …

by Dean Close (Vinton Today)  …In layman’s terms, what Fiberight does is take waste from a paper mill in Cedar Rapids, and uses rare bacteria – Stewart Paul refers to that bacteria as “the bugs” …

(PRNewsWire)  UOP refining technologies will be used to produce renewable fuels from biomass
UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced September 1, 2010, that its technology was selected for use in Rentech, Inc.’s Rialto Renewable Energy Center for the …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …This is the Rome Labs site, which does quite a bit of intelligence-related R&D. The super-secret nature of cellulosic development is not entirely different – though hugh-hush cadres of generals …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In New Hampshire, Mascoma reported yesterday that it had acquired SunOpta BioProcess, a division of SunOpta Inc. (STKL)  This combination brings together the fiber preparation and pretreatment technologies of SBI …

(Green Car Congress/FavStocks)  Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed and demonstrated the feasibility of a two-step hydrolysis-solvolysis process to produce biodiesel directly from wet algal biomass. Their process eliminates the need for biomass …

by Dave Williams (Atlanta Business Chronicle)  The nation’s first commercial plant producing ethanol from wood wastes is open for business in the timber country of southeastern Georgia.

More than a year and a half behind its original …

by William Hermann(The Arizona Republic)   Clean, green energy source could replace fossil fuels.
…With its ideal climate and abundance of available land, Arizona is poised to become a major center of a multibillion-dollar, algae-based, biofuel industry.

Scientists …

(PRNewsWire)  AdvanceBio LLC, a Cincinnati-based advanced biofuel technology company, today announced the development of its next generation, sugar-based fuel ethanol process.
The process is capable of utilizing sugars derived from sugar cane, sweet sorghum, sugar beet and …

by Greg Peel  (ninemsn)  …Algae.Tec is also in the process of an IPO. However at A$7.5m, Algae.Tec’s issue is hardly one that can be described as exploitative or prematurely opportunistic, and the company’s legally protected …

by Nidhi Subbaraman  (MIT Technology Review)  …The company announced plans to build one of the first commercial-scale cellulosic-ethanol plants, in Kinross, MI; it would be able to produce 80 million gallons per year.
But as of the …

by Stu Hutson (Physorg.com)  Termite spit may soon help fill our gas tanks. University of Florida researchers have isolated two enzymes termites use to break up lignin, a tough plant material that is major problem …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …“The simplicity is astounding. Here’s the big idea.  Take an existing, stranded ethanol factory or conglomerate. Buy it for a substantial discount. Start with cheap sugar. Drop in a new …

by Ariel DuChene  (Syracuse University)  Scientists and engineers seek to meet three goals in the production of biofuels from non-edible sources such as microalgae: efficiency, economical production and ecological sustainability. Syracuse University’s Radhakrishna Sureshkumar, professor …

by Bob Moen (AP)  Wyoming is a long way from places where sugar cane is grown, but a test plant in the northeast part of the state will soon be turning sugar cane waste into …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …In a note at CO2science.org, a trio of authors contend: “There simply is not enough freshwater on the face of the earth to make the production of biofuels a viable …

(PRNewsWire)  Biodiesel Industries announced today the company’s selection by the California Energy Commission for a project grant to support the state’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program. This Biofuel Production Plants grant provides funding …

(Biofuels Journal)  KL Energy Corporation is pleased to announce that Petrobras, through Petrobras America, has entered into a Joint Development Agreement with KL Energy Corporation (“KLE”), to jointly optimize KLE’s proprietary cellulosic ethanol process technology for …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  LanzaTech announced that it has produced 2,3-Butanediol (2,3-BD), a key building block used to make polymers, plastics and hydrocarbon fuels, using the company’s waste steel gas fermentation technology.
LanzaTech is a …

(Algae Industry Magazine)  An article by Rene H. Wijffels and Maria J. Barbosa, of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, published in the current edition of Science Journal, details the challenges and opportunities of algal biofuel …

By Jennifer McEntee  (The Voice of San Diego)   Investors are a tough crowd to cultivate. Yet in the pond that is the biotechnology market, one product seems to be rising to the top like the green …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Massachusetts, the secretive Joule Unlimited (then known as Joule Biotechnologies) emerged late last year from “stealth mode” with the startling announcement that their technology could produce up to 15,000 gallons …

(GTM Research)  …In this report, we focus on “third-generation” algae biofuels and “fourth-generation” biofuels that are either created using petroleum-like hydroprocessing, advanced bio-chemistry, or revolutionary processes like Joule’s “solar-to-fuel” method that defies any other category …

by Tamra Fakhoorian  (Algae Industry Magazine)  Reinventing the wheel is usually frowned upon, but in the case of the Waterwheel Factory’s development of high-tech paddlewheels for open pond raceways, it is paying off nicely in terms …

by Ben Leach  (Press of Atlantic City)  A multimillion-dollar ethanol plant is planned for a former landfill site, but members of the community can get a sneak peak of the technology in action next week.
Garden State …

(Standard-Examiner)    Utah environmental regulators have set a seven-year deadline for Logan officials to cut the amount of phosphorus in sewage lagoons west of the city.
Water from the lagoons discharges into Cutler Reservoir.
Phosphorous fuels algae blooms that …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Aside from the general observation that nearly all energy systems ultimately are based on today’s or yesterday’s solar energy (only geothermal and nuclear power are distinct exceptions), a new generation …

by Dominic Woolf, James E. Amonette, F. Alayne Street-Perrott, Johannes Lehmann & Stephen Joseph    (Nature Communications)  Production of biochar (the carbon (C)-rich solid formed by pyrolysis of biomass) and its storage in soils have been suggested …

(Telegraph)  Scientists say they have created a new biofuel made from whisky by-products which could be used to help power cars currently on the road.   

Edinburgh Napier University has filed a patent for the product, which …

by Cindy Zimmerman (DomesticFuel)  …Dr. Steffen Mueller, Principal Research Economist for the Energy Resources Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, did two presentations at the CUTC, both related to the increasing efficiency of …

(PRNewsWire)  Awards Were Approved for Joint Development Projects Between the United States and Israel in the Areas Of Biofuels, Wind Energy, Solar Energy and Energy Efficiency
The BIRD Foundation will invest $4.2M in five clean energy …

by Kenneth Chang (New York Times)  “It was something we wanted to show could be done,” said Michael J. Haas, a research biochemist at the United States Department of Agriculture.
“It’s quirky,” he acknowledged of the dairy-to-diesel …

(PR Newswire)  Range Fuels’ Commercial Cellulosic Biofuels Plant near Soperton, Georgia Produces Cellulosic Methanol from Non-Food Biomass
Range Fuels, Inc., a company focused on commercially producing low-carbon biofuels and clean renewable power, today announced that it has …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …The Digest took the opportunity to visit with BlueFire’s CEO Arnold Klann, who has been working in the cellulosic biofuels space for more than a decade, and continues to be …

by Erin Voegele  (Biodiesel Magazine)   New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson recently announced that $200,000 in Recovery Act funding has been awarded to New Mexico State University. A portion of that funding will go to the …

(The Japan Times)   Scientists from Tohoku University and Tohoku Electric Power Co. have developed a technology to efficiently generate ethanol from seaweed such as sea tangle and sea grape, group members said Saturday. 
The technology uses natural …

(Blue Fire Renewables)  Name Change Designed to Better Reflect Its Fuel and Energy Production Capabilities
BlueFire Ethanol Fuels, Inc., a company focused on changing the world’s transportation fuel paradigm through the production of renewable fuels from non-food …

Green Earth Team Gunner ALMS prototype challenge. photo: J.Ivancic

by Joanne Ivancic (Advanced Biofuels USA)  If there is any doubt that the Green Earth Technologies (G-Oil) Gunnar Racing Team stands for green racing, then you aren’t …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In New York, biobutanol and renewable chemical developer Gevo, ranked #13 in the 2009-10 “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” by Biofuels Digest readers and international selectors, filed its S-1 registration …

by Joseph Holroyd  (Algae Industry Magazine)  LakeMaster Corporation, a clean energy technology company headquartered in Rochester, New York, is engaged in the development and commercialization of a proprietary algal to biofuel system that captures carbon dioxide. …

by  Bob Boughner  (Chatham Daily News)  A proposed $38-million Chatham facility designed to prove corn cobs can be used to produce ethanol fuel received $4 million Wednesday from the province.
The (Ontario) government is supporting the development of …

by David Schwartz (Algae Industry Magazine)   … “I’ve always wanted to work on things that are really important, at least to the company where I’m working and, ideally, beyond that. I don’t mind how big the …

by Nidhi Subbaraman  (Technology Review)  …The company, Gevo, has engineered a yeast that helps transform the cellulose found in wood chips and plant stalks into butanol, an ingredient of gasoline. The researchers can then modify …

by C.R. Roberts (The News Tribune)  Auburn-based Forest Concepts LLC has won a $1 million Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research grant for the second phase of a biomass-production system.

The system makes uniform particles from …

by Carlton Purvis  (SCNow.com)   Native grass burns cleaner than coal and promotes wildlife.
The Pee Dee Research and Education Center announced the next step in its study of switchgrass as an alternative energy source during its annual Pee …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …The announcement was greeted with a hilariously inaccurate story in the New York Times, which apparently confused PetroAlgae’s technology with the OMEGA project developed by NASA (NASA proposed to grow …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Washington, here’s a look at some of the more interesting biofuel-related patent applications logged at the US Patent and Trademark Office in recent weeks. The USPTO’s archive is not for …

(PR.com/BFC)  BFC recently created the Rapid Verification ProgramTM a program designed for prospective clients to test their alternative fuels, at tonnage levels, with immediate analysis of the synthesis gas produced and full reports on anticipated …

by Linsey Davis(North Dakota State University)  Two NDSU professors received $309,357 from the National Science Foundation for research to improve conversion and reduce costs of making ethanol from cellulosic biomass. Andriy Voronov, assistant professor in the …