…A detailed structure of crystalline cellulose in algae was produced a decade ago. But only about half of the cellulose in wood fibres and crop plants is crystalline, the rest is disordered.  The challenge was …

by Wayne Seames  (American Oil Chemists Society/Inform Magazine)  A new generation of technologies to generate renewable fuels is nearing commercialization. Some of these are focused on producing ethanol and other alcohols from cellulosic biomass using …

(Wiley-Blackwell/ScienceNewsLine)   The production of ethanol from lignocellulose-rich materials such as wood residues, waste paper, used cardboard and straw cannot yet be achieved at the same efficiency and cost as from corn starch. A cost …

by Angela Brown (Central Plains Herald-Leader)  Shell Canada is looking into the possibility of establishing a biofuel plant in the Portage la Prairie area.
The facility would be a cellulosic ethanol plant, which is proposed for …

(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)  Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Create RiceNet for Predicting Genetic Functions in Rice
The first genome-scale model for predicting the functions of genes and gene networks in a grass species has been developed …

by Matthew L. Wald (New York Times)  A Georgia company says it has overcome a major roadblock in turning agricultural waste into vehicle fuel and other useful chemicals by experimenting with a technology that treats …

by Kiyohiko Igarashi, Takayuki Uchihashi, Anu Koivula, Masahisa Wada, Satoshi Kimura, Tetsuaki Okamoto, Merja Penttilä, Toshio Ando, and Masahiro Samejima (Science Magazine)   A deeper mechanistic understanding of the saccharification of cellulosic biomass could enhance the efficiency of biofuels development. We report here …

(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)  The ailing United States’ economy would receive a much needed boost with the commercial development of a domestic source of transportation fuel – especially if that fuel were to be clean, …

(Department of Energy/Los Alamos National Laboratory/EurekAlert!)  LANL molecular model helps expose cellulose weakness
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have found a potential key for …

by Paul Voosen (New York Times/Greenwire)  …For eons, plants have locked the sun’s energy into complex strands of sugar, used to build their stems and leaves. These chains are far different from table sugar or …

by Bryan Sims (Biorefining Magazine)  Delving into termite guts to find the best cellulases or lignocellulases to efficiently convert cellulose and hemicelluloses, even lignin, into advanced biofuels isn’t a new concept within the biorefining community, …

Stefan Kuhnel; Henk A Schols; Harry Gruppen (Biotechnology for Biofuels/Highbeam Business)  Sugar-beet pulp (SBP) consists of up to 75% w/w of carbohydrates (dry matter). Arabinose, glucose and galacturonic acid (GA) are the main sugar moieties …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …The hottest companies in bioenergy all know it – the name of the game is low-cost sugars, or affordable syngas that competes with natural gas. For those who don’t make …

by Joanna Schroeder (DomesticFuel.com)   Two and a half years ago DuPont partnered with Danisco (whom DuPont is now acquiring) to create DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol (DDCE). In just a short amount of time, the venture …

by Eduard Gismatullin  (Bloomberg)   Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, and Codexis Inc. will roll out technology this year to make biofuels from wheat straw and sugar-cane bagasse, the cellulose-rich waste from cane processing.
Shell and Codexis …

by Cole Gustafson (Western Farm Press/North Dakota State University Extension Service)  A USDA-funded study is developing new pricing and trading standards for cellulosic biomass feedstocks. A first step in the study is to identify the …

by Kris Bevill (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Poet LLC CEO Jeff Broin told attendees at a recent energy conference that the U.S. will need to eventually utilize the equivalent of E27 in the nation’s fuel supply …

(The Economist)  Biofuels are back. This time they might even work.
MAKE something people want to buy at a price they can afford. Hardly a revolutionary business strategy, but one that the American biofuels industry has, to …

by Dr. Neal Gutterson (President and Chief Executive Officer, Mendel Biotechnologies, Inc.)  Dr. Gutterson details the activities of Mendel Biotechnologies relevant to the advanced biofuels business space. Mendel developed Miscanthus x giganteus, a custom, sterile, weed-resistant variation …

by Dr. Kelly Tiller (President and Chief Executive Officer, Genera Energy, LLC)  Dr. Tiller details the large commitment the state of Tennessee has made to biofuels research. Genera Energy, a research firm owned by the University of …

by Dan Piller (Des Moines Register)   If the cobs, stalks and leaves left behind after corn harvest become the next big source for ethanol, the technology to pick up the stover is decidedly old-school.
“A farmer who …

(PRNewsWire)  BlueFire Renewables, Inc., a company focused on changing the world’s transportation fuel paradigm through the production of renewable fuels from non-food cellulosic wastes, announced a contract with Cooper Marine & Timberlands to provide feedstock …

By Kerri Ebert (Midwest Producer)  …Kansas State University agricultural economist David Lambert has been developing economic models focusing on how development of the cellulosic ethanol industry could help meet EISA targets of 16 billion gallons …

by Dennis O’Brien  (USDA Agricultural Research Service)  Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have developed a new tool for deciphering the genetics of a native prairie grass being widely studied for its potential as a biofuel. The …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  … IEA Bioenergy, part of the International Energy Agency, has published its report “Status of 2nd Generation Biofuels Demonstration Facilities in June 2010”, as a report to IEA Bioenergy Task 39.
The 126-page …

by Dina Bacovsky, Michal Dallos, Manfred Worgetter (International Energy Agency Task 39)   Driven by the need to partly replace fossil transport fuels and by food versus fuel and highest possible GHG mitigation considerations, large efforts are …

(PR Newswire)  AdvanceBio Systems LLC, a Cincinnati-based technology company, has been awarded a contract by The Pennsylvania State University to supply a Bench Scale Hydrolyzer System for its Shared Fermentation Facility located in University Park, Pennsylvania. …

(Oak Ridge National Lab)  Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are improving strains of microorganisms used to convert cellulosic biomass into ethanol, including a recent modification that could improve the efficiency of …

(Ceres)   Companies take step towards commercialization of low-carbon biofuels from switchgrass and other energy crops.
Energy crop company Ceres, Inc. and Novozymes, the world’s largest enzyme provider, have entered a research collaboration to co-develop customized plant …

Purdue University scientists have defined a hidden second option plants have for making an essential amino acid that could be the first step in boosting plants’ nutritional value and improving biofuel production potential.
The amino acid …

by B. C. Venuto and J. A. Daniel (Crop Science)  Development of a biofuel industry based on biomass will require large quantities of cellulosic feedstock. Among the proposals for acquiring this feedstock, without impacting other …

by George W. Huber and Bruce E. Dale (Scientific American)  Scientists are turning agricultural leftovers, wood and fast growing grasses into a huge variety of biofuels–even jet fuel.  But before these next generation biofuels go …

by Mark Jacobs (Meridian Institute). He represented the Council on Sustainable Biomass Production (CSBP).
CSBP is developing the standards to indicate sustainability issues through principles, criteria, and indicators. These address the climate change, biological diversity …

by Dylan Dodd and Isaac K. O. Cann  (Global Change Biology Bioenergy)   The combustion of fossil-derived fuels has a significant impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and correspondingly is an important contributor to anthropogenic global climate …

GeneSyst upgraded the weak acid hydrolysis process to convert biomass from municipal waste to fuel ethanol by making it a ‘continuous (flow) process ‘ using the patented Gravity Pressure Vessel instead of the former ‘pump …

March 14, 2008    In the midst of rising concern about energy sources, many are looking at local, waste-derived biofuels as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.  Most biofuel in the United States is made from plants, …