by Lauren Tyler (NGT News)  The University of Wisconsin-Madison and ExxonMobil have announced a two-year renewal of an agreement to research the chemistry of converting biomass into transportation fuels.
According to ExxonMobil, the research is part of a broad …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Colorado, ChemCatBio announced a new 2017 directed funding assistance opportunity. It’s an opportunity for industry and academia to engage with ChemCatBio to tackle challenges associated with these core research themes, to leverage …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Washington, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry today (July 17, 2017) announced $40 million in Department of Energy awards for the establishment of four DOE Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs), which …

by Geert De Clercq (Reuters)  Norwegian utility Statkraft has found a way to produce biofuel from wood chippings and other solid organic waste, which it says replicates in minutes a process that made crude oil underground …

by Lorenz Bauer (Lee Enterprises Consulting, Inc./Biofuels Digest)  After many years of development biomass pyrolysis is finally maturing as a commercial technology. Pyrolysis is not incineration. The goal is to use heat in the absence of …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  … Whether you are owner or seller, you need to know the underlying value of a feedstock in the advanced bioeconomy — and that is not the same thing as its …

(BECOOL/AltEnergyMag) A new Horizon 2020 project will foster cooperation between Europe and Brazil in the development of advanced biofuels from sustainable agricultural value chains, based on lignocellulosic biomass. Coordinated by the University of Bologna, Department …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  The Digest’s Complete March Madness webinars – 700+ slides available for your on-demand review.  —  The Digest’s March Madness series – 20 webinars covering the hottest topics as selected by …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  The Digest had a well-received webinar on cellulosic ethanol, featuring in-demand industry consultants Michele Rubino  and Michael Schultz, on hand to detail the very latest in a wide array of approaches to making …

(Commercial Alternative Aviation Fuels Initiative) The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently released the aviation biofuels report, “Potential Avenues for Significant Biofuels Penetration in the U.S. Aviation Market.” The report finds that it is possible …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  The Digest had a well-receive webinar on thermochemical technology horizons, featuring former DOE Biomass Program manager and in-demand industry consultant Paul Bryan on hand to detail the very latest in …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Not long ago, George Huber and Robert Brown wrote in a special issue of Energy Technology of their desire to “highlight recent advances in pyrolysis technologies and to discuss the …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Illinois, obtaining a certificate of occupancy on a building constructed of 60 Intermodal Shipping Containers is a huge accomplishment for Chip Energy, said company president Paul Wever, president of …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Mercurius says it “has the technology and processes that will, for the first time, make the production of cellulosic biofuels profitable while meeting the needs of the diesel and jet …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Byogy has developed a catalytic platform that converts any source of ethanol, butanol, mixed alcohols, or related olefins, into full replacement, and cost competitive biofuels including gasoline, diesel and jet …

(Ethanol Producer Magazine)  After announcing plans to purchase an aspirant cellulosic ethanol plant in Florida, Alliance BioEnergy Plus Inc. has released a bold cost-of-production estimate after researching the economics of its patented cellulose-to-sugar (CTS) conversion …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  The High Lords of Pyrolysis travel under the unlikely cover identities of “George Huber” and “Robert Brown” — but we know them in their true superhero identities of “The Catalyst” …

(Netzwerk Biotreibstoffe/WERF (Water Environment and Reuse Foundation))  This project was conducted in order to determine if hydrothermal processing (HTP) technology has potential for treating wastewater solids. In particular, it looked at the Genifuel HTP technology …

(Ethanol Producer Magazine)  ICM Inc. will build a new state-of-the-art biorefinery—dubbed ICM Element—next to its headquarters in Colwich, Kansas. The facility will showcase the company’s cutting-edge technologies.
…
Elements are nature’s building blocks and the world is …

by Markus Rarbach (Clariant)  … Our approach at Clariant when developing the sunliquid® technology was to deliver an entirely integrated process from feedstock to finished product including our proprietary enzyme and fermentation organism platform, where all process …

(Scrivener Publishing)  The most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of all the possible aspects for biofeedstock processing and the production of energy from biofeedstocks.
Audience
Chemical engineers, petroleum engineers, process engineers, students in chemical engineering, biotechnology, petroleum engineering, …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  As the project team behind this presentation explains, there’s trouble right here in River City when it comes to accessing good market and technical data on making hydrocarbons from a …

(Lux Research, Inc.)  Advanced biofuels will nearly double in five years to 9.6 billion gallons per year as first-generation fuels like traditional biodiesel lose out to newer low-carbon fuels, says Lux Research  —  New biofuel …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  It’s been the big, big problem in biomass deconstruction and cellulosic fuels — the finicky nature of biomass. We’ve learned to get past the main line of cellulosic defenses — …

(U.S. Air Force)  This Title III project is to further increase domestic advanced biofuels production capacity by establishing additional Integrated Biofuel Production Enterprise (IBPE) capabilities that represent a complete value chain including Feedstock production, Chemical …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed four new technologies available for license:
Streamlined Saccharification from Lignocellulosic Biomass, 2015-143
Translation Control …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  BETO. I think it’s Latin for “I forbid petroleum.” So while presidents have the Veto, technologists have the Beto.
It’s most widely known in its modern variant, as the acronym for the DOE’s Bioenergy …

by Ron Kotrba (Biomass Magazine)  Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. has signed a commercial purchase agreement with XR Resources Inc. to buy property in High River, Alberta, near Calgary, which includes a 16 MMly (4.2 MMgy) …

by Mahmood Ebadian (Biofuels Digest/Biomass Supply Chain Consulting Ltd.)  The procurement of low-cost feedstock has been the focus of the pioneering bio-conversion technology developers in commercializing their first industrial-scale projects. Low-cost feedstock is critical in such …

(National Renewable Energy Laboratory)  Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) made the surprise discovery that a metabolic pathway to take up CO2 exists and functions in a microorganism capable …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  This season, Faegre Baker Daniels’ John Kirkwood outlined the latest on leveraging supply chain investments into debt and equity placements to bring commercial projects to life.  READ MORE

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  This season, The Digest is hosting the Strategic Intent webinar series, looking at the plans, progress and future milestones of strategic stakeholders in the Advanced Bioeconomy.  In this slide deck, …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, Mercurius Biorefining has furthered its partnership with UC Davis to develop first-of-its-kind technology for production of furan-2,5-dicarboxylic acid (FDCA). While current approaches to the commercialization of FDCA use …

By Angela Fivga and Zsuzsa A. Mayer (Lee Enterprises Consulting, Inc./Biofuels Digest)  The analysis and standardization of biofuels are in constant development, therefore in many studies they follow a historic view or borrow unsuitable methods …

(Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc.) Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc. (OTCQB:ALLM) (the “Company”), is very pleased to release the results from months of testing and data collection on dozens of lignocellulose feedstocks utilizing the patented CTS conversion process.  …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Belgium, the BIOFOREVER  consortium of 14 European companies emerged from stealth with the news that they have started their demonstration project for the conversion of woody biomass to value …

by Lorenz Bauer and Gerald Kutney (Lee Enterprises Consulting/Biofuels Digest)  …  In this report, we are focused on bioenergy and biofuels (and not bioproducts) that are moving from the lab to initial commercial demonstrations and …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  This week, we conducted a webinar on Biorenewables Megatrends with NEXANT principal Ron Cascone, who gave these incisive slides on the state of commercialization in fuels, chemicals, biomaterials and nutrition. READ …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In developing a bioconversion project, the steps are numerous, interconnected and complex. Conducting a feasibility study, feedstock supply & market analysis, developing a business plan, funding initial development, choosing process technology, …

(Environmental Research and Education Foundation) Using a first-of-its-kind Life-Cycle Assessment model of biofuel production using MSW, this report includes an assessment of the environmental impacts associated with MSW conversion via landfill gas-to-energy, waste-to-energy, and gasification/Fischer-Tropsch. How …

by Zia Haq (U.S. Department of Energy)  Renewable biofuel alternatives can help replace conventional petroleum-based jet fuel. — New White House reportoutlines the federal government’s plans to lower the cost of alternative jet fuels.  —  Bioenergy …

(CORE-Jetfuel)  The Core-JetFuel Final International Conference titled Sustainable Alternative Aviation Fuels – The Way Forward took place on the occasion of the EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) on 16-17 June 2016 in Brussels, and followed …

by Irshad Ahmed (Lee Enterprises)  … I believe cellulosic ethanol is here to stay for the long haul and it is finally exhibiting real potential to establish a critical-mass commercial base alongside the corn-ethanol industry. Its commercial …

(Alliance Bioenergy +)  Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc. (OTCQB:ALLM) (the “Company”), is pleased to announce that it has received an LOI from Smart Business International Trading, S.A.S (Smart Business) of Bogata, Columbia for the purchase of …

by Zoltan Kish (Lee Enterprises/Biofuels Digest)  … The primary challenge of clean energy production is the heterogeneous nature of waste and biomass, which creates a widely varying chemical constituency of the energy products generated from these processes. …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Iogen says it has has “one of the world’s largest and most experienced teams in developing, designing, de-bugging, scaling-up and deploying cellulosic biofuel technology. We’re using innovative thinking and disciplined …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … Here, we profile 15 techs that offer incremental to profound shifts in the economics of the Gen-1 ethanol fleet, and have implications for everything from passenger cars to jets.
#15 Vertimass  and Byogy
#14 …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) “How much value is in the entire value chain, going from stover in the field to all the products?” asked Sandy Marshall, chairman, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada. His question opened his …

by Elizabeth E. Hood and Lorenz Bauer  (Lee Enterprises Consulting, Inc./Biofuels Digest)  … Biofuels can be produced by a number of processes, broadly categorized as biochemical and chemical. Biochemical processes utilize proteins called enzymes (biological catalysts).
Chemical …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Virent is in the business of replacing crude oil by applying clever chemistry to create the fuels and chemicals the world demands using a wide range of naturally-occurring, renewable resources. Virent’s …

by Gerald Kutney  (Lee Consulting/Biofuels Digest)  … From the time of the caveman until the early Industrial Revolution, biofuels – namely wood and the advanced biofuel of the day, charcoal – reigned supreme.  Both fossil fuels and …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)   This week we reported that Deinove and Toulouse White Biotechnology are collaborating with the MetaToul* platform (INSA-LISBP Toulouse and MetaboHUB national infrastructure) headed by Prof. Jean-Charles Portais, aims to map the …

(University of Arkansas/Biomass Magazine)  University of Arkansas chemical engineering associate professor Jamie Hestekin has received two grants totaling $145,250 from a local technology development firm to help the company convert woody biomass into bio-oil and …

by Krista Eastman (Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center)  Less input, more output. That’s the achievement of a new biomass pretreatment method that could help improve the economics of cellulosic biofuels, the second-generation biofuels made from …

by Krista Eastman (Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center) Three U.S. Department of Energy-funded research centers – the BioEnergy Science Center (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (University of Wisconsin–Madison and Michigan State …

(Cambridge News)  Entomics is turning food waste into biofuel and animal feed. — … Known as Entomos before a recent rebrand, Entomics has been co-founded by four Cambridge University graduates who met on the sustainability challenge …

by Tapan Susheel  (Times of India)  Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT-R) have achieved remarkable success in generating low-cost biofuel using a perennial weed, Kans grass. This grass, native to the subcontinent, …

by Hari Pulakkat (Times of India/The Economic Times)  …  Among the most advanced of the lot is Royal Dutch Shell, whose R&D centre in Bengaluru is now trying to scale up a process – called …

by Valerie Reed (US Department of Agriculture/Biofuels Digest)   A great government agency is a little like a river pilot — doesn’t run the ship, but steps in as a vital partner  for complex, critical tasks …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …  In Minnesota, construction is now underway at the Green Biologics bio-based n-butanol and acetone manufacturing facility in Little Falls, MN. The existing manufacturing site, formerly known as The Central …

by Mark Warner (Warner Advisors LLC)  Two questions have dominated the responses received after my Lessons Learned series on commercializing industrial biotechnology (here) and the deep-dive into the industrial biotechnology commercialization process (here), the questions are …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In Switzerland, 11 leading low carbon fuel companies present a comprehensive guide that identifies a variety of available and accessible low carbon fuel solutions.
…
Today, only 3% of transportation fuels are low …

by Seth W Snyder (Editor, Contributor), James H Clark (Editor), George Kraus (Series Editor), Gene Peterson (Contributor), Beth Calabotta (Contributor), Stephen Hughes (Contributor), Robert E. Kozak (Contributor) & 14 more (Royal Society of Chemistry) Biobased …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Intrexon’s proprietary methanotroph bioconversion platform has the potential to transform the gas-to-liquids (GTL) industry through use of optimized microbial cell lines to convert natural gas into higher carbon compounds such …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Virent, Renmatix, Verdezyne take top slots in The 40 Hottest Small Companies in the Advanced Bioeconomy for 2015-16   —  At the ABLC NEXT 2015 conference in San Francisco, Virent …

by Susanne Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist just released a comprehensive report on ethanol. The 87-page report, “U.S. Ethanol: An Examination of Policy, Production, Use, Distribution, and Market Interactions,” …

(Alliance BioEnergy Plus Inc./Biomass Magazine)  Alliance Bioenergy Plus, Inc. recently announced that its subsidiary Ek Laboratories in Longwood, Florida, under the direction of Dr. Richard Blair, Dr. Peter Cohen and Dr. Zhilin Xie, continues to see …

(U.S. Department of Energy)  The Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) pursues a pathway approach for advancing research and development (R&D) of converting biomass into renewable fuels and products. Following the BETO’s successful demonstration of cost-competitive cellulosic ethanol production technologies—R&D …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Tennessee, Genera Energy has launched its first mobile agriculture app, Biomass, developed to serve as a tool for planning, selecting and calculating biofuel crop needs, for use with Android …

(US Department of Energy)  The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy announces its intent to issue, on behalf of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) targeting …

by Danilo Gusmão de Quadros* (Advanced Biofuels USA) This reports on part of a trip to Wisconsin to visit the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), University of Wisconsin (UW), a dairy farm that uses …

by Osaretin Omorodion* (Advanced Biofuels USA) During late March 2015, the US Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) offered what amounted to a seminar for the public consisting of a series of presentations …

(SCOPE) Bioenergy & Sustainability is a collective effort with contributions from 137 researchers of 82 institutions in 24 countries.  The volume is the outcome of an assessment that included a meeting held at UNESCO, Paris, …

by Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine) … Even so-called conventional chemical processing is riddled with original approaches and unique twists. A cookie-cutter industry biodiesel is not. While too many technologies exist in this field to report on, …

(US Department of Energy)  On June 11–12, 2014, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) hosted a workshop in Lakewood, Colorado, to discuss research and development …

The meeting format for the 37th SBFC will have a total of 18 oral presentation sessions, 2 evening poster sessions as well as 2 special topics sessions will be convened over three and a half …

(Global BioBusiness)  It may be surprising to know that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “cellulosic ethanol”. Instead, there is cellulosic “sugars”. That because it is often forgotten that the cellulosic process (also …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Digest survey spells “low visibility” for cellulosic biofuels.  Beta Renewables rates “best in class”. Dupont rates “most heard of”.   Belief is big in “commercial eventually” but far less so for …

by Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine)  The synergies between co-located ethanol and biodiesel production have been discussed for a decade. The existing infrastructure to share process essentials, an in-house feedstock in distillers corn oil (DCO), and use of …

by Erin Voegele (Ethanol Producer Magazine) …Annawan, Illinois-based Patriot Holdings LLC has signed a letter of intent for ICM’s patent-pending FST and Gen 1.5. According to ICM, the FST is a value-added platform technology that …

by Rick Smith (The Gazette)”First-in-the-nation” plant to convert municipal solid waste and other trash into cellulosic biofuel
No Martians are landing, but loads of steel began arriving on Monday for the takeoff of project to expand …

(Aphios/Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Aphios Corp. has announced that it was granted U.S. Patent No. 8,540,847 entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Processing Cellulosic Biomass,” for its Aosic enabling technology platform.
… Trevor P. Castor, inventor of the Aosic …

(GlobalBioBusiness.com)  “Cellulosic Ethanol – Global Production, Major Trends, Regulations, and Key Country Analysis to 2020” is the latest report from industry analysis specialist GlobalData, offering comprehensive information on the global cellulosic ethanol market. The report …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Advanced biofuels capacity for 2013 is 1 billion gallons gasoline equivalent. Capacity for 2015 is between 1.4 and 1.6 billion gallons gasoline equivalent.  160 commercial scale facilities planned, under construction, …

The Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemical covers topics such as:

Enzyme Science & Technology
Biomass Supply & Sustainability
Plant Science & Technology
Algae Science & Technology
Biomass Recalcitrance
Pretreatment & Fractionation
Bacterial Science & Technology
Yeast and Fungal Science & Technology
Bioprocessing & Separations …

(Renmatix)  U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) visits facility to discuss job creation and growth of biobased markets
Renmatix, the leading manufacturer of cellulosic sugars for biobased chemical and fuel markets, marked the opening of a new …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …In our investigations in Iowa this week, we noted 6 trends worth carefully watching, which take us from opportunities with existing feedstocks to exotic newcomers like algae.
Our thesis now is …

(IFP Energies Nouvelles)  The numerous research programmes looking at new-generation biofuels that were initiated over the last ten years are now starting to bear fruit. Although no plants are producing and
marketing biofuels yet, the large-scale, industrial …

by Kris Bevill (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  The U.S. DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has launched a new interactive website meant to integrate a wide variety of data and resources related to bioenergy in an attempt …

by Vinod Khosla (Green Tech Media)  Part 1: Production technologies: where are we? The financial crisis of 2008 set back a number of projects and slowed actual construction of pilot and demo plants like it …

USDA and DOE put together this study finding that there could be adequate biomass to displace 30% or more of current US annual petroleum consumption.  READ MORE