By Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine) Researchers reported on a novel method this week at the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, to produce biodiesel from crude animal fats, including waste fat from alligators, using supercritical methanol in a flow reactor. “Conversion
Methanol/Biomethanol/Renewable Methanol
Back TO HOMEMaking Silk Purses from Sows Ears: Converting Waste Into Energy and Biofuels, Pt 1 and 2
by Tim Sklar (Biofuels Digest) Part 1 ... It seems that many of the companies providing new biofuels technologies do not fully understanding the competitive environment that they must navigate. As a consequence they fail to develop strategies that will allow
March 27, 2014 Read Full Article
The Race to Capture, Use and Monetize Waste CO2
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Reduce carbon? Rid the world of excess CO2? Not so fast, buster. A new generation of technologies has come along that capture, re-purpose and monetize CO2 emissions. Will they realize their promise? As Liquid Light steps out of
March 05, 2014 Read Full Article
Can This Birmingham Company Kickstart the Alternative Fuel Revolution?
by Bryan Davis (Birmingham Business Journal) The race to discover a viable alternative fuel to gasoline has slowed down some in recent years, and that could be because the fuel source everyone is looking for has been hiding in plain
February 13, 2014 Read Full Article
Israel's New Motor Fuels Strategy Leans on Gas
by Ari Rabinovitch (Reuters) Israel plans to cut oil use in transportation by 60 percent by 2025, an aggressive target by world standards, and will tap into its newfound natural gas deposits to make it happen. It is also investing heavily
December 26, 2013 Read Full Article
Biofuels, True North, Natural Gas, and Primus Green Energy
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Primus Green Energy recently completed a landmark technology demonstration — and heads off to scale with a catalytic technology for making $2.00 gasoline. But, in shifting to natural gas as a feedstock for the first
November 15, 2013 Read Full Article
Commissioning a First-of-a-Kind Plant Takes Time
by Tom Bryan (Ethanol Producer Magazine) ...Retka Schill visited the Ineos Bio facility in person in August. She returned from Florida with new insight about how large chemical companies define and carry out plant commissioning. She informs us that the
October 16, 2013 Read Full Article
Congress Could Lower Alt-Fuel Requirements in New Open Fuel Standard Act
by Jon LeSage (AutoBlogGreen) Congress is considering a revised version of the Open Fuel Standard Act, an Act that was originally introduced two years ago but failed to pass. Representatives Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) introduced a bipartisan bill that would require more
July 05, 2013 Read Full Article
Spiderweb-Like Tower Would Harvest Air Pollution in London and Turn It into Biofuel
by Carl Franzen (The Verge) ...Chang-Yeob Lee of the Royal College of Art wants to radically transform London's BT Tower at some point in the future, equipping it with exterior carbon fiber and steel rigging, designed to capture and convert air
July 05, 2013 Read Full Article
Cellulosic Ethanol: Scale-Up and Commercialization - Part 2
by David Glass (D Glass Associates) In the final breakout session of the BIO World Congress on June 19, there was a second panel on scale-up and commercialization of cellulosic ethanol. As with the session on the conference’s first day,
June 21, 2013 Read Full Article
Cellulosic Biofuels in the US: How Much and How Soon? 2014′s Terrific Ten
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Although no commercial-scale cellulosic biofuels facilities are operating in the United States at present, at least ten projects exceeding 20 million gallons per year are expected to begin operations by 2014. Tristan R. Brown and Robert
March 22, 2013 Read Full Article
UK Releases Open Source Data on Biofuels Usage Since 2008
by Meghan Sapp (Biofuels Digest) In the UK, the government has made available open source data regarding the country’s use of biofuels through April 14, 2013 (despite the fact that it’s still a month away), the fifth year of the Renewable Transport
March 12, 2013 Read Full Article
If Polluters Pay, Will Renewables Rise?
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Changes in EU policy and the financing of advanced biofuels have led to a revival of project formation in Europe. The latest news from Finland is that St1 is proceeding towards a build on its 10
February 06, 2013 Read Full Article
The Lowdown on Methanol and Dimethyl Ester as Advanced Biofuels
by Robert Rapier (Biofuels Digest/Energy Trends Insider) ...Methanol is cheap to produce and has been tested extensively as a gasoline replacement. It is the simplest alcohol and one of the world’s most widely used commodity chemicals. Global capacity of methanol is
September 14, 2012 Read Full Article
Advanced Biofuels, a Transformative Industry
by Bruce C. Folkedahl (Biomass Magazine/Energy & Environmental Research Center) As part of the ongoing research at the Energy & Environmental Research Center, we have been developing a catalytic pathway to convert ethanol or mixtures of methanol and ethanol to higher
September 07, 2012 Read Full Article
Dutch Autosport Industry Drives Forward in Fuel Sustainability Stakes
(Biofuels International) The 48th edition of the ELE Rally in the Netherlands hosted races that had cars fuelled by Gasoline Ethanol Methanol (GEM) from second generation biofuels producer BioMCN. ...The BioMCN GEM concept has been developed and tested in collaboration with car
June 07, 2012 Read Full Article
No Farm Bill, No Tier 3—Not until after the Election; Sundrop Fuels Presents an Alternative
By Joanne Ivancic (Advanced Biofuels USA) At the March 21 Bioenergy Day on Capitol Hill, discussion focused on the need for a continued Renewable Fuels Standard, reviews of the history of biofuels, assessment of current questioning of biofuels as viable
March 23, 2012 Read Full Article
The Methanol Alternative to Gasoline
by Tom Ridge and Mary E. Peters (New York Times) Opinion: President Obama recently called the United States the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” and asserted that it was time for our oil-dominated transportation fuel market to open the door
February 24, 2012 Read Full Article
Update on a Mobile Indirect Biomass Liquefaction System
by John P. Hurley (Biomass Power and Thermal Magazine/U.S. Department of Energy, Energy & Environmental Research Center) Minnesota’s forestry operations produce 300,000 tons per year of wood waste that is not used in any existing or proposed facility. Through the process
February 01, 2012 Read Full Article
LUFT: Market-Based Future for Ethanol
by Gal Luft (The Washington Times) ...At current oil prices, ethanol is more costly than gasoline while the alcohol fuel methanol, primarily made from natural gas, is cheaper than gasoline on a per-mile basis. But the comparative per-mile economics of
January 18, 2012 Read Full Article
New Biofuel Production Technologies: Overview of These Expanding Sectors and the Challenges Facing Them
(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 feasibility of second-generation biofuel production at
December 30, 2011 Read Full Article
Vertis Signed up as Agent for BioMCN in Central Europe
(BioMCN) Environmental commodity broker Vertis Environmental Finance have signed an agency agreement with BioMCN for the representation and sales of bio-methanol in Central Europe. BioMCN is the largest 2nd generation biofuels producer in the world, producing high quality bio-methanol from
December 23, 2011 Read Full Article
Researchers Discover a Way to Significantly Reduce the Production Costs of Fuel Cells
(EurekAlert/Aalto University) This ALD method for manufacturing fuel cells requires 60 per cent less of the costly catalyst than current methods. -This is a significant discovery, because researchers have not been able to achieve savings of this magnitude before with materials
December 23, 2011 Read Full Article
Alberta-Pacific Pulp and Paper Mill Transitions to Biorefining
by Luke Geiver (Biodiesel Magazine) ...Beginning as far back as 1998, mills like Alberta-Pacific began experiencing tighter profit margins, some down to three percent, while mills in places like India or Brazil averaged nine and eight percent respectively. The move
September 28, 2011 Read Full Article
Breaking Oil's Monopoly on Transportation
by Geoffrey Styles (Energy Outlook) I've been thinking about an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times written by a former National Security Advisor and a former CIA chief. ...The op-ed was apparently timed to mark the introduction of a new group
September 27, 2011 Read Full Article
Market Access Will Save US from $4 Gasoline, Says FuelChoiceNow
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In Washington, a coalition called FuelChoiceNow has opened for business one worth taking a very, very close look at. The pitch: that advanced fuel companies are developing new, affordable and commercial-ready alternatives to oil, but are inhibited
September 21, 2011 Read Full Article
Open Fuel Standard Legislation Is Bad for the Environment; Bad for Biofuels
(Advanced Biofuels USA) Shale Natural Gas Does Not Belong in Pro-Environmental Legislation A new legislative analysis by Advanced Biofuels USA concludes that the Open Fuel Standard (OFS) is bad for advanced biofuels and will add to environmental damage if passed and
June 02, 2011 Read Full Article
Why It’s Wrong to Agree with the Malthusians about Ethanol
by Robert Zubrin (Pajamas Media) Rising food prices are the result of rising oil prices, not a growing market for ethanol. ...There is not a fixed amount of grain in the world. Farmers produce in response to demand. The more customers,
May 17, 2011 Read Full Article
Making a Great Fuel Even Better
by Erin Voegele (Biodiesel Magazine) How replacing natural gas with biomass as feedstock for methanol production can improve biodiesel's already good environmental footing The vast majority of methanol produced today is sourced from natural gas, but this has not always been
May 16, 2011 Read Full Article
Open Fuel Standard Introduced in House, Sponsorship Growing
by Holly Jessen (Ethanol Producer Magazine) Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., imagines a world where consumers could drive up to the pump in a standardized vehicle and choose - be it biofuels, methanol, coal-to-liquid fuel or gasoline, depending on the best
May 10, 2011 Read Full Article
Methanol Greener than Ethanol
by Gerry Calhoun (DNJ.com) ...Methanol, processed from natural gas, is an alcohol, like ethanol, but it needs no extensive lands for cultivation, no distillation, no transportation and thus is far more environmentally friendly. Any car that can burn gasoline with
April 13, 2011 Read Full Article
Georgia’s First Wood-to-Ethanol Plant Opens
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 schedule, Colorado-based Range Fuels Inc.
August 31, 2010 Read Full Article
Range Fuels Produces Cellulosic Methanol From First Commercial Cellulosic Biofuels Plant
(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 produced cellulosic methanol from the
August 18, 2010 Read Full Article
ACE Speakers Answer Big Oil, Ethanol Critics
by Holly Jessen (Ethanol Producer Magazine) At this year’s American Coalition for Ethanol Conference & Trade Show, two speakers gave particularly strong arguments for chipping away at the power and monopoly of Big Oil. It just so happens that Anne
August 10, 2010 Read Full Article
Ethanol Likely to Have Major Role as Fuel
by Jim Kenzie (Wheel.ca) ...So far, everyone seems to think that the only way we’ll wean ourselves off decomposed dinosaur remains is if we either can’t find any more, or it becomes so expensive to find/extract/ship/refine that we’ll have to find
July 05, 2010 Read Full Article
BioMCN Opens Largest 2nd Generation Biofuel Plant
(BioMCN) June 25, 2010, the Queen’s Commissioner of the Province of Groningen, Sir Max van den Berg, together with Rob Voncken, CEO of BioMCN, has officially opened the largest second generation biofuel plant in the world. With a production capacity of 250
June 29, 2010 Read Full Article
Closed Down Methanol Plant Turned into the World's Largest Biofuels Production Plant
(Chemrec) On the northern coast of the Netherlands a few driven entrepreneurs transformed a closed down methanol factory into the world’s largest second generation biofuels production unit in less than three years. By changing the feedstock into crude glycerine and applying
June 11, 2010 Read Full Article
A New Way to Make Methanol Fuel
(New Energy and Fuel) University of Oxford researchers are developing a method for the homogeneous conversion of CO2 to methanol, with methanol as the only resulting C1 product. With momentum building in the methanol powered fuel cell market there is good
May 25, 2010 Read Full Article
Methanol: Biofuel to love or hate?
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ...A lot of people refer to methanol as wood alcohol – referring to the ancient process of extracting methanol from wood, using pyrolysis. In recent years, it has been primarily extracted from methane — the
May 25, 2010 Read Full Article
We Are Green: “Always Clean 110″ Project Is an Example of a Growing Trend in Biofuels: “Symbiosis” Project Produce Biodiesel, Using Recovered Methanol, Cooking Oil
by (Biofuels Digest) ...Here is an under funded grad student (with a mechanical engineering degree from Northern Illinois University) who, while working part time, put together a system that will produce bio-diesel fuel from basic waste by-products found on campus,
December 04, 2009 Read Full Article
Can Methanol Really Make a Dent in US Oil Demand?
by John Lynn (Energy Tribune) ... Methanol can be produced from a wide variety of feedstocks, including natural gas, coal, biomass, and even atmospheric carbon dioxide. ... Using mature gasification technology, one ton of biomass can be used to produce