Biomass

Funding Opportunity: Develop Advanced Biomass Supply Chain Technologies
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy Harvesting, Energy, News on Thursday, January 31 2013
The Department of Energy has announced about $6 million in funding for projects that will develop and demonstrate supply chain technologies to deliver commercial-scale lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks to biorefineries across the country.
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Sensor System Spurs Biofuel Production
Posted in Sensors, Biomass, Renewable Energy, News on Friday, May 11 2012
University of California, Berkeley researchers have developed a genetic sensor that enables bacteria to adjust their gene expression in response to varying levels of key intermediates for making biodiesel. As a result, the microbes produced three times as much fuel. The sensor-regulator system could eventually make advanced biofuels cheaper.
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Funding for Biomass R&D Initiative
Posted in Biomass, Renewable Energy, Government Initiatives, News on Wednesday, April 04 2012
Projects funded through the Biomass Research and Development Initiative (BRDI) — a joint program through the USDA and the DOE — will help develop economically and environmentally sustainable sources of renewable biomass. The White House has announced up to $35 million over three years to support research and development in advanced biofuels, bioenergy, and high-value biobased products.
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New Genome Map Speeds Biofuel Development
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Biomass, Renewable Energy, News on Monday, February 13 2012
Researchers at University of Georgia's Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory have mapped the genomes of two originator cells of Miscanthus x giganteus - a large perennial grass with promise as a source of ethanol and bioenergy.
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Breeding Grasses With Better Properties for Bioenergy
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Biomass, Renewable Energy, News on Wednesday, January 18 2012
Researchers with the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Sustainable Bioenergy Center (BSBEC) have discovered a family of genes that could help breed grasses with improved properties for bioenergy.
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Atlas Maps Renewable Energy Resources
Posted in Software, Biomass, Geothermal Power, Solar Power, Wind Power, Renewable Energy, Hydroelectric Power, News on Monday, January 09 2012
A new geospatial application developed by the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) allows users to map potential renewable energy resources in the United States. The interactive tool is called RE Atlas, and is free to use and available online.
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Bacteria Engineered to Eat Switchgrass and Make Transportation Fuels
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, Transportation, News, GDM on Tuesday, November 29 2011
Researchers with DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into all three of those transportation fuels. The microbes are even able to do this without any help from enzyme additives.
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Super Yeast Turns Pine into Ethanol
Posted in Waste-to-Energy, Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, Transportation, News, Videos, GDM on Friday, November 18 2011
A research team from the University of Georgia has developed a "super strain" of yeast that can efficiently ferment ethanol from pretreated pine - one of the most common species of trees in the U.S. Their research could help biofuels replace gasoline as a transportation fuel.
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Fighting the War on Trash
Posted in Waste-to-Energy, Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, Videos, GDM on Wednesday, November 16 2011
In partnership with the Office of Naval Research, Marines at Camp Smith, Hawaii are testing a trash disposal system called the Micro Auto Gasification System (MAGS) that can reduce a standard 50-gallon bag of waste to a half-pint jar of ash.
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Jet Fuel of the Future
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, Transportation, News, GDM on Monday, November 14 2011
With the DOE, Virent, Inc., and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) working together, planes may soon take to the skies using less petroleum. In June, DOE announced an award of up to $13.4 million dollars to Virent and its partners to develop a process to cost effectively convert cellulosic biomass - in this case the non-edible parts of corn - into jet fuel.
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Photosynthesis Helper Protein Discovered
Posted in Green Design & Manufacturing, Greenhouse Gases, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Tuesday, November 08 2011
Photosynthesis is less efficient in plants than it could be. Red algae, in contrast, use a slightly different mechanism and are thus more productive. Scientists from Germany's Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) have now identified a helper protein for photosynthesis in red algae.
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Novel Catalyst Helps Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Greenhouse Gases, Biomass, Energy Storage, Solar Power, Wind Power, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Friday, October 07 2011
Artificial photosynthesis is the process of converting carbon dioxide gas into useful carbon-based chemicals - most notably fuel or other compounds usually derived from petroleum - as an alternative to extracting them from biomass. An Illinois research team has produced a catalyst that improves the process.
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Self-Igniting Fungi Promising for Biomass-Based Fuels
Posted in Building Technologies, Waste-to-Energy, Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Wednesday, October 05 2011
The complete genetic makeup of two heat-loving fungi often found in composts that self-ignite without flame or spark has been decoded by an international team of scientists. Their findings may lead to the faster and greener development of biomass-based fuels, chemicals, and other industrial materials.
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Cheap Sugars for Sustainable Biofuel Production
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Friday, September 30 2011
Researchers at Iowa State University think that fast pyrolysis - quickly heating biomass such as corn stalks or wood chips without oxygen to produce liquid or gas products - could be a new way to make inexpensive sugars from biomass.
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Discovery Could Streamline Production of Biofuels
Posted in Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Monday, August 15 2011
A team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) have pinpointed the gene that controls ethanol production capacity in a microorganism. This discovery could be the missing link in developing biomass crops that produce higher concentrations of ethanol at lower costs.
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Making Biomass Economically Viable
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Wednesday, July 20 2011
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have found a potential key for unlocking the energy potential from non-edible biomass materials such as corn leaves and stalks, or switch grass.
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Virginia Tech Wins EcoCAR Competition
Posted in Batteries, Electronics & Computers, Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Energy Efficiency, Energy, Transportation, News, GDM on Thursday, June 30 2011
A team of students from Virginia Tech University won EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge after designing and building an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) using E85 (ethanol). Virginia Tech competed against 15 other universities to take home the top prize of the three-year competition.
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Researchers Counteract Biofuel Toxicity in Microbes
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, Transportation, News, GDM on Thursday, May 12 2011
Advanced biofuels are highly touted as potential replacements for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels. Equally touted is the synthesis of these fuels through the use of microbes. However, many of the best candidate compounds for advanced biofuels are toxic to microbes, which presents a “production versus survival” conundrum.
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Looking to Cow Rumen for Better Biofuels Enzymes
Posted in Green Design & Manufacturing, Greenhouse Gases, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Friday, January 28 2011
A cow's digestive system allows it to eat more than 150 pounds of plant matter every day. Now researchers report that they have found dozens of previously unknown microbial enzymes in the bovine rumen – the cow's primary grass-digestion chamber – that contribute to the breakdown of switchgrass, a renewable biofuel energy source.
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A Trip to the WEEC
Posted in Waste-to-Energy, Biomass, Solar Power, Renewable Energy, Energy, Lighting, GDM on Wednesday, December 15 2010
Last Thursday, I left New York for DC to check out the World Energy Engineering Congress (WEEC) held at the Washington Convention Center. Though my Amtrak train was a little slow in getting there, the show flew by in a flash.
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High-Power Switches for Future Energy Supply Networks
Posted in Batteries, Electronics & Computers, Biomass, Energy Storage, Solar Power, Wind Power, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy, Transportation, News, GDM on Tuesday, December 14 2010
Renewable energy comes out of an electricity socket, but to get there it has to travel a long journey – from wind turbines out at sea or regional solar, wind, and biogas power plants. On the way to the consumer much energy is lost, but new electronic components will change things in future.
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Biomass Alternative to Petroleum for Industrial Chemicals
Posted in Waste-to-Energy, Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Monday, November 29 2010
University of Massachusetts Amherst chemical engineers have developed a way to produce high-volume chemical feedstocks including benzene, toluene, xylenes, and olefins from pyrolytic bio-oils - the cheapest liquid fuels available today derived from biomass.
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Synthetic Fuel Research Underway
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Greenhouse Gases, Biomass, Energy, Transportation, News, GDM on Thursday, September 16 2010
Purdue University researchers have developed a facility aimed at learning precisely how coal and biomass are broken down in reactors called gasifiers as part of a project to strengthen the scientific foundations of the synthetic fuel economy.
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Using Computational Modeling to Produce Biodiesel from E. coli
Posted in Alternative Fuels, Green Design & Manufacturing, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, GDM on Friday, September 10 2010
Desmond Lun, an associate professor of computer science at Rutgers University–Camden, is researching how to alter the genetic makeup of E. coli to produce biodiesel fuel derived from fatty acids.
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Sustainable Biochar to Mitigate Climate Change
Posted in Climate, Pollution, Remediation Technologies, Green Design & Manufacturing, Greenhouse Gases, Biomass, Renewable Energy, Energy, News, GDM on Wednesday, August 11 2010
By producing biochar - a charcoal-like substance made from plants and other organic materials - up to 12 percent of the world's human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset, which is more than what could be offset if the same plants and materials were burned to generate energy.
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