cellulose

Don't count newspapers out yet – they might someday be used to power your car. A research team at Tulane University has discovered a microbe that eats newspapers for lunch and then spits out biofuel. The microbe, dubbed TU-103, was found when researchers in Tulane's Department of Cell and ...

Canadian cellulosic ethanol developer Iogen Corporation and its joint venture partner Royal Dutch Shell have committed further funding to keep the venture going for two more years. Iogen Energy is currently running a demonstration plant near Ottawa that is producing ethanol from wheat straw. The ...

BP could become the first major energy company to start commercial scale production of cellulosic ethanol in 2010 if all goes according to plan. BP has been partnering with Verenium Corporation to commercialize the latter company's process for breaking down cellulose into sugars. Verenium has ...

Codexis and Shell are expanding their collaboration on developing non-food based biofuels. Codexis develops what the company calls biocatalysts, the enzymes used to break down cellulose into simple sugar molecules. Codexis and Shell have had a cooperative agreement since 2007 and the expansion will ...

At the RETECH 2009 conference in Las Vegas recently, I learned about an interesting crop during the "Advanced Conventional Biofuels" breakout session. Phil Madson, the president of KATZEN International, said that a plant called "Sunspuds" could provide the solution to America's ethanol production ...

As we know, breaking down long-chain cellulose molecules into individual sugar molecules is problematic on an industrial scale. In nature, of course, this happens all the time thanks to little critters like the Limnoria Quadripunctata, or four spotted gribble. The gribble or sea grub, like numerous ...

As promised, we got a chance to sit down with Wes Bolsen, the CMO and vice president at Coskata, during last week's Platts Cellulosic Ethanol Conference in Chicago. We wanted a little more information on the $1/gallon number for the Coskata process "cellulosic" ethanol (yes, Bolsen pointed out that ...

If you get into a room with a lot of people who make up part of the cellulosic ethanol industry, things can get a little technical. This is the situation here in Chicago for the Platts 3rd Annual Cellulosic Ethanol and Biofuels conference. A few hundred representatives from a lot of companies in ...

Mascoma Corp is one of the two cellulosic ethanol companies that General Motors invested in earlier this year. Dr. Lee Lynd is one of Mascoma's co-founders and he and his collaborators at Dartmouth College have published a paper that gives some more insight into Mascoma's process. They have created ...

Aside from metals such as iron, steel and aluminum, perhaps the most common material in cars is plastic. Most of the plastic made today is derived from petroleum. Besides the raw materials used, a lot pf greenhouse gases are produced in the processing of plastics. Bio-materials have been a major ...