INEOS New Planet BioEnergy — a joint venture between the biofuels division of the chemicals company INEOS, and waste management and biofuel facility consultants New Planet Energy — secured a $75 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biorefinery Assistance Program, the government agency confirmed today.
The company plans to use the money to construct and begin running a facility near Vero Beach, Florida that primarily turns waste into ethanol. According to a company statement, the BioEnergy Center should begin commercial biofuel production in 2012, providing 175 temporary construction jobs, and 50 additional full-time jobs once the facility is completed… → Read More
As oil continues to spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is looking towards alternatives such as biofuels. BP announced today that it will acquire the cellulosic biofuels business of Verenium. The $98.3 million deal includes Verenium’s biofuel facilities in Jennings, LA and San Diego, CA. But it doesn’t include Verenium’s commercial enzyme business, and allows Verenium to develop its own “lignocellulosic” enzyme program.
Verenium focuses on specialty enzymes and biofuels, enabling the production of ethanol from cellulosic biomass, which come from crops such as sugarcane and corn. When fermented, this biomass can be turned into ethanol. → Read More
Ethanol fuel was always a mystery to me. Really, I never took the time to learn about it until I watched this 3:31 video that shows how a Pennsylvania company, Coskata, converts anything that contains carbon into fuel. Yeah, it’s an infomercial for GM, but it always quickly explains the whole waste to fuel conversion process and so it might be worth your time. → Read More
Beer, the third most popular beverage in the world after water and tea, just gained another reason for our support. Sierra Nevada Brewing, makers of fine beverages, recently purchased an EFuel 100 MicroFueler, which produces ethanol from water, sugar, and yeast. Guess what one of the major byproducts of beer fermentation is? Yup, yeast! The excess yeast left over from brewing will soon find its way into ethanol production. → Read More
Using excess or leftover corn as a fuel source sure sounded like a good idea, especially here in the U.S. Let’s get our farmers from, I don’t, Iowa, to set aside a certain percentage of arable land for the production of fuel corn. (The term “fuel corn” may or may not exist, but it should if it doesn’t.) This corn, rather than being used for food, would be used for the production of ethanol, an alcohol that can power combustion engines. Follow the logic: grow corn, which is fairly inexpensive to do, create ethanol, power car engines. Simple, direct and seemingly a possible solution to our reliance on foreign oil and all the bonus adventurism that comes with that. Grow corn at home, or meddle in other people’s affairs for access to oil? Onward! to our bright, biofueled future. Wait, what? There’s a word in that opening paragraph that suddenly no longer applies, apparently. What if all that corn (and other sources of biofuel) is no longer “leftover”? What if, you know, we should be using all that corn (etc.) to feed people? (Food used to feed people? Madness!) What if the price of food, for some reason, skyrocketed, and the poorer peoples of the world look longingly at all that “excess” corn being used to fuel your dumb automobile? It would seem we, Westerners, are stuck between a rock and a rock. Big rocks. With sharp edges. → Read More
First of all, I think it should be said that the whole corn-as-fuel idea is a red herring when it comes to alternative energy. The corn industry is a bloated mess and throwing the demands of widespread biofuel use into the mix would probably push it beyond the breaking point and make for some really weird corn politics. That said, if the process of fueling some things with corn is made easier and more efficient, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used on a limited scale where it’s cost-effective. That’s why I’m glad advances like this one are being made. Dr. Mariam Sticklen at Michigan State University has been researching ways in which the most stubborn part of the corn plant can be easily broken down. She’s come up with three different strains of modified corn, each one with a different method of cellulose breakdown, each copied from a different microorganism. The corn keeps the breakdown enzymes in vacuoles its stems and leaves, not in its seeds and pollen, which Sticklen says will prevent the plant from fertilizing other crops with the enzyme-producing gene. That doesn’t sound right to me; the gene would be found in the DNA of every cell, regardless of whether that cell produced the breakdown enzyme or not. Of course, unlike her I do not have a PhD in Bioengineering, so I’ll have to defer to her on this one. → Read More
