biofuels

Would you eat a burger created by The 404 Podcast? CNET social-media expert Caroline McCarthy joins us on today's episode and tell us about the burger joint of the future.

Rex Sorgatz, one of the founders of Fimoculous and former guest of The 404, consulted on 4Food, a new restaurant that adds a social-media twist to the burger by letting customers save their unique burger creations in the 4food system; a profit-sharing system even gives the creator 25 cents of in-store credit for every custom burger sold! Since Caroline knows practically everyone in Web 2.0, expect to see … Read more

Alcohol has no place behind the wheel of a car, but a team of Scottish scientists believe it might be perfect for the fuel tank: Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University's Biofuel Research Center, according to a report in Sky News, say they have successfully used whiskey by-products to form a butanol biofuel.

Lovers of fine scotch and bourbon may rest assured that this fuel is made from by-products, not the whiskey itself, so that no potable spirits are being put to waste.

The researchers' formula combines pot ale, which is a fluid coming from distillery equipment, with the grains … Read more

Exxon Mobil said Wednesday it opened a greenhouse facility to grow and test algae, the next step for its nascent biofuels program.

Researchers from Exxon and its partner Synthetic Genomics, will use the facility to test whether large-scale quantities of affordable fuel can be produced from algae.

Exxon said last year it will invest $600 million over the next five to six years attempting to develop biofuel from algae.

If research milestones are successfully met, Exxon said it will spend more than the $600 million over the next decade, $300 million of which will be allocated to SGI.

Exxon's … Read more

Valero Services, a subsidiary of the oil refiner Valero Energy, has signed a joint development agreement with Algenol Biofuels to share technology regarding "production and distribution of transportation fuels and chemicals," the company announced Thursday.

Algenol Biofuels, which was founded in 2006, has developed technology that capitalizes on certain types of algae with natural sugar-making abilities, harnessing their enzymes to ferment sugar into ethanol. The metabolically enhanced algae are grown in bioreactors. They're then manipulated with a combination of things like nutrients, water, pH levels, temperature, and salinity to produce ethanol, according to Algenol.

The amount and … Read more

ClearFuels Technology announced Thursday it signed a letter of cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to build a biorefinery in Colorado.

ClearFuels will receive an initial $7.7 million toward the construction of the Colorado refinery as part of an overall $22.6 million DOE grant.

The biorefinery will contain a biomass gasifier capable of producing diesel and jet fuel from clean biomass, and be installed at Rentech's Energy Technology Center in Commerce City, Colo. Rentech has a 25 percent investment in ClearFuels and is partnering with it to develop commercial biorefineries.

The ClearFuels-Rentech biorefinery in … Read more

Fuel start-up Cobalt Technologies has figured out a way to use trees poisoned and killed by pine beetles to make biobutanol, the company announced Wednesday.

Cobalt develops biofuels that can be mixed with gas, diesel, or jet fuel, as well as used to make plastics. Up until now, the company has used forestry byproducts that originated from healthy trees to make its n-butanol. The result is a gasoline blend made up of 12 percent biobutanol, which the company has claimed can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 85 percent when compared to conventional gasoline. It's been touting the … Read more

Electric cars are riding high, as incentives and new models make them a realistic option, but the fresh attention may highlight flaws compared with gasoline and alternatives such as biofuels.

The attention rankles with some in the biofuel industry, whose own hype was abruptly halted by a glut of production in 2007, subsequent bankruptcies, and a fall from grace after a link was drawn--which they dispute--between biofuels and spiraling food prices and rising hunger.

Gasoline may beat off both alternatives for decades as the least-worst option, with wider adoption of more efficient conventional cars helping to curb carbon emissions and … Read more

Brazil on Tuesday opened the world's first ethanol-fueled power plant in an effort by the South American biofuels giant to increase the global use of ethanol and boost its clean power generation.

State-run oil giant Petrobras and General Electric, which helped design the plant, are betting that increased use of ethanol generation by green-conscious countries will boost demand for the product.

Brazil, the top global ethanol exporter, is already in talks with Japan to develop biofuels power generation there.

"We have great expectations to show the viability and economy of generating electricity from...an alternative feedstock to fossil … Read more

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Wednesday announced the recipients of more than $80 million in government funding for biofuels research and development.

The bulk of the funding, coming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, went to algae research and development, while the rest went toward improving the country's ethanol infrastructure.

About $44 million went to the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB), an organization led by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. The research institute, which hosts the plant science labs of several universities, is coordinating the efforts of private, academic, and public organizations … Read more