A variety of wild sorghum that grows on the roadside in northern Australia is showing great potential as a biofuel crop. Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls at the University of Adelaide have discovered that the sorghum variety Arun has the potential to yield over 10,000 liters of bioethanol per hectare per year. Scientists looked …
Repreve Renewables Opens NC Processing Center
Repreve Renewables has opened a new processing center in Greensboro, North Carolina. The company’s primary crop is giant miscanthus, a drought tolerant perennial that needs low inputs yet provides high yields. Research has shown the crop also improves soil and water quality. Giant miscanthus can be used as a feedstock for a variety of products including bioenergy to poultry bedding. …
USDA Awards $8M for Advanced Biofuel Projects
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded $8.8 million in funding to boost advanced biofuel production and assist in sustaining jobs at renewable energy facilities in 39 states. The funds, provided through USDA’s Advanced Biofuel Payment Program, tie in to several USDA programs also aimed at increasing advanced biofuel production including the Farm Bill’s bio-refinery program, the Green Fleet …
U of Guelph Discovers Key to Increasing Biomass
University of Guelph researchers may have found the key to increasing food and fuel (#Biofuel) production. By modifying a plant’s genetic profile, researchers doubled the plant’s growth and increased seed production by more than 400 percent. The findings were published in the March 2016 issue of Plant Biotechnology Journal. Using Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant that has similar characteristics to …
Clariant’s Sugarcane Bagasse Can Achieve Price Parity
Clariant has completed testing on more than 40 containers of sugarcane bagasse asnd tops and leaves from Brazil at its pilot facility in Germany on the feedstock conversion to cellulosic ethanol. The tests using the company’s sunliquid technology proved the cost per liter when including feedstock, conversion and depreciation produce a price competitive biofuel. “The process integrated on-site enzyme production …
University of Illinois Identifies Ideal Bioenergy Crops
New research from the University of Illinois has identified what bioenergy crops are best for certain regions while minimizing effects on water quantity and quality. The study was based on replacing current vegetation with crops for ethanol production and looked at how each crop would impact water quantity and quality in soils. “We expect the outcome of this study to …
ICM Completes Cellulose Ethanol Performance Runs
ICM Inc. has successfully completed two 1,000-hour performance runs of its patent-pending Generation 2.0 Co-Located Cellulose Ethanol process at the company’s pilot plant in St. Joseph, Missouri. The runs were designed to prove performance of the co-located technology design for the conversion of cellulosic biomass feedstocks, including energy crops such as switchgrass and energy sorghum, agricultural crop residues, and forestry …
Sorghum for Cellulosic Ethanol Update
While corn stover might be the big talk recently in the cellulosic ethanol game, sorghum could emerge as an alternative to the feedstock for the advanced green fuel. During the recent American Seed Trade Association CSS 2014 and Seed Expo in Chicago, Leah Guffey caught up with Scott Staggenborg of Chromatin, a sorghum genetics company, and they talked about using …
DF Cast: Bundling Biomass for a Cellulosic Future
As cellulosic ethanol plants are opening up across the country, those facilities need a way to get the feedstocks, while farmers need a way to get that biomass to those new refineries. That’s where Pacific Ag comes in. In this edition of the Domestic Fuel Cast, we talk to CEO Bill Levy and Steve Van Mouwerik, Vice President of Operations …
PacificAg Can Help Ethanol Plants Go Cellulosic
The largest and most experienced biomass harvest company in the country wants to help ethanol plants develop or expand operations into the production of cellulosic ethanol by saving time and money on supply chain development. PacificAg, which is already supplying biomass for plants in Iowa and Kansas, enables cellulosic biorefineries the ability to source cost-competitive biomass for biofuel and biochemical …