University of Illinois Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Biofuels Digest
Jim Lane
May 7, 2012

In California, a combination of water, renewable electricity, CO2 and an engineered strain of a bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha are the ingredients for diesel fuel, in a technology path being pursued by a team from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, the University of California and Logos Technologies.

Highlighted in the in-house Berkeley Lab online publication this past week, the $3.4M electrofuels program reroutes metabolic pathways in the bacteria, bypassing photosynthesis, to create medium-chain methyl ketones, with cetane numbers similar to those of typical diesel fuel. The team is using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, and the bacteria use energy from hydrogen to split carbon from CO2, and produce hydrocarbons that float to the waters surface.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

UF-led research team selected for $125 million joint U.S.-India energy project

University of Florida News Release
Friday, April 20, 2012

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida-led research team has been selected to participate in a five-year, $125 million energy project involving the United States and India, U.S. Department of Energy officials have announced.

Known as the Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center, or JCERDC, the project is aimed at reducing energy consumption, cutting dependence on petroleum products and increasing use of renewable fuels.

The UF-led team will develop biofuels derived from inedible plant material. Two other research teams, led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will focus on solar energy and energy efficiency of buildings, respectively.

Total funding for the biofuels project is about $21 million, including about $2.7 million in federal funding destined for UF.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

JBEI researchers develop dynamic sensor-regulatory system

Biodiesel Magazine
By Erin Voegele April 05, 2012

Researchers at the U.S. DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have developed a new technique that can significantly boost the microbial production of biofuels. The new technique, referred to as a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS), was able to triple the amount of biobased diesel produced from glucose in one demonstration. According to information released by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is part of the JBEI, the DSRS system is able to detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production.

“Microbial production of fuels and chemicals from fatty acids is a greener and sustainable alternative to chemical synthesis,” JBEI researcher Fuzhong Zhang. “However, high productivities, titers and yields are essential for microbial production of these chemical products to be economically viable, particularly in the cases of biofuels and low-value bulk chemicals.”

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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Lawrence Berkeley Lab to consolidate in California

Biofuels Digest
Isabel Lane April 2, 2012

In Washington, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is planning to develop a major new research facility in Richmond to consolidate its biofuel-focused energy labs. The project is to have an annual budget between $200 and $250 million, 95% of the funding coming from the DOE. The effort is receiving significant pushback from activists against “synthetic biology,” though most of the protests have been dismissed as “baseless.”

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Friday, March 9, 2012

JBEI spins out Lygos to commercialize sugar-metabolizing microbes

Biorefining Magazine
By Erin Voegele March 05, 2012

The U.S. DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has spun out its first company, Lygos. The technology developed at JBEI, which will be commercialized by the new company, features designer microorganisms that metabolize sugar and can produce a wide variety of molecules.

According to information released by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which leads JBEI, the technology essentially repurposes a class of proteins that have been used for decades to make antibiotics and other drugs. Polyketide synthases are a (PKS) are a family of multifunctional enzymes that produce polyketides, hydrocarbon chains that serve as the backbone for many natural and synthetic organic chemicals. The JBEI researchers redesigned the PKS pathway by mixing and matching genetic information to produce compounds that were never made by nature but are used in everyday synthetic materials.

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Monday, October 3, 2011

Biofuel breakthrough made from microbes

cnet news
By: Candace Lombardi September 29, 2011 5:46 AM PDT

Two microbes, a bacteria, and a yeast" may sound like a recipe for a bad science joke, but it's actually the formula that's led researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy to produce a new source for biodiesel.

Working together under the umbrella of the DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a team of researchers have successfully engineered bisabolane into a biosynthetic alternative for making diesel.

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Monday, August 22, 2011

Berkeley Lab Opens Advanced Biofuels Facility

chem.info
By Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thursday, August 18, 2011

The ABPDU is a 15,000 square-foot state-of-the art facility, located in Emeryville, California, designed to help expedite the commercialization of advanced next-generation biofuels by providing industry-scale test beds for discoveries made in the laboratory. Derived from cellulosic biomass not used as a food or feed source, these advanced biofuels represent a job-creating industry that would significantly reduce our nation’s dependence on imported oil. As a further benefit, the combustion of these fuels is “carbon-neutral,” meaning their use does not contribute to an increase in greenhouse gases.

“The Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit will serve the efforts of major biofuels research across the nation – including the Bioenergy Research Centers in the DOE Office of Science,” said Berkeley Lab director Paul Alivisatos when it was announced in March 2010, that Berkeley Lab would receive a $20 million grant from DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). “The establishment by EERE of this facility at Berkeley Lab, a DOE Office of Science national laboratory, reflects a new spirit of cooperation between the DOE technology and science programs. Berkeley Lab is proud to play its part.”

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Saving biofuels’ magic bugs from their own toxins

Biofuels Digest
by Thomas Saidak May 13, 2011

In California, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced that Joint BioEnergy Institute researchers have found a way to help microbes survive the toxicity caused by the very compounds that they secrete in order to produce biofuels. Many of the best candidate compounds for advanced biofuels are toxic to microbes, which presents a “production versus survival” conundrum.

Researchers at the DOE’s JBEI have provided a solution to this problem by developing a library of microbial efflux pumps that were shown to significantly reduce the toxicity of seven representative biofuels in engineered strains of Escherichia coli. Microbes employ various strategies for addressing cell toxicity but perhaps the most effective are efflux pumps, proteins in the cytoplasmic membrane of cells whose function is to transport toxic substances out of the cell.

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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Berkeley Highlights Challenges Meeting 2050 Energy Goals

powergenworldwide.com
March 14, 2011

California is showing the way for the rest of the nation in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, having set an ambitious goal to reduce these emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. Given that energy demand is projected to double by 2050, experts agree that the state will have to dramatically overhaul its energy systems to achieve its greenhouse gas emission goals.

At the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, some of the specific challenges and issue ahead were discussed in a session titled "Portraits of the California Energy System in 2050: Cutting Emissions by 80 Percent." Contributing to this discussion were two scientists from Berkeley Lab and one from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), in which Berkeley Lab is a partner.

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Friday, February 18, 2011

Think Biomass, Not Natural Gas

Miller-McCune
February 17, 2011
By Joan Melcher

The framework of energy supply and use by any country is confoundingly complex. Now try to speculate what it might be 40 years from now, assuming a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Not so easy, eh?

But there are people doing it: going to work each day, considering myriad energy sources, conjuring up possible configurations for the future. It’s an undertaking many might find intriguing, but … understanding all the technologies, constantly crunching the numbers, seeing a big picture that is as complex and immutable as a monotone jigsaw puzzle, butting up against obstacles and being ready to accept new information that may topple the apple cart — that’s another thing.

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2 Studies Target Sticking Points, Gaps in Life-Cycle Calculations of Biofuels

The New York Times
By JENNY MANDEL of Greenwire
Published: February 10, 2011

Conducting in-depth life-cycle assessments of the environmental impacts of biofuels is complicated, and new research suggests some questions in comparing biofuels to alternatives like petroleum-based fuels will never be answered.

Furthermore, one study argues, consumer choices driven by price differences between bio-based and petroleum-based fuels will play into how biofuels affect the environment, adding another layer of complication that must considered.

The two papers were recently published by the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership among oil giant BP PLC; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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