Brazil Sugar Output Will Rise 19 Percent to Record, Unica Says

Bloomberg Business Week
March 31, 2010, 9:52 AM EDT
By Lucia Kassai

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Sugar output in Brazil’s Center South, the world’s largest producing region, will rise 19 percent to a record in the coming season as drier weather boosts yields and new mills come online.

Mills in the region, which makes 90 percent of Brazil’s sugar, will produce 34.1 million metric tons of the sweetener in the crop year starting tomorrow, up from 28.6 million a year earlier, Unica said in a report distributed today in Sao Paulo. Sugar-cane output will increase 10 percent to 595.9 million tons, Unica said.

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Uganda scientists find ways to get ethanol from stems, leaves

The East African
By HALIMA ABDALLAH
Posted Monday, March 29 2010 at 00:00

Uganda scientists have made a breakthrough in extracting bio-ethanol from non-food parts of plants — cassava stems, cassava leaves, pineapple leaves, elephant grass stems and wood — opening the way for commercial production of ethanol from new source materials.

The announcement follows more than a year of research into the potential of non-food parts of plants and cellulosic materials in producing bio-ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol is difficult and expensive to break down into simple sugars required for ethanol production, but is eventually cheaper say the researchers who argue that the initial investment for biofuels is much lower than for fossil fuels.

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Fueled by a Virus

EMagazine.com
March 29, 2010
By Erin Schneider

An E. coli virus strain that can turn raw plant matter into diesel without any refinement or additional steps has been developed by a group of researchers including members from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), employees from next-gen biofuel company LS9 and scientists from UC Berkeley.

After about a dozen genetic adjustments, the E. coli microbe was successfully modified to have the ability to covert the fatty-acid molecules in the plants directly into fuels and other chemicals. This process produces diesel molecules, alcohols and waxes directly from hemicellulose – a main component in plants. The researchers anticipate that their diesel-making E. coli will also be able to produce environmentally friendly surfactants, solvents and lubricants, and experimentation demonstrates that the process can also be appropriately adjusted to produce substances suitable for the substitute of gasoline.

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Palm Oil is the Most Sustainable Crop: Wageningen University Report

SolomonStarNews.com
Monday, 29 March 2010 13:41

Wageningen University in the Netherlands publishes research which shows that “palm oil is the most efficient energy crop.”

The report which was published in Biomass and Bioenergy, found that palm oil, sugar cane from Brazil and sweet sorghum from China are currently the most sustainable energy crops.

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From Biomass to Chemicals in One Step

TechnologyReview.com
By Katherine Bourzac
Monday, March 29, 2010

A startup's catalytic process converts biomass directly into components of gasoline.

An early-stage company spun out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, plans to commercialize a catalytic process for converting cellulosic biomass into five of the chemicals found in gasoline. These chemicals are also used to make industrial polymers and solvents. Anellotech, which is seeking venture funding, plans to build a pilot plant next year.

Anellotech's reactors perform a process called "catalytic pyrolysis," which converts three of the structural molecules found in plants--two forms of cellulose and the woody molecule lignin--into fuels. Ground-up biomass is fed into a high-temperature reactor and blended with a catalyst. The heat causes the cellulose, lignin, and other molecules in the biomass to chemically decompose through a process called pyrolysis; a catalyst helps control the chemical reactions, turning cellulose and lignin into a mix of carbon-ring-based molecules: benzene, toluene, and xylenes.

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Engineered Yeast Produces Ethanol and Butanol from C5 and C6 Sugars from Biomass Feedstocks

FavStocks.com
By Green Car Congress on 03/29/2010 – 2:21 am

Researchers from Frankfurt University have engineered the common industrial yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to ferment pentose (C5) as well as hexose (C6) sugars derived from biomass feedstock to produce bioethanol and biobutanol.

A talk on the work—“Genetic engineering of industrial yeast strains for the production of bioethanol and biobutanol from C5 and C6 sugars,”—by Dr. Christian Weber, Prof. Eckhard Boles and Dr. Gunter Festel took place on Monday at the Society for General Microbiology’s spring meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Plant waste is available in large amounts and contains a mixture of complex sugars including hexoses and pentoses that can be fermented to alcohol.

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Bill To Extend Ethanol Tax Credit Reignites Fuel vs. Food Debate

SustainableBusiness.com
03/29/2010 09:48 AM

A bill introduced in the US House last week would extend ethanol tax credits for another five years, to 2015. This tax credit is set to expire on December 31, 2010. If extended, the tax credits will provide the conventional ethanol industry with $30 billion over five years.

The Renewable Fuels Reinvestment Act (RFRA), introduced by Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and and John Shimkus (R-IL), has reignited the fuel versus food debate and intesified scrutiny on the EPA's regulations on the environmental impact of corn-based ethanol.

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Air Force jet flies on plant oil fuel blend

GovernmentExec.com
By Katherine McIntire Peters kpeters@govexec.com
March 26, 2010

On Thursday, Air Force Maj. Chris Seager broke a flight barrier of sorts when he piloted an A-10 Thunderbolt jet fueled by a 50-50 blend of camelina plant oil and regular JP-8 jet fuel.

"I couldn't tell the difference between [the blended fuel] and regular JP-8," Seager said during a teleconference with reporters following a 50-minute test flight at Florida's Elgin Air Force Base.

Service officials will spend the next few weeks pouring over data collected from the test flight to ensure the fuel blend poses no safety or operational problems. If the blend holds up, then they will begin testing it this summer in other aircraft, including F-15 and F-22 jets and the C-17 transport plane.

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CSI Says New Pretreatment Technology for Cellulosic Biomass Could Reduce Enzyme Dosage By Up To a Factor of 10

favStocks.com
By Green Car Congress on 03/26/2010 – 10:25 am

Researchers at Cellulose Sciences International (CSI) have developed a pretreatment technology of cellulosic biomass to reduce its recalcitrance (resistance to breakdown into sugars), enabling possible significant increases in rates of conversion of celluloses to sugar by cellulase enzymes, with an accompanying decrease in the required dosage of the enzymes. This, in turn, could lower the production cost of cellulosic biofuels and chemicals.

In a presentation of the work at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Rajai Atalla, founder of the company, said that CSI has achieved conversions on the order of 80% in approximately 20 hours for bleached kraft pulps; conversion of a control was 45%. For corn stover, they have achieved conversion rates that are twice those of controls, Atalla said.

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Biomass crop grows in popularity

By LARRY MEYER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Friday, March 26, 2010 10:06 AM PDT

ONTARIO — A strong turnout of area farmers and other interested parties Thursday showed there is interest in a proposal to build a cooperative to grow a biomass crop which would be used as fuel in a plant to generate electricity.

In the latest of a series of growers meetings, officials of Agri Energy Producers Association asked farmers to start signing up Thursday night or within the next few days, saying there would not be a requirement to grow a crop this year, given the lateness of the season.

“The biggest change from earlier (presentations) is that when you sign up, you will not be requested to grow in 2010,” attorney Randon Wilson said while reviewing the disclosure information about the new company.

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