Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have discovered a microbial enzyme that degrades tough-to-break bonds in lignin, a waste product of biorefineries. When inserted into a bioengineered bacterium, the enzyme helps efficiently convert lignin compounds into a common component of plastics—muconic acid—opening a pathway to transform waste into a... Read more →

Arkema has launched its new sustainable Kynar PVDF range. These new grades will claim 100% renewable attributed carbon derived from crude tall oil (CTO) bio-feedstock, according to a mass-balance approach. Kynar CTO PVDF grades using the mass balance approach under the ISCC+ certification process will be produced first in Arkema’s... Read more →

Canada has launched the $1.5-billion Clean Fuels Fund with a call for proposals for projects that increase Canada’s capacity to produce clean fuels. Seamus O’Regan Jr., Minister of Natural Resources, made the announcement during the World Hydrogen Technologies Convention hosted by the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association and supported... Read more →

Origin Materials launched its Net Zero Automotive Program with Ford Motor Company. The Net Zero Automotive Program is a sustainable automotive supply chain initiative focused on industrializing new materials to drive decarbonization in the automotive industry. Origin Materials has developed technology which turns sustainable wood residues into cost-advantaged, carbon-negative materials... Read more →

UrbanX Renewables Group of Long Beach, CA, executed a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract with Hyundai Engineering Co., Ltd—an essential step for building the state’s first facility producing ultra-low carbon renewable diesel. The company will produce its XRD renewable diesel from vegetable oil, fats and waste cooking oils through a... Read more →

Biocrude oil produced via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of biomass could provide a low-carbon supplement for transportation fuel supply. However, biocrude’s poor chemical (heteroatom content, energy content); physical (viscosity, density); and thermal (boiling point distribution, cetane value, cold-flow properties) characteristics limit commercial application. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a thermochemical depolymerisation process... Read more →

A research team in China has developed a one-pot method to produce octane from bio-derived furans under low temperatures. In an open-access paper in the RSC journal Green Chemistry, they report a 96.6% yield of octane obtained by catalytic conversion with Pd/C and phosphotungstic acid (HPW) under 1 MPa H2... Read more →

ADM plans to build North Dakota’s first dedicated soybean crushing plant and refinery to meet fast-growing demand from food, feed, industrial and biofuel customers, including producers of renewable diesel. Based in Spiritwood, ND, the approximately $350-million crush and refining complex will feature state-of-the-art automation technology and have the capacity to... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $35 million to 15 research projects through ARPA-E’s “Energy and Carbon Optimized Synthesis for the Bioeconomy” (ECOSynBio) program to decarbonize biorefining processes used across the energy, transportation, and agriculture sectors. Many biofuels, including ethanol, biodiesel and other products derived from organic material... Read more →

Arbios Biotech, a joint venture between Licella and Canfor (earlier post), and Shell Catalysts & Technologies (SC&T), have formed a new global alliance aimed at utilizing SC&T’s upgrading technology capability in the pursuit of a low-carbon intensity, circular-economy-focused biorefinery. Arbios Biotech was formed to commercialize Licella’s Cat-HTR platform, a globally... Read more →

A recent update by The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) now includes carinata as a renewable fuel feedstock for hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) with a similar greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint as waste and residuals, such as used cooking oil, for the same fuel type.... Read more →

Topsoe has signed a contract with Tidewater for the delivery of Topsoe’s HydroFlex technology (earlier post) in Canada. The technology will be utilized in a new 3,000 barrels per day renewable diesel facility that will be constructed at the site of Tidewater’s existing Prince George refinery in British Columbia, Canada.... Read more →

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced the availability of $61.4 million for technologies that produce low-cost, low-carbon biofuels. (DE-FOA-0002396) Topic areas for the “Bioenergy Technologies Office Scale-Up and Conversion” funding opportunity include high-impact biotechnology research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to bolster the body of scientific... Read more →

The Government of Canada announced a $2,890,000-investment in the University of Alberta’s biojet technology. The University of Alberta, along with project partners Alberta Innovates, FORGE Hydrocarbons Inc., Western Economic Diversification Canada, Future Energy Systems, CanmetENERGY Devon and Edmonton International Airport, are also providing funding toward this $7.4-million project. The investment... Read more →

Following several years of research and development, Central & East European (CEE) oil and gas corporation MOL has stepped up the value chain and has become a biofuel producer through the realization of an investment in the Danube Refinery. Bio feedstock will be co-processed together with fossil materials increasing the... Read more →

Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the University of Dayton, Yale University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated the production of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) from food waste–derived volatile fatty acids (VFA) by targeting normal paraffins for a near-term path to market and branched isoparaffins to increase... Read more →

The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) and software company Bioledger released a case study on the potential of a blockchain database to support traceability of biofuel and its feedstocks and overcome the vulnerabilities identified in securing the supply of sustainable renewables. The report summarizes the results of a project which... Read more →

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy intends to issue three sustainable transportation technologies funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) in Spring 2021. These potential funding opportunities seek innovative research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) in the pursuit of technologies that will help reduce greenhouse gas... Read more →

British Airways will power future flights with sustainable aviation fuel produced from sustainably-sourced ethanol, as part of a new partnership with sustainable jet fuel company LanzaJet. British Airways will invest in LanzaJet’s first commercial-scale Freedom Pines Fuels facility in Georgia and acquire cleaner burning sustainable aviation fuel from the plant.... Read more →

Honeywell recently introduced a single-stage UOP Ecofining technology offering for the production of renewable diesel fuel. The new single-stage technology is a fast-to-market, low capital cost solution that is suited for repurposing an underutilized hydrotreating or hydrocracking unit in a refinery, producing higher yields of renewable diesel fuel than other... Read more →

US Senator John Thune (R-SD) has re-introduced two bills intended to speed the adoption of biofuels. The first, with co-sponsor Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) would approve certain advanced biofuel registrations that have gone without approval by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) despite the fuels already being successfully used in at... Read more →

Large perennial grasses such as miscanthus are a primary target for use as bioenergy crops because of their sustainability advantages, but they take several years to establish and aren’t ideal for crop rotation. Maize and other annual crops are easier to manage with traditional farming, but they are tougher on... Read more →

Enerkem, with a group of strategic partners including major investor Shell, along with Suncor and Proman, and Hydro-Québec supplying green hydrogen and oxygen, and with the support of the Québec and Canadian governments, is proposing the construction of a biofuel plant in Varennes, in the Greater Montréal area. Varennes Carbon... Read more →

Researchers at UC Riverside and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have used mathematical and computational modeling, artificial intelligence algorithms and experiments showing that bacteria have failsafe mechanisms preventing them from producing too many metabolic intermediates. Metabolic intermediates are the chemicals that couple each reaction to one another in metabolism. Key to... Read more →

Altair Paramount, LLC (Altair) has applied for California LCFS fuel pathways for renewable diesel, renewable naphtha and renewable jet fuels derived from rendered animal fat feedstock and processed at their facility in Paramount, California. Altair sources rendered inedible animal fat from an integrated meatpacking and rendering facility owned by JBS1... Read more →

The Québec Government is awarding funding totaling CAD 5.943 million (US$4.55 million) to a non-profit organization Bioénergie La Tuque (BELT) under a program called Technoclimat from Transition Énergétique Québec (TEQ) for a project to develop and demonstrate the potential of producing advanced biofuels from locally-sourced forestry waste in La Tuque,... Read more →

Royal DSM will start a strategic partnership with Neste to enable the production of high performance polymers made from sustainable feedstock. This enables DSM and its customers to reduce the carbon footprint of their own products while supporting the industry to transition to a circular economy. In the new strategic... Read more →

Eastman and Gruppo Maip, a leading international plastics formulator and compound producer based in Turin, Italy, will partner to formulate new sustainable polymer solutions for automotive interior applications. This will enable an exclusive portfolio of formulations based on Eastman’s Advanced Circular Recycling technology, offering a range of both bio-based and... Read more →

Researchers from the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) have developed an efficient three-step process for the conversion of cellulosic feedstocks to both a valuable chemical precursor and high-performance jet fuel blendstock. Their paper appears in the journal ChemSusChem. In it, the team describes the synthesis of sustainable methylcyclopentadiene... Read more →

As part of a three-year project led by the US Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center (ERDC) to mitigate growth of toxic algae blooms, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is investigating these blooms as a viable source of biocrude fuel and fertilizer. One year into the ERDC project,... Read more →

Neste, the world’s leading producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel produced from waste and residue raw materials, has agreed to acquire Bunge Loders Croklaan’s refinery plant located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands for a purchase price of €258 million (US$302 million). The refinery plant is located next to Neste’s... Read more →

Diamond Green Diesel facility in Norco, La., will more than double its annual production of renewable diesel with the completion of a second Honeywell Ecofining process unit with a capacity of 30,000 barrels per day (bpd). Diamond Green Diesel is owned by Valero Energy Corp. and Darling Ingredients Inc., and... Read more →

An international research team has sequenced the full genome of an ornamental variety of miscanthus, a wild perennial grass emerging as a prime candidate for sustainable bioenergy crops. The genome project—led by scientists at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), a Department of Energy (DOE) bioenergy research... Read more →

IndianOil (IOC) has inked an MoU with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) to develop and demonstrate biomass gasification-based hydrogen generation technology. The process will help produce fuel-cell-grade hydrogen at an affordable price and accelerate IndianOil’s journey towards a sustainable hydrogen economy. IndianOil Chairman S M Vaidya said that... Read more →

A study by a team from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has found that the amount of sugars contained within cellulosic biomass from bioenergy crops that can be converted into fuels is of equal economic importance to the yield. The findings are published... Read more →

The Government of Canada is awarding $1.2 million to GreenNano Technologies Inc. (GNT), a company based in Toronto, to scale up production of a new lightweight wood-fiber–based composite material to create automotive parts using an innovative process. Cam covers made at GNT. The project will combine wood pulp with polymers... Read more →

Singaporean-based tonnage provider Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS), has appointed GoodFuels to supply biofuel bunkers for its 2010-built 47,377 deadweight tonne MR tanker M/T Pacific Beryl. The successful bunkering, which took place on Friday, 9 October in Dutch waters, is in line with EPS’ Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Policy. The... Read more →

Argonne National Laboratory’s Systems Assessment Center has released the 2020 version of the suite of GREET models and associated documentation. The GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation) tool provides a common, transparent platform for lifecycle analysis (LCA) of of the energy and environmental effects of a... Read more →

The technology group Wärtsilä has been awarded a major contract to supply and construct a plant for production of CO2-neutral liquid transport fuels. The plant will liquefy gas from the natural gas grid to produce carbon-neutral LNG. It will have a capacity of approximately 100,000 tons per year and located... Read more →

Renewable Energy Group, Inc. plans to undertake a capacity expansion of its Geismar, Louisiana biorefinery by 250 million gallons annually to 340 million gallons per year. The announcement follows a thorough review and site selection process. Construction should begin in mid to late 2021 with target mechanical completion date in... Read more →

Cargill and Virent, Inc. are working together to evaluate the use of Cargill’s corn dextrose as a feedstock to Virent’s BioForming technology for the production of “drop-in” low-carbon biofuels and biochemicals. Virent’s BioForming technology uses sugars found in plants as a feedstock to produce drop-in renewable gasoline and jet fuel,... Read more →

DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist of Deutsche Post DHL Group, says it will be neutralizing the carbon emissions of all less-than-container load (LCL) ocean freight shipments from 1 January 2021. As one of the leading ocean freight forwarders worldwide, and in line with Deutsche Post DHL... Read more →

The Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport MR will tackle this year’s Nürburgring 24-hour race featuring a complete body kit made of natural-fiber composite materials for the first time. Since early 2019, Porsche manufactured the two doors and the rear wing of the small series racing vehicle out of a natural-fiber... Read more →

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (APRA-E) will award $16.5 million in funding for six projects as part of the Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM) program. These projects will develop technologies that bridge the data gap in the biofuel supply chain... Read more →

A new study led by Colorado State University predicts significant climate benefits stemming from the use of advanced biofuel technologies. Accounting for all of the carbon flows in biofuel systems and comparing them to those in grasslands and forests, the team found that there are clear strategies for biofuels to... Read more →

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Gas Technology Institute (GTI) are embarking on a five-year initiative to accelerate the development and demonstration of low-carbon energy technologies. With increasingly ambitious decarbonization goals from private companies and governments alike, existing technology is not enough to achieve those targets. The Low-Carbon Resources... Read more →

Novvi LLC announced the successful start-up of its Deer Park, TX plant, where it is manufacturing and marketing 100% renewable base oils (NovaSpec Base Oils) for the lubricants industry, and 100% renewable process oils for polymer, adhesives, and personal care industries. Novvi is a joint venture of Amyris, Inc., Cosan,... Read more →

Specialty chemical company Clariant and Eta Bio, a company of the Pavlovi family, running a leading business in the agricultural sector in Bulgaria, have signed a license agreement for Clariant’s sunliquid cellulosic ethanol technology. The agreement marks the fourth signed license deal for Clariant’s sunliquid technology. Eta Bio has been... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced more than $97 million in funding for 33 projects that will support high-impact technology research and development to accelerate the bioeconomy. These projects will improve the performance and lower the cost and risk of technologies that can be used to produce biofuels, biopower,... Read more →

A Korean research team has developed a technology that can be used to mass-produce aviation-grade fuels from wood wastes. The ability to produce aviation-grade fuel from oil derived from wood waste—which up until now has been difficult due to the high viscosity of the oil—could help international aviation companies comply... Read more →