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						<title>ExxonMobil to Launch Biofuels Program</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.209.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[<br />[link=hyperlink url]http://www.rdmag.com/New-To-Market/2009/07/ExxonMobil-to-Launch-Biofuels-Program/[/link]<br /><br />Exxon Mobil Corporation announced an alliance with biotech company, Synthetic Genomics Inc., to research and develop next generation biofuels5 from photosynthetic algae. ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company has entered into a research and development alliance with SGI, a privately held company focused on developing genomic-driven solutions and founded by genome pioneer, Dr. J. Craig Venter, to develop advanced biofuels from photosynthetic algae that are compatible with today’s gasoline and diesel fuels. Under the program, if research and development milestones are successfully met, ExxonMobil expects to spend more than $600 million, which includes $300 million in internal costs and potentially more than $300 million to SGI.<br /><br /><br />[[b]Submitted by KEVswr[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:20:51 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Exxon to bet its money on algae to fuel</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.208.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[July 14, 2009<br /><br />Oil giant Exxon Mobil plans to announce a 600-million-dollar investment to produce liquid transportation fuel from algae, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. <br /><br />The effort by Exxon, whose chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson once derided ethanol as "moonshine," includes a partnership with the biotechnology company Synthetic Genomics.<br /><br />A top Exxon research told the newspaper that the company has researched fuel alternatives for years.<br /><br />"We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind," said Emil Jacobs, vice president for research and development at Exxon's research and engineering unit.<br /><br />"Scale was the first. For transportation fuels, if you can't see whether you can scale a technology up, then you have to question whether you need to be involved at all."<br /><br />But Jacobs acknowledged that it would take at least five to 10 years before large-scale commercial plants could produce algae-based fuels.<br /><br />Environmentalists struck a note of skepticism at the plans.<br /><br />"Research is great, but we need to see new products in the market," Greenpeace research director Kert Davies told the Times.<br /><br />"We've always said that major oil companies have to be involved. But the question is whether companies are simply paying lip service to something or whether they are putting their weight and power behind it."<br /><br />Algae, Exxon said, could produce over 2,000 gallons of fuel (7,570 liters) per acre (0.4 hectare) of production per year, compared to 650 gallons (2,460 liters) for palm trees and 450 gallons (1,703 liters) for sugar canes, while corn only yields 250 gallons (946 liters).<br /><br />Alternate posting<br /><br />SOURCE: AFP<br /><br />R&D Daily<br />Advantage Business Media<br /><br />[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:09:35 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Biofuels could clean up Chernobyl 'badlands'</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.207.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/4f90221/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cmg20A2271440B50A0A0Ebiofuels0Ecould0Eclean0Eup0Echernobyl0Ebadlands0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm<br /><br />27 June 2009 by Fred Pearce <br /><br />CONTAMINATED lands, blighted by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, could be cleaned up in a clever way: by growing biofuels. Belarus, the country affected by much of the fallout, is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years.<br /><br />A 40,000 square kilometre area of south-east Belarus is so stuffed with radioactive isotopes that rained down from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 that it won't be fit for growing food for hundreds of years, as the isotopes won't have decayed sufficiently. But this week a team of Irish biofuels technologists is in the capital, Minsk, hoping to do a deal with state agencies to buy radioactive sugar beet and other crops grown on the contaminated land to make biofuels for sale across Europe.<br /><br />The company, Greenfield Project Management, insists no radioactive material will get into the biofuel as only ethanol is distilled out. "In distillation, only the most volatile compounds rise up the tube. Everything else is left behind," says Basil Miller of Greenfield. The heavy radioactive residues will be burned in a power station, producing a concentrated "radioactive ash". This can be disposed of at existing treatment works for nuclear waste, he says.<br /><br />The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency is not so sure, however. Its head of waste, Didier Louvat, told New Scientist that, while the biofuels process should be safe, neither Belarus nor Ireland has an adequate way of disposing of the radioactive residues at present. "The disposal facilities Belarus set up after the Chernobyl accident are not acceptable, so they will need safe storage until they have something better."<br /><br />Belarus has been tight-lipped about the project, though it is clearly keen to tackle the problem. Last September Andrei Savinkh, Belarus representative at the UN in Geneva, called decontamination of the soil "the number one priority for the Belarus government".<br /><br />Chernobyl is in Ukraine, close to the Belarus border. But prevailing winds meant 80 per cent of the fallout from the burning reactor fell in Belarus. Both were then part of the Soviet Union. The accident left vegetation and soils heavily contaminated with strontium-90, caesium-137, plutonium and americium. The most heavily polluted areas remain evacuated but 8 million people live in a much wider contaminated zone.<br /><br />Farmers grow some grain crops here. The radioactive material concentrates in roots and stalks, which they plough back into the soil after harvesting. So the soil is almost as contaminated now as it was after the accident. The Belarus government hopes that by growing biofuels and using the whole plant, it can cleanse the soil. "Instead of centuries of natural decay [of the radionuclides] this process will cut the time to 20 to 40 years," Savinkh says.<br /><br />Greenfield plans to build the first biofuels distillery next year at Mozyr, close to one of the most contaminated areas (see map). The €500 million plant will turn half a million cubic metres of crops a year into 700 million litres of biofuels, starting in 2011. As many as 10 more plants will follow provided funding can be raised, says Miller. The European Union reckons it will need about 25 billion litres of bioethanol by 2020 to meet green fuel targets.<br /><br />One of Greenfield's partners will be Belbiopharm, a state biotech company that wants to develop genetically modified crops able to clean the soil more quickly.<br /><br />The hope is that in the long run these measures will make life safer for local people. A study in 1999 by Nick Beresford of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, UK, found that tens of thousands of people in the contaminated region are consuming dangerous levels of radioactivity in their food.<br /><br /><br /><br />[[b]Submitted by KEVswr[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:37:51 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Xinhua - Lao Gov't to Promote Biofuel Production</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.206.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[2009-0604 - Xinhua - Lao Gov't to Promote Biofuel Production<br /><br /><http://english.cri.cn/6826/2009/06/04/1601s490381.htm>http://english.cri.cn/6826/2009/06/04/1601s490381.htm<br /><br />Lao Gov't to Promote Biofuel Production<br /><br />2009-06-04 16:28:43 Xinhua Web Editor: Hu Weiwei<br /><br />The Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines said that the government will promote the production of biofuel in the wake of imported fossil fuel price fluctuations over the past year, the Lao newspaper Vientiane Times reported Thursday.<br /><br />The Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines said that the government will promote the production of biofuel in the wake of imported fossil fuel price fluctuations over the past year, the Lao newspaper Vientiane Times reported Thursday.<br /><br />Electricity Department Acting Director General Hatsady Sisoulath said the department was now establishing a draft of national strategy on biofuel development, as an important reference for promoting biofuel production in Laos.<br /><br />The draft is expected to be submitted to the government for approval at the end of this year, said Hatsady at a workshop on " Future Resource Economy and Policies in Laos until 2020" held in Vientiane on Wednesday.<br /><br />Hatsady said Laos had the potential to produce biofuel because of the abundance of agricultural land and a climate that was conducive to biofuel crop cultivation for supply to processing plants.<br /><br />The country's biofuel development strategy must be drawn up in cooperation with the various sectors involved, such as the Ministry of Energy, Mines and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, banks when considering loans for investors in this field, and even private sectors if they want to involve in this business, said Hatsady.<br /><br />If the production of biofuels comes into reality in Laos, this form of energy will constitute about 30 percent of total fuel consumption by 2020 and help the country reduce fossil fuel imports, said Hatsady.<br /><br />Copyright by CRIENGLISH.com, 1998-2009. Email:<mailto:crieng%40cri.com.cn>crieng@cri.com.cn Registered Number:05064898 <br /><br />http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archive-laonews/message/15802<br /><br />[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:05:32 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Methanol challenges hydrogen to be fuel of the future</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.205.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[Methanol challenges hydrogen to be fuel of the future<br /><br />    * 18:03 02 June 2009 by Colin Barras<br /><br /><br />Could methanol be at the center of a cleaner, greener future infrastructure? (Image: Rex Features)<br /><br />For years many companies, governments and researchers have predicted that our energy future must lie with the universe's simplest element. The mooted hydrogen economy would use the gas to store and transport renewable or low-carbon energy, and power fuel cells in the transport sector or in portable electronics.<br /><br />But creating the necessary society-wide infrastructure has proved difficult and expensive to get off the ground. And now a rival idea, first suggested in 2006 by Nobel chemistry laureate George Olah at the University of Southern California, has received a boost.<br /><br />The methanol economy, say its supporters, could be with us much sooner than the hydrogen one.<br />Hydrogen dangers<br /><br />Olah's rationale is that modifying our existing oil and petrol-focused infrastructure to run on methanol will be much easier than refitting the world's liquid-fuel-based economy to deal with an explosive gas.<br /><br />Methanol has already been used to power portable gadgets and could potentially power vehicles and other devices. Now US chemists have worked out the conditions needed to make the feedstock for methanol production using renewable energy.<br /><br />The research is significant because just as the lack of an efficient way to generate and store hydrogen is a major barrier to the idea of running civilisation on it, sourcing methanol on a vast scale is a similarly major hurdle.<br />Clean solution<br /><br />The best way to make methanol is by steam reforming methane, produced from syngas - a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide - which can be made via the Fischer-Tropsch process.<br /><br />This uses catalysts to convert the syngas into liquid hydrocarbons. The process is used today to make diesel and other liquid fuels from coal, and kept South African cars going during the country's international isolation in the 1980s and 90s.<br /><br />However, the whole point of the methanol economy would be to create a greener society, so any syngas must come from an environmentally friendly source, not fossil fuels.<br /><br />Now chemist Scott Barnett at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and colleagues have shown that a solid oxide electrolysis cell, more normally used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, could be that source.<br />Viable brew<br /><br />Using a mix of one part CO2, one part hydrogen and two parts water in the device generates syngas at a rate which compares favourably with the processes used to make it from natural gas, says Barnett. At peak conditions of 800 °C and 1.3 volts, the system can produce 7 standard cubic centimetres of syngas per minute for every square centimetre of the electrolysis cell's surface.<br /><br />The next stage, turning the syngas into methanol, is a standard industrial reaction that is well understood.<br /><br />Barnett's method requires a steady stream of water vapour and CO2, but both gases are released when the methanol is used in fuel cells, and could be captured and re-used, he says.<br /><br />That would add to the costs involved, but a hydrogen economy would require similar gas-capture technology, says Barnett, because hydrogen production requires a plentiful source of fresh water, which is heavy to cart about.<br /><br />Olah thinks Barnett's study is a useful one. "This [methanol economy] approach is now starting to be implemented around the world," he says. "New methanol plants are being built in China, South Korea, Japan and Iceland."<br />Limited scope<br /><br />But others remain sceptical that methanol will ever occupy more than a small niche. There are several well-known problems with the use of methanol. Like hydrogen, and unlike petrol, methanol is not a source of energy, but simply an energy store, points out Ulf Bossel at the European Fuel Cell Forum in Oberrohrdorf, Switzerland. "The energy carried by methanol is less than was needed to make it," he adds.<br /><br />Barnett agrees that methanol is a poor substitute for using the power from a renewable generator like a wind turbine directly. But he says that in cases where direct use is not possible, liquid methanol beats the efficiency of hydrogen for storage and transportation.<br /><br />Methanol could be used to store energy from renewable sources that often produce more electricity than is needed at a particular time, he says, and could also be useful at off-grid sites.<br /><br />In these situations, Bossel agrees a modest methanol economy makes sense. "The hydrogen idea is gradually fading," he says. "Methanol could be a better solution because it is easier to handle."<br /><br />Journal reference: Energy and Fuels (DOI: 10.1021/ef900111f)<br />[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:03:35 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Catalyst breakthrough: one-pot bio-oil to alkane reaction</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.202.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[http://rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000101~ISSUE~0905~RELTYPE~MS~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~FQ.html<br />Catalyst breakthrough: one-pot bio-oil to alkane reaction<br />May 13, 2009<br /><br />For the protection of the environment, and because of the limited amount of fossil fuels available, renewable resources, such as specially cultivated plants, wood scraps, and other plant waste, are becoming the focus of considerable attention. Processes such as pyrolysis or liquefaction allow the conversion of biomass into bio-oil, a highly promising renewable source of energy. A team of German and Chinese scientists led by Johannes A. Lercher at the Technical University of Munich has now developed a new catalytic process to convert components of bio-oil directly into alkanes and methanol. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the process is based on a "one-pot" reaction catalyzed by a precious metal on a carbon support combined with an inorganic acid. <br /><br />Bio-oil is an aqueous, acidic, highly oxidized mixture. However, its high oxygen content and instability turn out to have a negative impact: bio-oil cannot be used directly as a liquid fuel. It would, however, be highly interesting as a source of basic raw materials if it were possible to convert it to alkanes. Alkanes, which are also commonly called paraffins, are saturated hydrocarbons; they are among the most important raw materials for chemical industry, and in particular as starting materials for the production of plastics. Furthermore, they are among the primary fuels in the world's economy. <br /><br />Bio-oil contains a phenolic fraction consisting of compounds with the main framework being an aromatic ring made of six carbon atoms with some hydroxy (-OH) groups attached. With the new process, the phenolic components of bio-oil can be converted with high selectivity to cycloalkanes (ring-shaped alkanes) and methanol. The researchers were able to demonstrate this with various model substances. As catalyst, they used palladium metal on a carbon support, with phosphoric acid as the proton source for the reaction. <br /><br />The reaction is a "one-pot" reaction, meaning a one-step reaction whose partial reactions (hydrogenation, hydrolysis, and dehydration) occur in the same reactor, with no intermediate work-up. The secret is in the catalyst, which works on all of these different reactions. The end result is a mixture of various alkanes that separates into a second phase, making it easy to separate from the aqueous bio-oil phase. The new process is a practical approach for the direct use of bio-oil for the production of alkanes. <br /><br />Abstract <br /><br />SOURCE: Wiley-Blackwell <br />R&D Daily<br />Advantage Business Media<br /><br />Rockaway, NJ, 07866<br /><br /><br />[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 02:56:24 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Bioelectricity promises more 'miles per acre' than ethanol</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.201.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[Bioelectricity promises more 'miles per acre' than ethanol<br />May 8, 2009<br /><br />Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our “miles per acre” from biomass? Researchers writing in the online edition of the May 7 Science magazine say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. They calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change.<br /><br />“It’s a relatively obvious question once you ask it, but nobody had really asked it before,” says study co-author Chris Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. “The kinds of motivations that have driven people to think about developing ethanol as a vehicle fuel have been somewhat different from those that have been motivating people to think about battery electric vehicles, but the overlap is in the area of maximizing efficiency and minimizing adverse impacts on climate.”<br /><br />Field, who is also a professor of biology at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, is part of a research team that includes lead author Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, and David Lobell of Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment. The researchers performed a life-cycle analysis of both bioelectricity and ethanol technologies, taking into account not only the energy produced by each technology, but also the energy consumed in producing the vehicles and fuels. For the analysis, they used publicly available data on vehicle efficiencies from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations.<br /><br />Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based energy crop. For example, a small SUV powered by bioelectricity could travel nearly 14,000 highway miles on the net energy produced from an acre of switchgrass, while a comparable internal combustion vehicle could only travel about 9,000 miles on the highway. (Average mileage for both city and highway driving would be 15,000 miles for a biolelectric SUV and 8,000 miles for an internal combustion vehicle.)<br /><br />"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles,” says Campbell. “Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."<br /><br />The researchers found that bioelectricity and ethanol also differed in their potential impact on climate change. “Some approaches to bioenergy can make climate change worse, but other limited approaches can help fight climate change,” says Campbell. “For these beneficial approaches, we could do more to fight climate change by making electricity than making ethanol.”<br /><br />The energy from an acre of switchgrass used to power an electric vehicle would prevent or offset the release of up to 10 tons of CO2 per acre, relative to a similar-sized gasoline-powered car. Across vehicle types and different crops, this offset averages more than 100% larger for the bioelectricity than for the ethanol pathway. Bioelectricity also offers more possibilities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through measures such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could be implemented at biomass power stations but not individual internal combustion vehicles.<br /><br />While the results of the study clearly favor bioelectricity over ethanol, the researchers caution that the issues facing society in choosing an energy strategy are complex. “We found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues: transportation and climate,” says Lobell. “But we also need to compare these options for other issues like water consumption, air pollution, and economic costs.”<br /><br />"There is a big strategic decision our country and others are making: whether to encourage development of vehicles that run on ethanol or electricity,” says Campbell. “Studies like ours could be used to ensure that the alternative energy pathways we chose will provide the most transportation energy and the least climate change impacts."<br /><br />This research was funded through a grant from the Stanford University Global Climate and Energy Project, with additional support from the Stanford University Food Security and the Environment Program, The University of California at Merced, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and a NASA New Investigator Grant. <br /><br />Original Release<br /><br />Abstract<br /><br />Audio Interview with Chris Field<br /><br />Coverage at Scientific American<br /><br />SOURCE: Carnegie Institution for Science<br /><br />[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]></description>
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<pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2009 13:16:36 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>Researchers find weaknesses in a plant's cellulosic defense</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.199.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[[link=hyperlink url]http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0904&RELTYPE=MS&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=DB&CommonCount=0[/link]<br /><br />Researchers find weaknesses in a plant's cellulosic defense<br />April 23, 2009<br /><br />Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have discovered a potential chink in the armor of fibers that make the cell walls of certain inedible plant materials so tough. The insight could lead to a cost-effective and energy-efficient strategy for turning biomass into alternative fuels.<br /><br />In separate papers published in Biophysical Journal and Biomacromolecules, Los Alamos researchers identify potential weaknesses among sheets of cellulose molecules comprising lignocellulosic biomass, the inedible fibrous material derived from plant cell walls. The material is a potentially abundant source of sugar that can be used to brew batches of methanol or butanol, which show potential as biofuels.<br /><br />Cellulose is biosynthesized in plant cells when molecules of glucose—a simple sugar—join into long chains through a process called polymerization. The plant then assembles these chains of cellulose into sheets. The sheets are held together by hydrogen bonds—an electrostatic attraction of a positive portion of a molecule to a negative portion of the same or neighboring molecule. Finally, the sheets stack atop one another, sticking to themselves by other types of attractions that are weaker than hydrogen bonds. The plant then spins these sheets into high-tensile-strength fibers of material.<br /><br />Not only are the fibers incredibly strong, but they are incredibly resistant to the action of enzymes called cellulases that can crack the fibers back into their simple-sugar components. The ability to economically and easily break cellulose into sugars is desirable because the sugars can be used to create fuel alternatives. However, due to the tenacity of cellulose fibers, the United States currently lacks an energy-efficient and cost-effective method for turning inedible biomass such as switch grass or corn husks into a sweet source of biofuels.<br /><br />Working with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolécules Végétales in France, Los Alamos researcher Paul Langan used neutrons to probe the crystalline structure of highly crystalline cellulose, much like an x-ray is used to probe the hidden structures of the body. Langan and his colleagues found that although cellulose generally has a well-ordered network of hydrogen bonds holding it together, the material also displays significant amounts of disorder, creating a different type of hydrogen bond network at certain surfaces. These differences make the molecule potentially vulnerable to an attack by cellulase enzymes.<br /><br />Moreover, in this month’s Biophysical Journal, Los Alamos researchers Tongye Shen and Gnana Gnanakaran describe a new lattice-based model of crystalline cellulose. The model predicts how hydrogen bonds in cellulose can shift to remain stable under a wide range of temperatures. This plasticity allows the material to swap different types of hydrogen bonds but also constrains the molecules so that they must form bonds in the weaker configuration described by Langan and his colleagues. Most important, Shen and Gnanakaran’s model identifies hydrogen bonds that can be manipulated via temperature differences to potentially make the material more susceptible to attack by enzymes that can crack the fibers into sugars for biofuel production.<br /><br />“We have been able to identify a chink in the armor of a very tough and worthy adversary—the cellulose fiber,” said Gnanakaran, who leads the theoretical portion of a large, multidisciplinary biofuels project at Los Alamos.<br /><br />“These results are some of the first to come from this team, and eventually could point us toward an economical and viable process for making biofuels from cellulosic biomass,” adds Langan, director of the biofuels project.<br /><br />Original article<br /><br />Study abstract for “The Stability of Cellulose: A Statistical Perspective from a Coarse-Grained Model of Hydrogen-Bond Networks”<br /><br />SOURCE: Los Alamos National Laboratory<br /><br />]]></description>
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<pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:04:10 -0700</pubDate>
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						<title>No algae were harmed during the making of this biofuel</title>
<link>http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.197.14</link>
<description><![CDATA[<br />No algae were harmed during the making of this biofuel<br /><br />April 8, 2009<br /><br />Algae is widely touted as the next best source for fueling the world's energy needs. But one of the greatest challenges in creating biofuels from algae is that when you extract the oil from the algae, it kills the organisms, dramatically raising production costs. Now researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University have developed groundbreaking "nanofarming" technology that safely harvests oil from the algae so the pond-based "crop" can keep on producing.<br /><br />Researchers at the Ames Laboratory are growing several strains of algae to test nanofarming technology that uses sponge-like mesoporous nanoparticles to extract biofuel oils from the organisms.<br />(Credit: U.S. Dept. of Energy's Ames Laboratory)<br />Commercialization of this new technology is at the center of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between the Ames Laboratory and Catilin, a nano-technology-based company that specializes in biofuel production. The agreement targets development of this novel approach to reduce the cost and energy consumption of the industrial processing of non-food source biofuel feedstock. The three-year project is being funded with $885,000 from DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and $216,000 from Catilin and $16,000 from Iowa State University in matching<br /><br />funds.<br /><br />The so-called "nanofarming" technology uses sponge-like mesoporous nanoparticles to extract oil from the algae. The process doesn't harm the algae like other methods being developed, which helps reduce both production costs and the production cycle. Once the algal oil is extracted, a separate and proven solid catalyst from Catilin will be used to produce ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and EN certified biodiesel.<br /><br />The potential of algae for fuel is tremendous as up to 10,000 gallons of oil may be produced on a single acre of land. The DOE estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require only 15,000 square miles, which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland. This is less than one-seventh the area devoted to corn production in the United States in 2000.<br /><br />The driving force behind this combination of nanotechnology and biofuels is Ames Laboratory Chemical and Biological Sciences Program Director Victor Lin. Since 2000, Lin, who is also a chemistry professor at Iowa State University, has been leading research on using nanotechnology to dramatically change the production process of biodiesel. This successful technology led Lin to found Catilin one and a half years ago.<br /><br />This micrograph shows the sponge-like mesoporous nanoparticles developed by researchers at Ames Laboratory to harvest biofuel oils from algae without harming the organisms.<br />(Credit: U.S. Dept. of Energy's Ames Laboratory)<br />"By combining nanotechnology, chemistry and catalysis, we have been able to find solutions that have not been considered to date," Lin said. "Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University offer valuable research capabilities and resources that will play a key role in this exciting collaboration with Catilin."<br /><br />According to Marek Pruski, Ames Laboratory senior physicist and co-investigator on the project, phase one and two of the project will cover the culturing and selection of microalgae as well as the development of the specific nanoparticle-based extraction and catalyst technologies for the removal of algal oil and the production of biodiesel, respectively. Phase three will focus on scale-up of the catalyst and pilot plant testing on conversion to biodiesel.<br /><br />"When we ultimately put together this exceptional extraction technology with Catilin's existing solid biodiesel catalyst, we will dramatically increase the reality of renewable energy," said Catilin's CEO, Larry Lenhart. "Given the Obama administration's objectives, the timing is perfect."<br /><br />Catilin, Inc.<br /><br />SOURCE: DOE/Ames Laboratory<br /><br /><br />R&D Daily<br /><br /><br />[link=hyperlink url]http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0904&RELTYPE=MS&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=SR&CommonCount=0[/link]<br />[[b]Submitted by KEVswr[/b]]]]></description>
<author>Hemp4Fuel&lt;contact@nospam.com&gt;</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:13:40 -0700</pubDate>
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