switchgrass News
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Brachypodium will be a big help in biofuels research
A short little grass known as purple false brome may speed discoveries about switchgrass, its famous cousin and energy-crop hopeful. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists like John Vogel and Yong Gu at the agency's Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., are probing the genetic makeup of purple false brome, or Brachypodium distachyon, as a faster way to learn more about the ...
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Switchgrass ethanol yields large net energy gain
Switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced five times more energy than needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol, finds a large farm study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln published Monday. The five year study also found greenhouse gas emissions from cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass were 94 percent lower than estimated greenhouse gas ...
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Opportunities for sustainable biomass in Ukraine
Ukraine is discovering the potential of biomass, thanks in part to the three-year biomass development project Pellets for Power. Carried out by Wageningen UR together with several private partners and with support from NL agency’s Sustainable Biomass Import programme, Pellets for Power has paved the way for The Netherlands as well as for other EU members to import sustainably produced ...
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Yield projections for Switchgrass as a Biofuel Crop
While scientists have conducted numerous studies on production of biomass from biofuel crops, such as switchgrass, no one has yet compiled this information to evaluate the response of biomass yield to soils, climate, and crop management across the United States. A team of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Dartmouth College published just such a study in the July-August 2010 ...
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Fuels from biomass: New technique can fast-track better ionic liquids for biomass pre-treatments
They’ve been dubbed “grassoline” - second generation biofuels made from inedible plant material, including fast-growing weeds, agricultural waste, sawdust, etc. - and numerous scientific studies have shown them to be prime candidates for replacing gasoline to meet our transportation needs. However, before we can begin to roll down the highways on sustainable, carbon-neutral grassoline, numerous ...
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How will the US produce 36bn gallons of biofuel by 2022?
The new U.S. Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), signed into law last month as part of the revised Energy Bill, sets high goals for the U.S. biofuels industry. It calls for the production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels—mainly ethanol and biodiesel—annually by 2022, with 21 billion gallons coming from so-called “advanced biofuels,” which can be produced using a variety of new feedstocks and ...
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Vermeer Corporation named in $6 million Department of Energy grant award
Vermeer Corporation is announcing its involvement in a nearly $6 million grant award by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Department is making the investment to reduce costs associated with harvesting, handling and preprocessing biomass feedstocks. “This commitment gives Vermeer the opportunity to pull product development forward,” said Jay Van Roekel, Strategic Business Unit ...
By Vermeer
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Kansas Gets First U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
HUGOTON, Kansas, August 28, 2007 (ENS) - A Spanish energy company has selected the town of Hugoton in southwestern Kansas as the site of the first U.S. plant to turn corn stalks, switchgrass and other woody biomass into ethanol. Abengoa Bioenergy announced the $400 million ethanol project on Thursday. The facility will include an 85 million gallon per year corn-to-ethanol production plant as ...
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NREL Teams with Navy, Private Industry to Make Jet Fuel from Switchgrass
The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is partnering with Cobalt Technologies, U.S. Navy, and Show Me Energy Cooperative to demonstrate that jet fuel can be made economically and in large quantities from a renewable biomass feedstock such as switch grass. “This can be an important step in the efforts to continue to displace petroleum by using biomass ...
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Project Seeks Cropping Systems that Profit Farmers, Provide Food and Fuel and Scrub Carbon Out of the Air
Cropping systems that are profitable for farmers and balance societal needs for food, feed, fuel, energy and clean air and water are the focus and challenge of Iowa State University’s Landscape Biomass Project. “My dad always said there is no reason that driving your car should not make the air cleaner, and there’s no reason that you should have to feel bad about turning on a ...
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US: Corn Isn’t Enough for Ethanol Production in Future
Ethanol if obtained through cellulose, a material found in cornstalks, trees, and grass that doesn’t carry any agricultural value, can help reduce corn’s demand and also curb the appetite of US for more and more foreign crude oil. Ethanol, produced from the cellulose of plants, has chemical properties that are same as in Ethanol obtained through sugar cane or corn. However, Ethanol can be ...
By RNCOS
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$30 Million Juices Startup of Bioenergy Research Centers
WASHINGTON, DC, October 1, 2007 (ENS) - The startup of three new bioenergy research centers got a financial boost today with the U.S. Department of Energy's investment of nearly $30 million in end of fiscal year 2007 funds. The fiscal year ended September 30. The three centers selected by DOE this June are located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; and near Berkeley, California. They ...
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Combining strategies speeds the work of enzymes
Enzymes could break down cell walls faster – leading to less expensive biofuels for transportation – if two enzyme systems are brought together in an industrial setting, new research by the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory suggests. A paper on the breakthrough, “Fungal Cellulases and Complexed Cellulosomal Enzymes Exhibit Synergistic Mechanisms in ...
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German-American Partnership To Promote Energy From Biomass and Waste
Freesen & Partner and Steel City Biofuels sign agreement to promote green energy, create international marketplace Alpen, NRW (Germany) / Pittsburgh, PA (USA) – The benefits of biofuels seem clear enough: they can provide a safe, sustainable domestic resource. But what does this mean for the business owner, for municipalities, the farm economy? How can the utilization of oilseed corps, ...
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BESC creates microbe that bolsters isobutanol production
Another barrier to commercially viable biofuels from sources other than corn has fallen with the engineering of a microbe that improves isobutanol yields by a factor of 10. The finding of the Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center, published in the journal Metabolic Engineering, builds on results from 2011 in which researchers reported on the first genetically engineered microbe ...
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Harvesting Energy, Stimulating Economic Growth
Ernst Conservation Seeds to Present Innovate Energy Program at EBW Expo & Conference in Pittsburgh, PA Pittsburgh, PA. Ernst Conservation Seeds, is involved in an innovative effort to create energy from biomass through high-energy switchgrass and other warm season grasses. Ernst Conservation Seeds, a three generation family business based in Meadville, PA, will present its new program at ...
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Controversy over biofuels grows
New research suggests that nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions associated with growing some biofuel crops may be much greater than previously thought and could be high enough to outweigh the potential CO2 savings associated with biofuels. Producing fuels from crops such as rapeseed is one strategy being explored to replace fossil fuels, with a view to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the ...
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CENER (Spain) to Acquire Equipment for Biomass Pretreatment Research
AdvanceBio Systems, LLC today announced that the National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain (CENER) selected, in a global competitive bidding process, AdvanceBio Systems' SuPR2G Bench Scale Pretreatment Reactor to conduct basic research and development work, related to the production of fermentable sugars from lignocellulose rich biomass feedstocks. "CENER and AdvanceBio Systems intend to ...
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Feds Offer $200 Million for Small Biorefineries
WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) – The U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, will provide up to $200 million, over five years to support the development of small-scale cellulosic biorefineries in the United States. The agency seeks projects to develop biorefineries at 10 percent of commercial scale that produce liquid transportation fuels such as ethanol, as well as bio-based chemicals and bioproducts used in ...
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Biofuels ignite food crisis debate
Taking up valuable land and growing edible crops for biofuels poses a dilemma: Is it ethical to produce inefficient renewable energies at the expense of an already malnourished population? David Pimentel and his colleagues from Cornell University in New York highlight the problems linked to converting a variety of crops into biofuels. Not only are these renewable energies inefficient, they are ...
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