Researchers at the University of Connecticut have developed a new energy efficient device that converts waste vegetable oil into biofuel. Consisting primarily of a giant glass vessel fitted out with tubes and rods, the prototype operation already produces enough biodiesel to help run
Neste Oil has started production at its biodiesel plant in Singapore, the world’s largest with an annual capacity of 800,000 tons. The plant will produce the NExBTL diesel which, according to the company reduces the carbon emissions by 40 to 80 percent depending on the percentage blending with the conventional … [continued]
This post is part of our participation in Blog Action Day 2010, which is on the topic of Water. If you didn’t know, we use water to pump crude oil out of the ground, remove pollutants from power plant exhaust, flush residue after fossil fuels are burned, cool power plants, … [continued]
Researchers from Brown University have come up with a simplified process for converting used French fry oil and other used vegetable oils into biofuel. The process take place in a single vessel, which makes it far less expensive. Though the research has a way to go before it’s commercially viable, … [continued]
Hemp could be on the verge of joining the growing number of weeds that could power your car. Researchers at the University of Connecticut have found that industrial hemp seeds could make an ideal feedstock for biofuel production. Slight hitch: growing hemp, industrial or otherwise, is still illegal in the … [continued]
Put this one in the category of every cloud has a silver lining: E. coli, the bacteria notorious for contaminating food products from lettuce to ground beef, could also play a key role in developing the next generation of biofuels. A team of scientists from Rutgers University is working with … [continued]
The sewage-to-biofuel field is attracting interest from major companies like Waste Management and startups like InfoSpi, which are betting that renewable sewage biodiesel can become competitive with petroleum diesel on price. Now the American Chemical Society has published an article* on sewage biodiesel that bears out this promise. The article … [continued]
A team of researchers at MIT are engineering a strain of bacteria, which is similar to the type that causes tuberculosis, to produce biofuel. The researchers say that the bacteria are useful because they are hungry for a number of sugars and toxic compounds and produce lipids that can be … [continued]
The world is awash in a glut of crude glycerin, a major byproduct of biodiesel manufacture. The big question is what to do with it all. In the U.S. alone, about 340,000 tons of unrefined glycerin came into the market in 2007. Over half of that came from biodiesel, and … [continued]
Biofuel-powered plane rides may be in our future much sooner than anticipated if Boeing gets its way. The company expects to see approval for commercial use of biofuels in the next 3 to 5 years.
