Gas 2.0

A well-known biofuels researcher at Harvard has developed a synthetic ribosome — one of the fundamental building blocks for creating artificial life — which, initially, could have major implications for the creation of designer enzymes to make cheaper and more energy efficient cellulosic ethanol.

Dr. George Church, co-founder of the next generation biofuels company LS9, made the stunning announcement in a telephone call with reporters.

“If you are going to make synthetic life that is anything like current life … you have got to have this … biological machine,” Dr. Church said in comments to Reuters.

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MIT undergraduates have created a regenerative shock absorber that can increase vehicle fuel efficiency by 10 percent. Not only does this conserve energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat, it also reportedly results in a smoother ride than conventional shocks.

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Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a straightforward two-step process to convert cellulose — the ubiquitous energy-rich molecules found in all plant material — into a furfural biofuel.

To make this simple process reality, Ron Raines and his graduate student, Joseph Binder, developed a special mix of solvents and additives with an extraordinary capacity to dissolve cellulose.

“This solvent system can dissolve cotton balls, which are pure cellulose,” says Raines. “And it’s a simple system—not corrosive, dangerous, expensive or stinky.”

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Researchers reported Monday that they have re-engineered a common bacteria to produce complex and energy-dense alcohols similar to the hydrocarbon compounds found in fuels such as gasoline. This is the first time these types of alcohols have been synthesized by bacteria (man-made or otherwise) in the lab.

E. coli is normally found in the guts of most warm-blooded animals (yes, even yours) and if you’ve had an encounter with it that you remember, chances are you spent the weekend on the toilet wishing you were dead. Yet, while it’s true that some strains of e. coli can cause food poisoning in humans, most are actually quite harmless.

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Researchers are reporting they have developed a new material made from three-dimensional, highly porous nano-silicon that could give future lithium ion batteries a ten times higher capacity than they currently have.

The storage capacity of current generation lithium ion batteries remains a bottleneck for the widespread adoption of electric cars due to a perceived limited driving range. Although we could argue whether a 100-130 mile range really is that much of a limitation or not, perhaps the better solution is to be able to ignore that argument altogether by increasing battery capacity.

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A modern team of Italian researchers has uncovered a device invented by fellow Italian G.D. Botto in 1833 that can be used to generate hydrogen with inexpensive, everyday parts. By reflecting sunlight from two parabolic mirrors onto a hollow tube wrapped in metal and filled with water, the device generates enough electricity to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. Theoretically, the device is so simple that anybody could build it in their garage.

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A Dutch researcher has developed a magnesium, titanium and nickel alloy that has huge potential as a hydrogen storage tank for cars of the future. On a relative basis, the weight of a storage tank made from this alloy would be 60% lighter than a lithium ion battery that could take a car the same distance.

One of the major stumbling blocks of hydrogen cars (fuel cell or otherwise) involves the storage of hydrogen on board. Hydrogen is very combustible and poses an extreme fire/explosion danger, especially when stored as a highly compressed gas.

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The Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry has discovered a new method of producing methanol from glycerol Waste. According to the research team, ninety percent of methanol is currently produced from natural gas and the new process wont need to rely on any fossil fuels.

“We’re turning a waste material - glycerol - directly into a very useful product - methanol,” said Professor Edman Tsang, an expert in the development of new catalyst materials, and the main inventor behind the new method. “Around 350,000 tons of glycerol is incinerated in the US each year, and converting this to methanol gives you a portable store of energy, and potentially an economically viable new biofuel business.”

“Essentially, this is a way of getting methanol ‘for free’ from biomass,” said Tsang.  “Methanol itself is useful either as a fuel on its own or in biodiesel manufacture. It is also used widely in industrial chemistry.”

The advantage of the new process is that it is direct - not requiring multiple costly processing steps - and it works at a low temperature and low pressure.

“In industry, temperature costs money, but high pressure is even more expensive. This process operates under readily achievable, mild conditions of 100 degrees C and 20 bar of pressure.”

There is no large-scale industrial demand for glycerol right now, so utilizing this process would not only use something that would otherwise be wasted, it will help save energy in the production phase.

Isis Innovation has patented the technology, and will be working with Prof Tsang to commercialize the technology.

Source: Biofuel Review
Photo: Courtesy of Odd Bod via Flickr Creative Commons License

In what could be a major breakthrough for second generation ethanol production, German researchers have developed a new method that easily converts raw wood into sugar using a liquid ionic salt bath at room temperature followed by reaction with a solid acid resin.

The process works by chopping the complex raw wood molecules into smaller and simpler bits — the end product being single sugar molecules. The method can also be used on other second generation ethanol feedstocks such as grass straw. Once you’ve made the sugar, the rest of the process of making ethanol is as simple as making beer — literally.

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Researchers at the University of Florida are reporting that the enzymes in the guts of termites could provide a powerful tool for making ethanol from non-food woody plants.

In an upcoming review paper, professor Michael Scharf details how termites — which cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to houses in the US alone each year — might actually prove useful for something that most people could never have envisioned.

Through millions of years of evolution, termites have filled a niche in the animal world that takes precise chemical coordination between the digestive enzymes and microbes in their guts to turn the wood that they eat into sugars which can then be used to “fuel” the termite.

It is this seemingly easy transformation of wood into sugar in the termite guts that holds the promise for future ethanol production, because, once you have the sugar, it’s easy to make ethanol through fermentation.

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Whatever you do, don’t call it a battery.

A research group at the University of Texas at Austin has taken a carbon-based nanomaterial called graphene, and developed it into a device that has the potential to vastly improve upon the energy storage capacity of batteries. Reportedly, graphene could also double the current maximum storage capacity of the group of battery alternatives known as ultracapacitors.

If the research group’s findings bear out when applied to reality, it could mean a complete phase change in the way we approach energizing not only our transportation sector, but our entire energy infrastructure.

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution from Adam Shake.

Bill Gates has his hands in the green again, but this time, it’s algae.  His Investment Firm, Cascades Investments LLC, along with the Rockefeller family’s venture capital firm Venrock, the WellcomeTrust, and Arch Venture Partners have invested a total of 100 million dollars in Sapphire Energy.

Sapphire Energy, a San Diego based company that launched in May of 2007, says that it’s goal “is to be the world’s leading producer of renewable petrochemical products.” The companies website goes on to say “Critically important, there is no ‘food vs. fuel’ tradeoff. The process is not dependent on crops or valuable farmland. It is highly water efficient, delivering 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuels.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Sapphire is working towards a 10,000-barrel-a-day algae-based oil facility, and can now concentrate on production and engineering problems. Meanwhile, Gates’s involvement may signal a broader interest in alternative biofuels.”

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It was a weird and improbable shotgun wedding of genetic material — one conducted by your drunk uncle Larry in a brothel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. One in which researchers successfully combined enzymes from a bacteria that normally resides in a cow’s gut with the genes of the leaves and stalk of a corn plant — and one in which the offspring from that marriage is a corn plant that can digest itself into the components needed to make ethanol.

Certainly, anything that can digest itself warrants a closer look — and now a company in Kansas has licensed that proprietary corn offspring, dubbed Spartan Corn III (it even sounds like a name your drunk uncle Larry would approve of), for the ultimate consummation of the marriage in a baptism of commercialization.

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A professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology claims to have developed a catalyst that can cut the cost of making non-food based cellulosic ethanol — “celluline,” as I like to call it — by 30%.

Just for grits and shiggles, let’s say that when celluline’s finally produced in commercial amounts it will cost consumers $3.00 per gallon. If the cost savings associated with this catalyst were passed on to consumers, that would mean the same celluline would cost $2.10 per gallon.

Professor Michikazu Hara says the carbon-based catalyst can be made cheaply, and works by breaking down cellulose and creating sugar when mixed with water and heated to 100° C. Using the current celluline production methods, this step in the process uses a large amount of energy, time and chemicals.

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A small group of unassuming mid-westerners has discovered what could be a complete game-changer for the global biodiesel industry. Their new system makes biodiesel in mere seconds, creates a product that costs half the price, produces no waste, and can use any animal fat or vegetable oil as a feedstock.

Even though I’m sometimes down on my country because of the pathetic state of our government, the thing that always makes my patriotism swell is the truly amazing and unexpected ingenuity that seems to spring forth from the American people.

And in this tale, American ingenuity doesn’t get much more classic. A student and his professor at a small college smack dab in the middle of the heartland that virtually nobody’s ever heard of, have figured out a way to make biodiesel quickly, cheaply, and efficiently from a very small package.

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