Biomass is a recalcitrant, heterogeneous matrix of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin that resists microbial and enzymatic breakdown. Overcoming this recalcitrance is the major economic barrier to the conversion of biomass to sugars or other chemicals. Heat, acid and other chemicals…
Adgex Ltd. (Sydney, Australia; www.adgex.com) is marketing a plant, tradenamed “Green Blaze,” for processing organic raw materials by means of high-speed ablative pyrolysis. According to the company, the plant (flowsheet) can be adapted to convert into synthetic fuel almost any…
Joule Unlimited (Bedford, Mass.; www.jouleunlimited.com) announced recently that it has achieved end-to-end production of ethanol from carbon dioxide and sunlight (CO2-to-ethanol), using its specially designed photobioreactor and engineered cyanobacteria. The full production runs occurred late last year at the company’s…
Chemists from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley; www.berkeley.edu) have modified a metal-organic framework (MOF) compound with diamines, which enables the material to be tuned to absorb CO2 at different temperatures, such as from air at room temperature, or…
Industrial CO2 capture is currently done by absorption in liquid amines, such as monoethanolamine. However, absorption-based carbon capture carries a significant energy penalty for regenerating CO2 in a stripping column — power plants can lose 20–30% of their energy output…
Last month, Hydro ASA (www.hydro.com) entered into a contract with Multiconsult (both Oslo, Norway; www.multionsult.no) for engineering services for Hydro’s planned pilot plant at Karmøy, Norway. The Karmøy pilot aims to verify what Hydro calls the worlds most energy- and…
The research group of Yuya Tachibana at Gunma University (Gunma, Japan; greenpolymer.chem-bio.st.gunma-u.ac.jp) has developed a procedure for the production of terephthalic acid (TPA), the monomer of the widely used thermoplastic polymer polyethylene terephthalate (PET), from the inedible biomass-derived starting material…
Photosynthesis is one of the best ways to convert carbon dioxide into renewable energy and at the same time, reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In plants, there are two main steps in photosynthesis: First, water is split…
Takahiro Yamashita and colleagues at the Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO, Tsukuba, Japan; www.naro.affrc.go.jp) have developed an aerobic bioreactor that can reduce nitrous oxide emissions by nearly 90% in the treatment of…
Composite coating A new composite material that prevents metal corrosion, even under extreme conditions, has been developed by researchers from the INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials GmbH (Germany; www.inm-gmbh.de). The patented composite consists of layers of particles placed…