News

Britain’s biggest congealed mass of fat, oil and wet wipes, is to be transformed into biofuels. The fatberg, which was found beneath the streets of Whitechapel, east London, weighs around 130 tonnes and is 250 metres long. It will be turned into around 10,000 litres of biodiesel. The fatberg, which is more than twice the length of two football pitches, took an eight-strong crew using…
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California-based biorefining company Aemetis has announced that its Universal Biofuels plant in India has achieved a major milestone in the commercial production of advanced enzymatic biodiesel by processing one million pounds of low-cost waste feedstock unsuitable for use in traditional biodiesel production facilities and achieving high biodiesel yields by utilising its advanced…
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US scientists have developed a new technique to accelerate the production of renewable jet fuel from corn cobs and wood chips. Globally, air travel contributed 815 million US tons of CO2­ emissions in 2016, 2% of the global manmade total, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). It is predicted that by 2035, 7.2 billion passengers will travel by air in…
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Giant clams in the Indian and Pacific Oceans could provide insights into improving biofuel production processes, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) are claiming. Alison Sweeney, an assistant professor of physics in the Penn School of Arts and Sciences, and her collaborator Shu Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering at Penn’s School of Engineering and…
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) has used one of its modelling scenarios to predict that bioenergy will provide nearly 17% of final global energy demand in 2060, compared with 4.5% in 2015. In its latest Technology Roadmap, entitled ‘Delivering Sustainable Bioenergy’, the IEA provides the technology milestones and policy actions needed to unlock the potential of bioenergy in line…
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German bioethanol producer CropEnergies has criticised the European Commission’s (EC) revised renewable energy directive (RED) proposals. In the company’s third quarter forecast, CropEnergies chief executive Joachim Lutz said the EC could impair further progress, warning proposals to cut the amount of biofuels made from crops make no sense when it wants to increase alternative…
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Europe’s renewable energy policy needs more of a “realistic mix of renewable energy solutions” and needs to move away from depending on oil if it wants to achieve its goal of decarbonising EU transport, according to speakers at a recent debate. Experts from the ethanol industry and the energy sector attended the POLITICO conference -   Decarbonising Europe’s…
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The National Biodiesel Board (NBB) has appointed Doug Whitehead as its chief operating officer. Whitehead joins the executive team after ten years in various roles with the organisation, most recently as the director of operations and membership. “Doug has admirably served the biodiesel industry in his various roles at NBB over the years and his experience and expertise in operations,…
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Oil giant BP has announced that it will buy Clean Energy Fuels Corp.’s biomethane business for $155 million (€147m). Clean Energy Fuels is a US provider of natural gas fuel for transportation in North America.  In a statement, BP said that the deal enables both companies to accelerate the growth in renewable natural gas supply and meet the growing demand of the natural gas vehicle…
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The Governor’s Biofuels Coalition has written a letter to President Trump urging him to enforce the renewable fuel standard (RFS) approved by Congress and helps to advance biofuels production in the US. In the letter, they wrote: “Our states are the home to over 200 biorefineries that are producing tens of thousands of jobs, sequestering tons of carbon, saving millions of barrels of…
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A team of chemical and biological engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has found a way to produce from biomass a valuable compound used in plastic production that they estimate could lower the cost of ethanol produced from plant material by more than two dollars per gallon. The development is the latest in an ongoing effort at UW–Madison to create commodity chemicals…
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Children in the UAE have been recycling cooking oil to make biofuels as part of a new initiative. The programme was set up by the Blue waste management company in Dubai, and involves pupils of all ages, from kindergarten to teenagers. According to the National UAE, Delhi Private School in Sharjah has already collected an impressive 162 litres of used cooking oil as part of the scheme. School…
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US advanced biofuels company Gevo announced that it was selected to collaborate with researchers at the US Department of Energy (DOE) as part of DOE’s Small Business Vouchers (SBV) programme. The SBV programme provides funding for DOE’s national laboratories to partner with selected US businesses, enabling these clean technology companies to leverage the…
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Aemetis has announced that its India-based subsidiary Universal Biofuels has signed a three-year biofuels supply agreement with BP Singapore (BPS), the regional trading arm of BP, which has an expanding biofuels portfolio.   "The agreement sets forth the logistics, pricing and other terms of the supply to BPS of low carbon biodiesel," said Eric McAfee, chairman and CEO of Aemetis. "We expect…
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