Other News

UK wood recycler Growing Beds has signed a joint venture agreement with waste to energy company Bioflame to build a 2.5MW renewable energy power station capable of producing 20,000MW hours a year. The plant will be located in a disused Ministry of Defence research and development building in Thurleigh, Bedfordshire. The £7 million+ (€7.6 million) power station will be built and operated by…
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A report published by the UN's World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) has warned that the sharp increase in biofuel production has impact significantly on water demand. According to the UN World Water Development Report 3 production of ethanol stood at 77 billion litres in 2008 and should reach 127 billion litres by 2017. One of the major problems with biofuels is the need for large…
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Canadian company Dynamotive Energy Systems have begun scalable production of renewable petrol and diesel from biomass. Its two-stage process will use a pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass to produce a bio-crude. Dynamotive said it can deliver renewable fuels from biomass at a cost of less than €1.5 per gallon of 'ethanol-equivalent fuel' at a volume of up to 4.5 mgy per processing…
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Federal and provincial funds have been injected in ethanol facilities and research projects in Canada. British Columbia has pledged more than $32.6 million (€24.5 million) to commercialise approximately $200 million in provincial renewable energy technology projects. The Innovative Clean Energy Fund has awarded more than $22.6 million to 19 projects and another $10 million in provincial…
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India Emami Biotech is planning to extend its biodiesel sales in Calcutta with the introduction of mobile biodiesel dispensing units. The company has applied for approval from various authorities, and initially plans to launch two to three units with the number rising depending on the feedback. The move is seen as an attempt by the company, one of the major bio-diesel makers in the country, to…
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Chinese bioenergy producer Gushan Environmental Energy has announced the temporary suspension of production at its subsidiary Fujian Gushan Biodiesel Energy following a dispute with a local tax authority concerning consumption tax issues. In January consumption tax rates on diesel products were levied, but Gushan has appealed to the State Administration of Taxation of Fujian Province Fujian SAT…
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US-based biofuels developer BioEnergy International has formed Myriant Technologies (Myriant) to incorporate all of its biobased chemicals business and intellectual property. BioEnergy is building a 110 million gallon a year ethanol plant in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, with operations expected in January. ‘The new alignment will facilitate a clearer understanding and market valuation of each…
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Drawing on the success of Biofuels International expo & conference in Europe in 2008 & 2009, leading global publication Biofuels International magazine is pleased to announce its first Biofuels International Canada expo & conference. The two day conference and exhibition on 28 - 29 October 2009 in Montreal is designed to coincide with Canada's biofuel mandate which takes effect…
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A project in Australia’s Queensland is looking to generate power from bananas. Horticultural organisation Growcom intends to generate power from biogas from the 30% of harvested bananas in Australia which are deemed unsaleable and wasted along with leaves and plant stalks. Growcom’s Banana Waste 2 Energy (BW2E) project aims to capture the energy in banana waste for on-site power generation…
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In the credit squeeze and with plants idling around them, biodiesel producers are keen to ensure what they bring into the plant and what they produce out of it will survive the winter. Having a flexible source of raw materials is one way to weather the volatile ride the industry is taking. Biodiesel producer Innovation Fuels has been processing waste vegetable oil to produce biodiesel, but is…
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American Energy Enterprises, a new company based in the US state of Connecticut, believes that a proposed new plant will allow it to produce cellulosic ethanol from wood waste at $0.80-0.85 (€0.56-60) a US gallon. The company has reached an agreement with Perdue University to use a special strain of yeast engineered to digest cellulose: the company believes this will raise yields from their…
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Puerto Rican energy company Energia Alterna has announced that Royal Caribbean Cruises and Celebrity Cruises will participate in trials of different blends of Marine Gas Oil (MGO) and jatropha crude oil in different quantities. The aim of the trials is to ascertain whether jatropha oil can be burnt as fuel by itself (not as biodiesel), as well as being used as a blend fuel. According to…
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Wales, UK-based Anglesey Aluminium Metals has submitted an application for approval of a 299-MW biomass power plant to be located near the company’s aluminium smelter and possibly power it. If approved, the plant would consume about 2.4 million tons of woody biomass, such as wood chips, pellets or agricultural residues, a year. Anglesey Aluminium hopes to commence basic construction in early…
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Following the opening of its factory in October this year, Brazilian company Grupo Ypioca is set to produce ethanol from sugarcane. The Jaguaruana factory has installed capacity to produce 50 million litres of ethanol a year, or 90 million litres of the sugarcane derivative cachaca, making it the world's largest manufacturing facility of cachaca. ‘There is no industry more modern than…
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