Other News

California just got greener. Ethanol handling and distribution terminals company U.S. Development Group (USDG) will begin construction on a new terminal in the state. The West Colton Rail Terminal will be located in the Inland Empire area of southern California. Construction on the first phase, located in Rialto, California, will consist of a manifold transfer system that will begin receiving…
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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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Petrobras, Brazil’s largest oil company, is in talks about the possible purchase of a controlling stake in Brenco, a Brazilian ethanol producer backed by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and America Online (AOL) founder Steve Case. Brenco was reported to be considering the offer alongside two others, including one proposing a merger with ETH Bioenergia, an ethanol producer controlled by…
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In Scotland, a consortium of existing managers and Souter investments has bought out Argent Energy, which was the UK’s only commercial-scale biodiesel refinery when it opened in Motherwell in 2005. The consortium purchased the shares of a group of investors led by Cinven, which has backed the project since its inception in 2001. ‘Since we started production we have delivered over 170…
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Husky Energy has been awarded a grant of CA$72.8 million (€46.5 million) from the Canadian Government towards the cost of its ethanol plant in Minnedosa, Manitoba. The plant, which produces ethanol from corn, has a capacity of 130 million litres a year. The award will be funded under the CA$1.5 billion ecoENERGY scheme, which provides new plants with investment for infrastructure development…
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Forget corn and soyabeans, a new source of biofuels may leave producers salivating. Sub-standard watermelon is being eyed as a potential feedstock owing to its high sugar content and the fact it can be readily distilled into alcohol to power cars and farm machinery. The news that retailers reject 360,000 tons of sub-standard fruit annually in the US alone provides the future of biofuels with a…
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The volume of anhydrous ethanol exported from Brazil to the US has fallen from 376.2 million litres in Q2 2008 to 22.3 million litres in Q2 2009. Several factors explain this dramatic reduction. Rains during much of June reduced the number of days available for sugarcane crushing, lowering the volume of cane harvested as well as the sucrose content of the cane. This is despite the entry of 10…
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Chinese research scientists believe that chitin, the compound secreted by aquatic animals to make shells, could provide an environmentally friendly catalyst for the conversion of organic oils into biodiesel, and they have already convinced one commercial producer to invest. The team, from Hua Zhong Agriculture University in the Wuhan province of China, found that carbonised chitin achieved a…
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A dispute delaying construction work on the UK’s largest bioethanol plant has been resolved. On Tuesday 4 August workers on the plant at Teesside were sent home on paid leave over a commercial dispute involving project managers Simon Carves and its sub-contractors. Simon Carves reportedly cut strings with the project leaving Ensus to manage the build. But an Ensus spokesman has now confirmed…
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In the US state of Oregon, cellulosic ethanol specialist Trillium FiberFuels has received a grant of $750,000 (€531,000) from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to commercialise its cellulosic ethanol technology. The trillium process works by using an existing industrial enzyme to convert xylose, which is not digestible by yeast, to another sugar called xylulose, which is. According to…
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In Pakistan, the Ministry of Environment has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Rural Support Programmes Network (RSPN) to implement a commercially viable Rs2.8 million (€24,000) biogas programme. In the programme’s first phase, set to run until 2012, 30,000 digesters will be installed in selected rural areas. The programme aims to use the market and non-market benefits of…
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The presence of trace amounts of biodiesel in marine diesel is becoming increasingly hazardous to shipping, according to marine fuel specialists. Marine fuel is often transported in pipelines also used to transport biodiesel. Trace contamination of marine fuel is therefore almost inevitable. ‘Since there is today no accepted test method available to quantify biodiesel in marine fuels,…
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A new HUF 14 billion (€52 million) bioelectricity plant in Szakoly, eastern Hungary, is set to be operating commercially by September 2009. The Hungarian Energy minister announced that plant workers are currently conducting a trial run, which, assuming there are no unforeseen difficulties, should be completed by the end of August. The plant will burn 170,000–180,000 locally produced biomass…
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