World’s Biofuels Markets 2010 has now passed into history, amidst memories of lessons learned, contacts made, and friendships renewed. The standing-room only crowds in many of the sessions showed that, after a trying 2009, the biofuels industry is very much on the move in 2010. Several trends were much in evidence during the three days of the conference.
Archive for the ‘Biotechnology’ Category
WBM 2010
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Qteros receives patent for Q Microbe and consolidated bioprocessing system
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Qteros announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued U.S. Patent for the fermentation of biomass by the unique, naturally-occurring anaerobic Q Microbe (Clostridium phytofermentans). Qteros, the exclusive licensee of the patent, demonstrated that their Q Microbe technology offers ethanol producers significant cost reductions by streamlining the biomass-conversion process, commonly referred to as “consolidated bio-processing” (CBP).
67 advanced biofuels projects aim for 2.32 billion gallons in capacity by 2014: Biofuels Digest Advanced Biofuels database
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Biofuels Digest released its updated, version 1.3 of the Advanced Biofuels Tracking Database, now featuring 67 announced projects with 2.322 billion gallons in announced capacity by 2014, and 107 million gallons of installed advanced biofuels capacity by the end of 2010.
The Shell Game: What’s up with Biofuels’ “Quiet Company?”
Thursday, March 25th, 2010In the old and famous “shell game”, a small, round ball, known as a “pea” is located under one of three shells, and shuffled around by an operator. The player can double his bet by guessing under which shell the pea is located. Of course, the skilled operator is using sleight-of-hand to move the pea so that no player can ever successfully guess where the pea is located.
Rumors aplenty at “standing-room only” WBM
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010Sapphire, DARPA, Joule, Akuo, SunFuel in the news as World Biofuels Markets convenes.
In the Netherlands, World Biofuels Markets, which officially opened yesterday with 10 keynote speakers including former Norwegian PM Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, BP Biofuels CEO Philip New, former Netherlands PM Ruud Lubbers and current Netherlands Environment Minister Bernard ter Haar, got off to a roaring start Monday with delegates crowding standing room-only workshops on algal fuels, energy crops, sustainability, and congresses on biopower and bio-based products. Overall attendance figures of up to 1500 have been reported for WBM, a sharp increase over 2009’s 900 attendees.
Think Big? Think Small.
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010Though the stakes could not be bigger, the pop stars that will be gliding across the biofuels’ Red Carpet this week are so incredibly tiny it can take an electron microcrope to see them, as the latest designer e.coli, yeast and enzyme strains take a turn down the runway. The key to thinking big in biofuels, 2010 style, is thinking very, very small.
Biofuels and Downstream technologies
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Upstream, midstream, downstream. Terms of art in oil and gas refining — less common in bioenergy. They correspond to feedstocks, processing, and the distribution systems and engine technologies.
In bioenergy, most attention is showered on the feedstocks and the processing technologies. The downstream is overlooked — yet it is in the pipeline and in the engine that the “fuel meets the fire”. Let’s take a look at some downstream challenges and the innovative downstream technologies.
Spring Algae Bloom: an inside look at the DOE’s new algal fuels consortium, the NAABB.
Thursday, March 11th, 2010It was a cold Wednesday afternoon in January when the news came through that a consortium called the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts had received a $44 million grant from the Department of Energy. Another group called the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium had won the other. In all, DOE said it would invest $80 million in a consortia approach to solving technical challenges such as outlined in the Algal Biomass Roadmap process, commenced in late 2008.
Sneak-peek at “fuel from thin air”: Joule Biotechnologies and its “game-changing technology”
Thursday, March 11th, 2010This week, Joule Biotechnologies CEO Bill Sims, sitting atop one of the most discussed and least understood technologies in biofuels, visited with us to shed some light and provide some timelines for future guidance on the development of Joule’s bio-based technology, which uses a microorganism to produce biofuel directly from CO2, water and sunlight.
