So I had a presentation last Wednesday at the Renewable Materials Conference in Germany, and in one of my slides, I talked about “The Force”. I did not realize how really strong the Force is until I heard this news from Dow Chemical today announcing their supply agreement with New Energy Blue for bio-based ethylene … Continue reading
Good news for the cellulosic ethanol industry in the USA. VERBIO North America Corporation, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, a 51% subsidiary of VERBIO Vereinigte BioEnergie AG, has signed a contract yesterday with DuPont to purchase its cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa, USA. The purchase includes about 100,000 tons of baled corn stalks, … Continue reading
It might not be a good 2016 for Spain’s largest renewable energy company, Abengoa SA, as it teeters on bankruptcy following a huge stock price fall by more than 50% when the company announced on November 25 that it failed to close a deal with a major new investor, Gonvarri Steel Industries, a subsidiary of … Continue reading
Happy November blog readers! I am 10,000 feet in the air enjoying the gogowifi at Delta on my way to San Francisco to cover this week’s SynBioBeta conference. Follow my tweets at @DGreenblogger #SBBSF15. Meanwhile, the biofuel industry (and renewable chemicals as well) was abuzz with the recent opening of DuPont’s much anticipated Nevada, Iowa, … Continue reading
DuPont announced a licensing deal with Jilin Province New Tianlong Industry Co. Ltd. (NTL) for the use of DuPont’s cellulosic ethanol technology and its Accelerase enzymes for the production of renewable biofuel from leftover biomass on Jilin Province’s corn farms. This project aims to develop China’s largest cellulosic ethanol manufacturing plant to be located in … Continue reading
Abengoa has been selected by Fulcrum BioEnergy to build its first biorefinery, worth $200m, to be located in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, Nevada (USA). The facility will use gasification technology to convert municipal solid waste (MSW) into syncrude that will be upgraded into jet fuel. Abengoa will be responsible for the turnkey execution of the … Continue reading
Joining the startup of several other cellulosic ethanol facilities such as from DSM-POET, Abengoa and Granbio, is Raizen who recently began its own production of cellulosic ethanol using Iogen’s technology at Raizen’s newly expanded Costa Pinto sugarcane mill in Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, Brazil. The 40 million litres/year facility, with investment worth of $100 million, will … Continue reading
It felt like everybody was in a group hug when I attended a biofuel panel discussion at the recently-held World Bio Markets USA with POET-DSM, GranBio and Abengoa Bioenergy in attendance. Abengoa had its grand opening celebration last month with its new 25 mgpy cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas. The facility is expected to … Continue reading
I am currently trying to catch up on a lot of emails and news and hoping to post some of them. In the meantime, this caught my attention about a fiber separation technology from ICM Inc. I don’t usually cover biofuels but I am trying to understand what are the challenges upstream in producing cellulosic … Continue reading
I don’t know much about liquid detergent formulation other than detergent is largely composed of surfactants so I am surprised that it also uses ethanol (or also called ethyl alcohol) as a solvent. Procter & Gamble said ethanol has long been a key ingredient in the Tide® formulation, allowing for stability of the detergent formula and … Continue reading