Search Results for 'biobutanol'
We Came in Peace: The Renewable Fuel Standard and the spirit of innovation
Tweet Should the Renewable Fuel Standard be saved? Depends on the scenario you believe in. The charts tell the tale. If you happened to be a wide-eyed 6-year old in the fall of 1969, as I was, you might have received a copy of a book published and distributed by Gulf Oil called “We Came [...]
Frugal Fuels: Top 12 ways to transform biofuels using materials already around us
Tweet REduce, REuse, REcycle. REnewable energy sometimes means REthinking, REfocusing. Great ideas abound for new feedstocks, and novel infrastructure. We admire so many of them. Jatropha, carinata, switchgrass, sweet sorghum, blender pumps, systems-at-sea. And so much more. But what about technologies that bolt-on a different processing unit, but keeps everything else the same. Or uses [...]
Go Bionic: Top 10 Bolt-ons, retrofits adding power, performance to the first-gen biofuels fleet
Tweet Great Scott! Hot new technologies are turning ethanol plants from beleaguered bastions of first-gen fuels into hot properties for deploying advanced strategies. Who, how, and where? As you likely know, young Superman learned his trade on a Smallville, Kansas corn farm. But these days, first-gen biofuels plants themselves — from the corn belt to [...]
Setting the record straight: Gevo and Butamax
Tweet Biofuels’s Montagues and Capulets were at it again last week — with a flurry of press releases about court decisions and commercial timelines regarding their respective isbutanol technologies. At the heart of it — a dispute over the significance of last week’s dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Gevo against Butamax for patent infringement. [...]
Biodiesel’s Big Comeback and Bigger Prospects
Tweet Darling of the mid-2000s, still beloved by its many fans — biodiesel is increasingly a key to delivering advanced biofuels volumes now — and even more so between now and 2022. Presentations by NBB CEO Joe Jobe and REG CEO Daniel Oh at ABLC 2013 explained the how and why. In the excitement over [...]
C4 explosion: Cobalt Technologies is the latest four-carbon biobased player to expand capacity
Tweet Cobalt expands into Asia and butadiene with two new strategic investors. What’s up with the C4 molecules? Why is everyone building capacity? In California, the Digest has learned that Cobalt Technologies is announcing this morning a strategic relationship with two prominent, but undisclosed, Asian chemical companies for the development of butadiene from a range [...]
Oxygen for High Altitudes: 17 Biofuels ventures raise $434M in equity
Tweet Despite the sluggish economic recovery and questions over policy stability — biofuels ventures have been busy raising lots of capital. In the past 6 months, $434 million. Who got what, where, when and why? As any mountaineer knows — above 25,000 feet you hit the “death zone” – where oxygen is a must, now [...]
7 Steps to meeting US renewable fuels targets
Tweet We go through the renewable fuels math — and find that the nattering nabobs of negativism might have crowed too soon. Sometimes you wonder what former US Vice-President Spiro Agnew would make of the current political landscape, and the hoo-haw over the US Renewable Fuel Standard. Back in 1970, he decried the “nattering nabobs [...]
Biorefinery 2015 – The Shape of advanced biofuels to come – Part II
Tweet In Part I of our special two-part series, we looked at changing financial structures. Today in part II, we look at a new set of technologies coming along that are redefining our ideas about scale and cost. As seen in part I of Biorefinery 2015: the first wave of cellulosic biofuels projects are now [...]
Biorefinery 2015 – transformations in biofuels costs, financing
Tweet The first wave of cellulosic biofuels projects are now reaching completion. But what does the next wave look like – from technology to financing? We explore the trends in our two-part Biorefinery 2015 series. It’s a remarkable story of expansion. According to a report from Tristan R. Brown and Robert C. Brown at the [...]



