In Poland, scientists working at the Department for Functional Nanomaterials at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences designed and synthesized a functional ternary Pt/Re/SnO2/C catalyst as an anode material in a direct ethanol fuel cell. It was possible by synthesizing platinum, rhenium and tin oxide nanoparticles of a spherical shape […]
In New York state, Cornell-led collaboration is turning DNA from organic matter—such as onions, fish and algae—into biodegradable gels and plastics. The resulting materials could be used to create everyday plastic objects, unusually strong adhesives, multifunctional composites and more effective methods for drug delivery, without harming the environment the way petrochemical-based materials do. The team’s […]
In Japan, in a new study published in Energy & Fuels, researchers led by the Tokyo University of Science developed a novel technique for cellulose degradation. This technique was based on a type of laser called the infrared-free electron laser (IR-FEL), whose wavelength is tunable in the range of 3 to 20 μm. This new […]
In Illinois, Northwestern University synthetic biologists have developed a new rapid-prototyping system to accelerate the design of biological systems, reducing the time to produce sustainable biomanufacturing products from months to weeks. The new platform, called in vitro Prototyping and Rapid Optimization of Biosynthetic Enzymes (iPROBE), provides a quick and powerful design-build-test framework to discover optimal […]
In California, three new projects by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint BioEnergy Institute, could make agriculture both more sustainable and more profitable by aiming to quantify and reduce the carbon intensity of agriculture, including the farming of biofuel feedstocks such as corn, soy, and sorghum, while also increasing yield. Crop-based biofuels […]
In Finland, Neste launched a new research project which aims at developing sustainable and globally scalable raw materials and technology solutions for transportation fuels and the production of chemicals and polymers. These new solutions decrease the use of crude oil and tackle climate change. The new technologies will be based on scalable renewable and circular […]
In India, the Indian Asian News Service reports that researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have developed a microwave to produce bio-oils. The researchers used agricultural waste such as rice straw and bagasse and discarded plastics as feedstock for the technology development. They say pyrolysis technologies result in bio-oils with high oxygenate levels […]
In Massachusetts, MIT chemical engineers are working to develop a smaller-scale alternative, which they envision could be used to locally produce fertilizer for farmers in remote, rural areas, such as sub-Saharan Africa. Fertilizer is often hard to obtain in such areas because of the cost of transporting it from large manufacturing facilities. In a step […]
In Japan, scientists in Japan and the Netherlands have independently developed anaerobic soil disinfestation, also known as biological soil disinfestation or reductive soil disinfestation, to kill off pathogenic bacteria, parasitic nematodes and even weeds in soils without using pesticides. By covering the soil with plastic to cut off access to oxygen, unwanted organisms suffocate and […]
In New Mexico, New Mexico Consortium scientists looked at whether growing algae for biofuels using wastewater from different sources can lead to a higher end lipid content in the algae. Using wastewater to grow algae would be a cheaper alternative means of cultivation, and if algae grown in a certain type of wastewater has a […]
