In Washington state, the holy grail of bio-fuel researchers is to develop a self-sustaining process that converts waste from sewage, food crops, algae and other renewable carbon sources into fuels, while keeping waste carbon out of our atmosphere and water. Much progress has been made in converting such waste to useful fuel but completing the […]
It’s been a hot week for hydrogen with DiviGas securing $3.6 million in seed funding for the commercialization of a new next-generation polymeric hydrogen separation membrane that is a filter at a molecular level that purifies hydrogen and helps capture the associated CO2. The disruptive membrane will help reduce emissions by >1000 Million Tons of […]
In Washington, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers have devised a way to engineer yeast to produce itaconic acid—a valuable commodity chemical—using data integration and supercomputing power as a guide, helping advance economically attractive replacements for fossil fuels. Itaconic acid has enormous potential as a renewable chemical building block. It could substitute for some fossil-fuel-derived products. […]
In Washington state, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed seaweed-based inks and materials for developing colorful 2-D and 3-D shapes and models. The innovation is called ArtSea Inks and Materials. The set of vivid inks—think a futuristic upgrade from yesteryear’s eight-pack of Crayola crayons—was developed using seaweed solutions bolstered with pigments that […]
In Washington state, when the coronavirus pandemic thrust the world into turmoil last year, a group of bioenergy researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) saw an unconventional way to fight the pandemic: algae. What followed was a deep dive into the literature linking algae and antivirals as far back as 1956. To make sense […]
In Washington, in their ongoing effort to make carbon capture more affordable, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a method to convert captured carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane, the primary component of natural gas. By streamlining a longstanding process in which CO2 is converted to methane, the researchers’ new […]
In Washington, researchers from PNNL and the U.S. Department of Energy Co-Optima initiative identified the top 13 diesel fuel blendstocks from biomass resources that could reduce harmful emissions from medium- to heavy-duty diesel vehicles. The top 13 blendstocks include hydrocarbons, esters, and ethers that have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by at least 60% […]
In Alaska, kelp is plentiful in remote, coastal Alaska. Fuel is not. And it’s expensive. Many isolated communities rely on diesel generators for energy because they are not connected to pipelines or the electrical grid. But diesel is expensive since it must be barged or flown in. In search of a cheaper, sustainable fuel, researchers […]
In Washington, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers are forming a clearer picture of how plant matter is transformed in the microbial gardens the ants create. This detailed understanding of how fungus degrades biomass could one day help scientists develop microbial systems for sustainable bioproduct production, such as biofuels or renewable chemicals. In the latest of […]
In Washington state, through decades of fundamental research, scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have contributed detailed information about how catalysts help convert energy into molecular bonds, storing the energy by making bonds and releasing it by breaking bonds. Now, a team is working to turn chemical energy storage into practical setups that could […]
