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A series of columns from the major trade associations in the biofuel industry: the National Biodiesel Board, Growth Energy and ePURE, providing expert insight on the latest policy and market developments in the biofuels industry. 

Biomass-based diesel supply made available in the US market in May increased 9.2% from April according to the Environmental Protection Agency, although that compares with a 26% month-to-month increase in 2017 and a 13.3% gain over the five-year average. May also reflected the first monthly year-on-year decline in available supply in 2018, with the growth slowdown a reflection of uncertain support... for biofuels, a reoccurring theme for an industry still dependent on government largesse to expand. [read more]

Long used for little more than fire wood or as a boundary tree across Sub-Saharan Africa, the croton tree is proving to be a vital source of biofuel for Kenya, one of the continent’s fastest growing economies. Nestled in the lush foothills of Mount Kenya, the town of Nanyuki hosts Eco Fuels Kenya (EFK), a company that is pioneering the use of croton nuts for production of environmentally... friendly biofuel and in the process providing livelihoods and improving incomes of rural farmers. [read more]

Aviation biofuel innovator Agrisoma Biosciences has its sights set on a worldwide production base for its fuel-producing carinata crop of somewhere between 30 and 40 million acres, sufficient to satisfy up to half the world’s jet fuel requirements. “That’s certainly our vision for the future,” said Steven Fabijanski, CEO of Canadabased Agrisoma Biosciences, a biotechnology... enterprise which partnered with Qantas in late January this year, helping to fuel the first US-to-Australia flight to be propelled by a blend of traditional jet fuel and carinata oil. [read more]

The twin fears in the 1990s of global warming and of peak oil resulted in urgent searching for possible solutions, including plant oil production from species such as the Central American woody herb jatropha (Jatropha curcas L). This long lived drought-tolerant plant grows up to 5 metres tall and can fruit prolifically, producing large seeds high in oil content. Jatropha had been brought to Cape... Verde and other parts of Africa possibly as early as the late 1700s for producing oil for soap making in Europe, and production continued until the 1930s. During the 1800s jatropha was planted elsewhere in the world, including India, Australia and Brazil. [read more]

Jatropha curcas has been promoted as an environmentally and socially acceptable biofuel crop. Conventional jatropha contains toxic phorbol esters in addition to other antinutrient secondary compounds, which makes the oil and the seed cake toxic to humans and animals. An edible variety of J. curcas occurs naturally in Mexico. Its seeds have the same or similar chemical composition as the toxic... varieties (Tables 1 and 2) except for the fact that it lacks toxic phorbol esters. [read more]

Since entering the industry almost 25 years ago, ICM has designed about half of the 200 ethanol plants in the United States, along with plants in Canada, Europe and South America. With a substantial focus on research and innovation, the company develops and offers add-on technologies to ethanol operations that look to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and enable the production of higher value... feed products. Through its extensive involvement in the industry, ICM is well placed to offer insight on the latest trends in plant design, and developments in the ethanol sector. Here, Biofuels International speaks with Steve Hartig, ICM’s VP for Technology and Development. [read more]

As ethanol plants recognise the value of increased Distiller’s Corn Oil (DCO) extraction, new technologies are being adopted to release the bound oil. To obtain maximum benefit of the innovations being adopted, a fundamental understanding of the process of oil extraction is needed. Centrifugation technologies are widely used in the ethanol industry for oil extraction: both low speed... decanter and the high-speed disc stack centrifuges. Each employs the same separation principal of centrifugation. While plant operating parameters influence a plant’s oil yield and performance, the efficiency is fundamentally governed by a simple Nobel Prize-winning formula: Stokes’ Law. Understanding how normal process variables in the plant impact the factors of this equation ensures high oil extraction efficiency as new process technologies are adopted in plants. [read more]

E arlier this year, scientists from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced a breakthrough that could have a major impact on the production of cellulosic biofuels. By analysing and comparing the ‘workhorse’ cellulosedegrading enzymes of two fungi, the researchers pinpointed the regions on those enzymes that can be targeted via genetic... engineering to help break down cellulose faster. In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the NREL team detail their long running study of the fungal cellobiohydrolasese Trichoderma reesei (TrCel7A) and Penicillium funiculosum (PfCel7A). Enzymes from this family are among the most significant for breaking down cellulose, including for the production of ethanol. [read more]