Bioenergy & Bioproducts Education Programs
Bioenergy & Bioproducts Education Programs provide professional development and hands-on teaching tools for STEM educators who aspire.
STEM and OPERATION BioenergizeME
OPERATION BioenergizeME is the Bioenergy Technologies Office’s (BETO’s) education base camp for students and educators and anyone seeking to better understand the promises and challenges in developing a thriving bioeconomy. OPERATION BioenergizeME has a three-fold mission:
Butanol production from lignocellulosic biomass: revisiting fermentation performance indicators with exploratory data analysis
After just more than 100 years of history of industrial acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) fermentation, patented by Weizmann in the UK in 1915, butanol is again today considered a promising biofuel alternative based on several advantages compared to the more established biofuels ethanol and methanol. Large-scale fermentative production of butanol, however, still suffers from high substrate cost and low product titers and selectivity. There have been great advances the last decades to tackle these problems. However, understanding the fermentation process variables and their interconnectedness with a holistic view of the current scientific state-of-the-art is lacking to a great extent. To illustrate the benefits of such a comprehensive approach, we have developed a dataset by collecting data from 175 fermentations of lignocellulosic biomass and mixed sugars to produce butanol that reported during the past three decades of scientific literature and performed an exploratory data analysis to map current trends and bottlenecks. This review presents the results of this exploratory data analysis as well as main features of fermentative butanol production from lignocellulosic biomass with a focus on performance indicators as a useful tool to guide further research and development in the field towards more profitable butanol manufacturing for biofuel applications in the future.
Biobutanol
Butanol is an alcohol that can be used as a transport fuel. It is a higher member of the series of straight chain alcohols with each molecule of butanol (C4H10O) containing four carbon atoms rather than two as in ethanol.
Butanol was tradionally produced by ABE fermentation - the anaerobic conversion of carbohydrates by strains of Clostridium into acetone, butanol and ethanol. However, cost issues, the relatively low-yield and sluggish fermentations, as well as problems caused by end product inhibition and phage infections, meant that ABE butanol could not compete on a commercial scale with butanol produced synthetically and almost all ABE production ceased as the petrochemical industry evolved.
However, there is now increasing interest in use of biobutanol as a transport fuel. 85% Butanol/gasoline blends can be used in unmodified petrol engines. It can be transported in existing gasoline pipelines and produces more power per litre than ethanol. Biobutanol can be produced from cereal crops, sugar cane and sugar beet, etc, but can also be produced from cellulosic raw materials.
Plastics have become a problem - here is a potential solution
Each year more than 300 million tons of plastic is manufactured; with over half intended for single-use application. While recycling offers some relief, plastic waste totaling more than half the global population ends up in landfills or polluting our waterways, beaches, and open areas.
Ecological Fibers prides itself on how we approach our manufacturing processes. When it comes to the environment, we’ve never settled for the easy solution if it was detrimental to the earth. When we realized the potential health ramifications of using solvents, we didn’t reduce the number of solvents we used, we removed solvents altogether, becoming the first covering materials company to do so. Now, we’ve set our eyes on plastics.
Why Sustainable Supplement Bottles Are A Must
Every year, we celebrate Earth Day. This day is an opportunity for us to take a moment to appreciate this beautiful planet we call home. Earth day also gives us the chance to reflect on how our choices have impacted the world around us. Being one human on a planet full of billions of people can make the idea that one person can change the world difficult to believe. It seems so impossible that we are capable of making a difference. However, small changes add up over time to make a big difference. Because this idea has caught on, people are more focused now than ever on making better choices. As people look to more sustainable choices, businesses must also think about how they affect the planet. One of the ways this happens is via transitioning to items such as sustainable supplement bottles.
DOE Announces $59 Million to Expand Biofuels Production and Decarbonize Transportation Sector
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $59 million to accelerate the production of biofuels and bioproducts to reduce emissions in hard-to-decarbonize sectors and create good-paying jobs in rural America. DOE is focused on applied research, development, and deployment to improve the performance and reduce the cost of biofuel production technologies and scale-up production systems in partnership with industry. By reducing costs and technical risks, these efforts can help pave the way for the biofuels industry to deploy commercial-scale integrated biorefineries. The breakthroughs from this funding will support President Biden’s and DOE’s goals of advancing the use of bioenergy, achieving cost-competitive biofuels, and reaching a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.
On the Road to a Net-Zero-Carbon Transportation Future
Climate change is speeding up, along with the urgency to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for global warming. At the same time, car, truck, and train wheels keep turning, while planes and boats take to the skies and oceans—releasing 1.5 billion tons of GHGs into the atmosphere every year.
Breakthroughs from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines (Co-Optima) initiative will help rapidly cut emissions, reduce dependence on international petroleum, and contribute to ambitious national goals to slow global warming on the land, in the air, and across the water. While previous research focused on either the fuel or the engine, the Co-Optima team examined synergies provided by co-optimizing potential fuels with advanced engine technologies. Findings from the six-year collaborative undertaking are now available in a recently released report
Quantity in Search of Quality: Los Alamos National Laboratory Makes a Case for Improving Algae Genome Data
The potential for advancing algal biofuels and bioproducts relies on using algae strains that are best suited for industrial production. Genomic sequence data—the functional information in the DNA of a specific organism such as algae—can reveal the genes and regulatory mechanisms that control how a given strain grows and responds to stress. By screening genomes from a vast array of diverse algae, scientists can unlock the secrets of how to cultivate rapidly growing, high-quality strain compositions. High-quality genomes include no gaps in their sequence and accurately reflect all of the DNA in the strain.
Q&A With Nicholas Rorrer: Plant-Based Plastics and Plastic Plants
By age nine, Nicholas Rorrer was busy staining T-shirts with ketchup.
Rorrer was not a messy kid. Quite the opposite; his ketchup stains were part of a surprisingly well-controlled experiment on how various soaps work on stains of all colors.
Today, Rorrer, who is a senior researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), studies how to clean up a very different, far more complicated mess—plastics, or rather the molecular building blocks (called polymers) behind these bitter-sweet materials.
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