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An efficient way to make fermentable sugars from fibrous waste

The National Food Research Institute (NFRI) of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO; Tsukuba City, Japan; www.naro.affrc.go.jp) has developed an enzymatic pretreatment process for producing highly concentrated sugar solution from fibrous materials containing rice straw and starch. The…

This gasification process turns waste into syngas

Construction of a large-scale waste-to-energy plant will start in the middle of next year in Port Hedland, Western Australia, and operation is scheduled to commence in the second quarter of 2015. The plant will be built by the New Energy…

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A new gas-engine cogeneration system

Last month, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; www.mhi.co.jp) and Tokyo Gas Co. (both Tokyo, Japan; www.tokyo-gas.co.jop) began marketing a jointly developed 1,000-kW gas-engine cogeneration system. Based on the conventional 930-kW system, the new systems engine operates at a reduced speed…

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December Chementator Briefs

  Acetic acid from syngas A new process for the production of acetic acid claims to be more efficient and cost-effective than current technologies. Carbonylation of methanol has been the leading acetic acid technology for several decades, but BP plc…

Making biogas from waste with a low organic content

The effluent discharged by domestic industries in Japan amounts to approximately 11.1 billion ton/yr. Most of this waste is comprised of relatively low concentrations of organic matter. Today, most of this effluent is treated by aerobic biotreatment (activated sludge). However,…

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Metabolic engineering makes plants produce more oils

A research team from the University of Western Australia (Perth; www.uwa.edu.au), led by professor Dongke Zhang, has pioneered the application of higher plants for new-generation biofuel production. Metabolic engineering of Arabidopsis thaliana — a small flowering plant native to Europe…

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Heat Transfer for Huge-Scale Fermentation

Industrial microbiology continues to hold the promise of producing an increasingly large array of commercially important chemicals because an ever-wider number of useful microbes is being developed and successfully deployed at commercially viable scales. Today, many of these bio-based chemicals…

First commercial-scale high-solids anaerobic digester in North America

Harvest Power (Waltham, Mass.; www.harvestpower.com) recently began operation of the first commercial-scale, high-solids anaerobic digester in North America. The facility produces biogas from food waste and yard waste in Richmond, B.C., Canada. “The anaerobic digester employs essentially the same biology…

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Bacteria engineered to make gasoline

Short-chain hydrocarbons have been produced for the first time by microbial fermentation by a research team from the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST; Daejeon, South Korea, www.kaist.ac.kr), led by…

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A new catalyst for low-cost production of biodiesel fuel

Daiki Axis Co. (Matsuyama City, Japan; www.daiki-axis.com) has developed a new solid catalyst for biodiesel fuel production under the support of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) under the authority of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry…