Biofuels and chemicals

The Denver Zoo is rolling out a motorized rickshaw that has been converted to run on animal droppings. It might help save a bundle.

Imported from Thailand, the tuk-tuk is about 20 years old, but it has been given a new lease on life from engineers at the zoo.

The electric three-wheeler runs on gasified pellets made from animal poop, as well as trash produced by zoo visitors and staff.

A heater on the back of the prototype vehicle turns the pellets into syngas, which is used to generate electricity to power the tuk-tuk. … Read more

Startup Virdia is joining hundreds of biotech companies trying to make low-cost sugar to replace oil and food crops.

The company today announced new financing, including $30 million of venture capital from existing investors Khosla Ventures, Burrill & Company and Tamar Ventures. Mississippi also provided the company with $75 million in low-interest loans and tax incentives to build an operation in the state.

Founded in 2007, Virdia uses acid hydrolysis to separate the sugar from the cellulose in wood chips. Once it has done so, the company intends to sell the resulting sugar into the existing "commodity carbohydrate markets&… Read more

What if tobacco could grow fuel in its leaves?

As far-fetched as that sounds, a group of scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is testing the limits of genetic engineering to make the widely grown tobacco plant a carrier for hydrocarbons.

Scientists will be at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit this week to discuss the project, which received a $4.8 million grant over three years. The grant fits ARPA-E's mission of funding research that is high-risk but with a potential for a breakthrough.

Biofuels or biochemicals are typically made by growing plants and then converting that biomass into … Read more

For a new crop of biofuel companies, ethanol is out and "biogasoline" is in.

One of them is Primus Green Energy, which plans to open a demonstration plant by the end of the year that will convert wood pellets into high-octane gasoline. The Hillsborough, N.J.-based company intends to raise $50 million to $100 million this year for a commercial-scale plant that would start producing at higher volumes in 2015.

Many companies break down biomass into sugar through different methods and then ferment that to make ethanol or speciality chemicals. Primus Green Energy and others are seeking … Read more

Startup Amyris has hit a speed bump producing chemicals and fuels from sugar cane, another sign of the technical difficulties biofuel companies have had.

In an earnings call last week, Amyris CEO John Melo said the company had trouble maintaining reliable production of its operations in Brazil. "We showed conclusively that our technology does work at scale, but also learned that it takes time to translate from peak yield levels in the lab to maintaining those yields over longer operational periods in the field," he said on a conference call with investors last Thursday.

As a result, Amyris … Read more

If you have a good mind for puzzles and are a whiz at video games, your may have a calling in science.

Researchers at the University of Washington have devised a video game that lets citizen scientists take a stab at decoding the shape of proteins. The graphical game called Foldit challenges players to predict protein structures and ultimately design their own using a three-dimensional construction tool.

"You could imagine where you come home in the evening and you can either stay up all night playing Halo or be designing an HIV vaccine with people around the world. Which … Read more

A group of scientists has gone offshore in an effort to bypass the food-versus-fuel debate.

Startup Bio Architecture Lab today published a paper in Science it claims will turn seaweed into a viable feedstock for fuel and other chemicals.

Making fuel and chemicals from crops such as corn and sugar cane requires significant quantities of land and fresh water, creating competition for resources with agriculture. Macroalgae such as seaweed, by contrast, grow in salt water and are relatively productive energy sources because they are 60 percent carbohydrates and don't contain lignin, which binds up useful molecules in many earthbound … Read more

Startup Joule has secured the money to take its potentially breakthrough biofuel technology to a larger scale.

The company today announced that undisclosed private and institutional investors led a $70 million funding to build a larger demonstration plant. The announcement was made at the Technology Leaders in Future Energy conference in Abu Dhabi. Founding investor Flagship Ventures also joined the round.

Founded in 2007, Joule took a clean-sheet approach to making biofuels which now are primarily made from corn or sugar cane. Its process uses a genetically engineered version of cyanobacteria to produce diesel or ethanol using only sunlight, water, … Read more

Renmatix is blasting wood chips with supercritical water to create sugar, a building block for chemical and fuels.

The Philadelphia-based company today said that German chemicals giant BASF has invested $30 million in Renmatix as part of a $50 million funding. Existing investors, including venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, also invested.

Renmatix has a unique method for converting non-food biomass, such as wood chips, municipal waste, or grasses, into fuels or chemicals. Methods tried by other companies, including using specialty enzymes and heat-driven chemical processes, have by and large failed to scale up. The result is that … Read more