US Biofuel Market Analysis, a new research report from RNCOS, anticipates the US biofuel industry, particularly ethanol production, to lead the world biofuel production during 2008-2017.

As per the report, the US has emerged as the world's largest biofuel industry, with its ethanol production soaring to 4.9 billion gallons in 2006, an increased of around 1 billion gallons from the production level in 2005, and contributed 36% of the total global ethanol production. While the growth in ethanol production was substantially high in 2006 from 2005, the industry still continues to enhance its production capacity.

Seeing this remarkable performance of the US biofuel industry, a senior research analyst at RNCOS comments that it will not be wrong to say that the global ethanol industry is centred around the US.

Moreover, the US is expected to lead the global ethanol production in future. The main reasons behind this projection, says the analyst, are the long-term government intervention (Renewable Fuels Standard policy) and setting up of more ethanol plants. Besides, continuous rise in domestic ethanol demand will encourage domestic producers to keep adding to the production volume in coming years.

The RNCOS research says that this radical rise in ethanol production in the US has virtually affected every aspect of field crops sector - from domestic demand and exports to prices, acreage allocation among crops, and even the livestock sector. Under such commodity market effects, government payments, farm income and food prices have changed significantly.

Illustration by David Simonds

FORTY years ago Dustin Hoffman’s character in “The Graduate” was given a famous piece of career advice: “Just one word…plastics.” It was appropriate at the time, given that the 1960s were a golden age of petrochemical innovation. Oil was cheap and seemed limitless. Since then, scientists have kept on coming up with wondrous new products made from petroleum that helped to ensure, in the words of one corporate slogan, better living through chemistry. Even so, someone offering advice to today’s promising graduates might invoke a different, uglier word: chemurgy.

This term, coined in the 1930s, refers to a branch of applied chemistry that turns agricultural feedstocks into industrial and consumer products. It had several successes early in the 20th century. Cellulose was used to make everything from paint brushes to the film on which motion pictures were captured. George Washington Carver, an American scientist, developed hundreds of ways to convert peanuts, sweet potatoes and other crops into glue, soaps, paints, dyes and other industrial products. In the 1930s Henry Ford started using parts made from agricultural materials, and even built an all-soy car. But the outbreak of the second world war and the shift to wartime production halted his experiment. After the war, low oil prices and breakthroughs in petrochemical technologies ensured the dominance of petroleum-based plastics and chemicals.

But now chemurgy is back with a vengeance, in the shape of modern industrial biotechnology. Advances in bioengineering, environmental worries, high oil prices and new ways to improve the performance of oil-based products using biotechnology have led to a revival of interest in using agricultural feedstocks to make plastics, paints, textile fibres and other industrial products that now come from oil.

This form of biotechnology has not attracted as much attention as biotech drugs, genetically modified organisms or biofuels, but it has been quietly growing for years. BASF, a German chemical giant, estimates that bio-based products account for some €300m ($470m) of sales in such things as “chiral intermediates” (which give the kick to its pesticides). The sale of industrial enzymes by Novozymes, a Danish firm, brings in over €950m a year, about a third of it from enzymes for improving laundry detergents. Jens Riese of McKinsey, a consultancy, reckons industrial biotech’s global sales will soar to $100 billion by 2011—by which time sales of biofuels will have reached only $72 billion.

Will this boom really prove to be more sustainable than the first, ill-fated blossoming of chemurgy? One potential problem is that oil-based polymers are very good at what they do. Early bioplastics melted too easily, or proved unable to keep soft drinks fizzy when they were made into bottles. Pat Gruber, a green-chemistry guru who helped start NatureWorks (a pioneering biopolymers firm) says customers are sometimes too risk-averse to retrain staff or modify equipment to accept a new biopolymer—even if it is cheaper or better.

It seems likely that oil-based products will be around for a long time in some applications. But the big advances in oil-based polymers happened decades ago, whereas the number of patents granted for industrial biotechnology now exceeds 20,000 per year. Such is the pace of innovation, says Tjerk de Ruiter, chief executive of Genencor, a industrial-biotech firm that is now a division of Denmark’s Danisco, that processes that once took five years now take just one. And Steen Riisgaard, the boss of Novozymes, insists that new technologies can indeed push old ones out of the way, provided they are clearly superior (and not just greener). Brewers raced to adopt Novozymes’ novel enzymes, for example, in order to cash in on the Atkins Diet craze with “low carb” beers.

A second potential obstacle is that incumbent companies will quash the fledgling new technologies. But concern about oil’s reliability as a feedstock means that even oil-dependent incumbents are interested in alternatives. Oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP see novel bioproducts not as threats but as useful tools for blending into, and possibly extending, remaining oil reserves. And chemicals giants such as Dow and DuPont are also big fans of novel industrial biotechnologies. Chad Holliday, DuPont’s boss, is sure that Sorona, his firm’s new biofibre, will be a multi-billion dollar product and “the next nylon”. DuPont expects its sales of industrial biotechnology products to grow by 16-18% a year, to reach $1 billion by 2012.

Perhaps the biggest worry is that today’s industrial-biotech boom is an artefact of the soaring price of oil. If the oil price plunged and stayed low, the boom would surely turn to bust. Short of outright collapse, however, even a sharp price drop need not burst the biotech bubble. Mr Riese has scrutinised the economics of sugar and oil—the chief rival feedstocks—and concludes that the “bio-route” will be cheaper even at an oil price of $50-60 a barrel. Brent Erickson of BIO, an industry lobby, argues that “this was happening long before the oil-price spike—$100 oil is just gravy.” Industry bosses agree, noting that the flurry of projects now approaching commercial use were deemed viable and initiated a few years ago, when the oil price was closer to $40 a barrel.

For proof that industrial biotech is ready for the big time, look to Brazil. The country already has a large and efficient industry producing ethanol fuel from sugar cane. Now rival consortia are rushing to build plants to turn sugar cane into bioethylene. This is striking. Unlike many other industrial biotech efforts which target niche markets, this is an assault on the $114 billion market for ethylene, the most widely produced organic compound of all.

Erin O’Driscoll of Dow, a chemical giant now investing in Brazilian bioethylene, says the firm is confident the technology is ready for commercialisation. The chief reason for such optimism is that industrial biotechnology is better and cheaper than it was back in the heyday of chemurgy. Dow has even come up with a material made from soyabean oil that it plans to sell to carmakers to replace oil-based foam. Ford and his friend Carver would be proud.

Economist.com

The mandate is expected to cut Taiwan's diesel consumption by 38.5 million litres a year, equivalent to about 1 million barrels of imported crude oil.

The Taiwanese government decided to roll out an island-wide biodiesel programme after a successful biodiesel trial in several parts of the island. More than 500 buses have been running on 2-5% biodiesel fuel blend in Kaohsiung City and Chiayi County in southern Taiwan since January 2007.

The original capacity of the Zeitz location has been increased by a further 100,000 m³ to 360,000 m³

Germany-based bioethanol producer CropEnergies has completed the expansion of capacity at its bioethanol plant in Zeitz, Saxony-Anhalt.

After a construction period for the extension of 13 months, the original capacity of the Zeitz location of 260,000 m³ of bioethanol a year has been increased by a further 100,000 m³ to 360,000 m³. The increase was carried out in two stages.

The existing plant, which processes cereals and sugar syrups into bioethanol, was expanded by an additional 40,000 m³ of bioethanol a year. The newly-built plant with capacity of 60,000 m³ a year exclusively processes sugar syrups originating from the neighbouring sugar factory. With this expansion, the Zeitz factory is Europe's largest bioethanol plant.

At the Zeitz plant, a total of over €50 million has been invested in the expansion of the bioethanol production.

At the end of the year, a further plant with a capacity of up to 300,000 m³ of bioethanol a year will go on stream in Wanze, Belgium. At the end of financial year 2008/09, CropEnergies will then have a capacity of over 700,000 m³ of bioethanol available a year.

The provincial government of Ontario, Canada, has awarded $7.5 million (€4.77 million) for two biofuels projects.

Both projects intend to develop biofuels made agricultural byproducts, such as corn husks and manure, instead of from crops.

Approximately $5 million of the total funding is going to a research centre at the University of Western Ontario's experimental field station.

The second project will take place at a London, Ontario-area farm and focuses on generating green energy from manure and waste water.

Ontario produces close to 50 million tonnes of biomass a year, which has the potential to produce enough energy to power 7 million homes.

Since 2003, the Ontario government has invested more than $600 million in research devoted to green technologies and initiatives.

براساس یافته‌های پژوهشگران مرکز تکثیر و پرورش جانوران آزمایشگاهی دانشگاه تربیت معلم، زهر زنبور عسل در درمان بیمای MS مؤثر است.

به گزارش ایسنا، دکتر محمد نبیونی،‌ عضو هیات علمی دانشگاه تربیت معلم و مجری طرح با بیان این که نتایج این تحقیق برای ارائه در کنفرانس «طب تکمیلی» در دانشگاه علوم پزشکی اصفهان پذیرفته شده است، خاطرنشان کرد: در اجرای این تحقیق، بیماری MS به موشهای صحرایی نژاد «ویستار» القا شد، سپس تاثیر زهر زنبور عسل روی این موش‌ها مورد بررسی قرار گرفت.

وی تصریح کرد: طی این بررسی، غلافهای میانی اعصاب ملینی با تاثیر زهر زنبور عسل شروع به بازسازی و ترمیم کردند.

دکتر نبیونی خاطرنشان کرد: بیماری MS نوعی اختلال در سیستم عصبی مغز است که در نوع شدید آن منجر به مرگ بیمار می‌شود. در بیماری MS بیمار با تخریب سیستم عصبی روبه رو و منجر به تخریب غلاف‌های میانی اعصاب ملینی می‌شود.

وی گفت: این تحقیق یکی از بخش‌های طرح تحقیقاتی جامع تاثیرات بیولوژیک زهر زنبور عسل است که تاثیر زهر این حشره در درمان بیماری‌های دیگر نیز در دست تحقیق و بررسی است.

گفتنی است این طرح تحقیقاتی توسط ساره رجبی، دانشجوی کارشناسی ارشد رشته سلول تکوینی و با راهنمایی دکتر نبیونی به مدت یک سال در مرکز تکثیر و پرورش جانوران آزمایشگاهی دانشگاه تربیت معلم به نتیجه رسیده است.

مرکز تکثیر و پرورش جانوران آزمایشگاهی اردیبهشت ماه سال گذشته در پردیس دانشگاه تربیت معلم گشایش یافت.

The Italian Biodiesel Association has stated that five new biodiesel plants are ready to come online and will increase national biodiesel capacity from 1.9 million tonnes and to 2.7 million tonnes.

The 12 existing plants produced only 469,707 tonnes due to high feedstock costs last year, down from more than 590,000 tonnes in 2006. The association is projecting that total production will reach 600,000 tonnes in 2008 and 800,000 tonnes in 2009.

Italian research has detailed the potential to use tobacco oil as a biodiesel feedstock. Researchers say that tobacco is a higher-yield crop than comparable biodiesel feedstocks.

The Chinese and Italian governments have initiated a feasibility study for jatropha biodiesel at Sichuan University. The project received $650,000 (€409,000) in support from Italy. The project is the third signed by Italy and China, promising cooperation in biofuels research since mid-April.

In April, Oxem Group began construction on a 60 million gallon a year canola-based biodiesel plant near Pavia, in Lombardy. Oxem will invest $100 million in the project that will use feedstock from France, Germany, Romania and Hungary. Last year, only 45,000 hectares of Italian crops produced feedstock for biodiesel.

In February, Mossi & Ghisolf announced that it will construct a 66 million gallon a year ethanol plant in Piedmont, and convert it to cellulosic feedstocks in the long run. Mossi & Ghisolf say the $148 million plant would be operational in 2009, and converted to cellulosic ethanol in a second, $177 million upgrade.