A group of researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have discovered that a particular type of algae — with a bad reputation for causing damaging algal blooms in oceans throughout the world — produces a substance that can be used to make inexpensive, non-toxic, simple-to-build, flexible, thin and durable batteries that, after optimization, are expected to perform on par with today’s most advanced lithium-ion batteries.

The key to the discovery lies in the way in which the algae, Cladophora, produce a unique type of cellulose with a very large surface area (approximately 80 square meters of surface area per gram of material).

By coating this algal cellulose material with a thin layer of a well-known, conductive polymer, called polypyrrole (PPy), the team has “succeeded in producing a battery that weighs almost nothing and that has set new charge-time and capacity records for polymer-cellulose-based [non-metallic] batteries,” according to Gustav Nyström, a doctoral student in nanotechnology and one of the main researchers.

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Researchers have developed an environmentally friendly, biodegradable lubricant based on castor oil and cellulose derivatives.

The new grease, which does not contain any of the pollutants that traditional petroleum and synthetic lubricants have, may lighten the toxic load from manufacturing and industry on our water and soil.

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Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a straightforward two-step process to convert cellulose — the ubiquitous energy-rich molecules found in all plant material — into a furfural biofuel.

To make this simple process reality, Ron Raines and his graduate student, Joseph Binder, developed a special mix of solvents and additives with an extraordinary capacity to dissolve cellulose.

“This solvent system can dissolve cotton balls, which are pure cellulose,” says Raines. “And it’s a simple system—not corrosive, dangerous, expensive or stinky.”

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Researchers at Michigan State University have patented a process for pretreating corn crop waste that they say will cut the cost of making cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels.

Cellulosic ethanol is made from wood pulp, grasses and crop wastes. The technology promises better energy output than corn-based ethanol, at prices that could be cost-competitive with gasoline.

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American scientists have discovered a fungus deep in the Patagonian rainforest that makes biodiesel as part of its natural lifecycle. The fungus is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel sources.

According to team member Prof. Gary Strobel of Montana State University, “The fungus can even make these diesel compounds from cellulose, which would make it a better source of biofuel than anything we use at the moment.”

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The process works by chopping the complex raw wood molecules into smaller and simpler bits — the end product being single sugar molecules. The method can also be used on other second generation ethanol feedstocks such as grass straw. Once you’ve made the sugar, the rest of the process of making ethanol is as simple as making beer — literally.

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In an upcoming review paper, professor Michael Scharf details how termites — which cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to houses in the US alone each year — might actually prove useful for something that most people could never have envisioned.

Through millions of years of evolution, termites have filled a niche in the animal world that takes precise chemical coordination between the digestive enzymes and microbes in their guts to turn the wood that they eat into sugars which can then be used to “fuel” the termite.

It is this seemingly easy transformation of wood into sugar in the termite guts that holds the promise for future ethanol production, because, once you have the sugar, it’s easy to make ethanol through fermentation.

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The current, most widely adopted process for making second generation cellulosic fuel — “celluline” — involves the use of acids, enzymes and fermenting microbes to get from the harvested plant material to a fuel that is usable in your car’s engine.

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Sheesh. It seems that everybody and their brothers are ethanol experts these days. But what drives me nuts is that when people are talking about ethanol, they don’t seem to know what type of ethanol they’re talking about.

It’s sad because the widespread misinformation and misunderstanding is killing popular opinion for biofuels in general right now and, in particular, mercilessly destroying the good name of the second generation of ethanol — cellulosic ethanol.

The truth of the matter is that cellulosic ethanol will be made from non-food sources (miscanthus, switchgrass, wood waste, and even garbage) that can be grown on marginal land or is already a waste byproduct of society.

The production of cellulosic ethanol could have huge benefits beyond energy independence:

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