Biofuel

A lot of people rely on coffee to make it through the day, but this is the first time we've seen a tiny house that needs java. New Frontier Tiny Homes has teamed up with Dunkin' Donuts, actress Olivia Wilde and a sustainable biochemical company to produce the unique promotional project.

This past Sunday, Qantas flight QF96 departed from Los Angeles and arrived in Melbourne 15 hours later. What made the trans-Pacific flight special is the fact that it was the first time an airliner flying from the US to Australia was powered – at least partially – by biofuel.

​The perks of a cup of coffee don’t have to end when the grounds are dumped in the trash. Now a London-based company has partnered with Shell to turn the leftovers from this human go-juice into biofuel to help run the English capital’s expansive bus network.

A coral reef resident may seem like an strange source to make biofuels practical, but the characteristic iridescent blue muscle tissues that the giant clam shows when it's open is giving researchers at the University of Pennsylvania clues on how to produce algae more efficiently.

When olive oil is produced, the leftover water and solid residue are discarded – and that can be problematic. Help may be on the way, however, as scientists have devised a process of converting the wastewater into biofuel, fertilizer and clean water.

​According to researchers at Queen's University Belfast, around 20,000 metric tons of aluminum foil is tossed away in the UK each year – enough to stretch to the Moon and back. This prompted chemistry researcher Ahmed Osman to look for new ways to put all that waste to use.

Used coffee grounds can already be turned into biofuel but it's a fairly complex affair, making its widespread use unlikely. That could be about to change, however, as scientists have simplified the coffee-grounds-to-biofuel conversion process.

Till now, in the US, tests of genetically engineered algae have been confined to the lab. The US Environmental Protection Agency approved moving things outdoors, and green glowing algae was let loose in water from five reservoirs. Should anyone be worried? Not all, according to the results.

They may give us an almost endless supply of eggs and nuggets, but industrial chicken farming comes with a tradeoff: it produces a lot of poop. To turn a con into a pro, researchers have developed a process that mixes chicken manure with an invasive weed to create a feedstock for making biofuel.

What if biofuel crops could be grown on marginal land that wouldn't be suitable for food crops anyway? Well, that's the case with sugarcane. Now, genetically-engineered types of sugarcane may make it a more valuable source of biofuel than ever before.​

Aqualia and SEAT are teaming up to develop a sustainable fuel from wastewater. The project, known as Life Metha-morphosis, is aimed at creating a biofuel from treated organic waste, which can then be used to power CNG cars, whose CO2 emissions would be cut by up to 80 percent.

By analyzing the contrails created by planes running on a biofuel mix, NASA has found that biofuels can cut particle emissions by 70 percent. The benefits come not just from reducing carbon emissions but by also cutting down the chance of contrails forming, which have a bigger impact on the climate.