The Malaysian Palm Oil Board recently announced that Kuala Lumpur City Hall is set to use B10 biofuel for all of its diesel-powered vehicles by the end of 2017. The goal was set as a part of their initiative to make Kuala Lumpur a ‘green city'.

Since 2014, all diesel sold in Malaysia has 7% palm oil content, named B7. The government plan is to increase this blend to 10%. The city hall and MPOB have been collaborating on B10 vehicle testing since 2014. There has been no reported problem with the vehicles used for the B10 biodiesel tests.

MPOB's principal research officer, Wan Hasamuddin Wan Hassan, said the current B7 pumps at fuel stations would still be supplied for after the B10 rollout. Consumers will have a choice to pump either B7 or B10, depending on their engine capacities.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota are starting a plant that converts by-products of wastewater treatment into biodiesel.

Scum, a white, muddy substance produced during wastewater treatment, presents a significant waste disposal challenge. It is either sent to anaerobic digestion facilities to produce biogas, or disposed of in landfill. According to their study, 68% of dried and filtered scum can be converted to about 140,000 gallons of biodiesel and $500,000-600,000 in profit per year.

The new process, developed by Professor R. Roger Ruan and doctoral candidate Erik Anderson from the University of Minnesota, converts scum to biodiesel that can be used to fuel utility vehicles of the university. For the pilot, the team has been using scum from the local St. Paul Wastewater Treatment facility. The scientists also hope that the St. Paul facility will soon be ready to install the process once the pilot scale testing is complete.

Scientists in Germany have found a way to refine biodiesel to make it suitable for standard diesel engines.

Biodiesel from plant material burns at a different temperature compared to petrodiesel. Hence, only specially designed engines can run on pure biodiesel or blends that contain substantial amounts of biofuel. Researchers in Germany have found a way to transform biofuel from plants for them to meet the boiling characteristics required for commercial diesel sold in the EU.

Existing processes to convert plant oils into biofuel for a standard diesel engine are energy intensive, meaning a significant portion of the fuel is burnt in the process. The team of Lukas Goossen from the Ruhr-Universität Bochumnd looked at catalysts to refine the biodiesel at low temperatures and using very little energy.

The team found that by using three catalysts, they were able to blend rapeseed oil methyl ester and ethylene into a one biofuel with the same boiling characteristics as petrodiesel. However, the catalysts used in the study are expensive and short-lived. Finding a cheaper alternative for commercial production would be the next challenge.

Camelina (Camelina sativa L.) is an alternative oilseed crop with potential for biofuel production. Kansas State University researchers, led by Augustine Obour, investigated the effect of the interaction between genotype and environment on camelina seed yield, oil content, and fatty acid composition across two locations in the U.S. Great Plains.

The team used three spring camelina genotypes grown from 2013 to 2015 in two locations, Hays, Kansas, and Moccasin, Montana. Results showed camelina grown at Hays yielded 54% less than that at Moccasin. The genotypes had significant yield differences in Hays but yields were not different at Moccasin.

Further analysis revealed that the variations in seed yield and fatty acid profile between genotypes were correlated with the growing season precipitation and temperatures at each environment.

Scientists from ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics (SGI) have developed an algae strain capable of converting carbon into energy-rich fat which can then be converted into biofuels. While using carbon dioxide to generate fat from algae is not new, the amount of fat produced by this new strain is significantly greater than from most algae.

SGI and ExxonMobil scientists have been tweaking the parts of the algae genome related to nitrogen absorption. The result is a strain of algae with about 40% of its mass as fat, which is double the fat of conventional algae. These findings can be considered as a significant step towards industrial algae biofuel production.

The next step for the scientists will be increasing the algae's ability to convert sunlight into biomass to increase fat production as well as testing and engineering more algae grown under various conditions.