The Vietnamese Government has recently announced their move to enforce E5, a 5% ethanol blended with 95% gasoline, in 2018.

The government reaffirmed that the transition would surely take place and that it was up to businesses to be prepared, emphasizing that the transition would take place on January 1. The government has also informed the public about the benefits of E5 and its safety. It will also provide guidance to local governments to assist the implementation.

Vietnamese government has previously tried to increase sales of ethanol, but had limited success. Hence, the Ministry of Industry and Trade would be working with the Ministry of Finance to make E5 prices more attractive this time.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have recently received a $3.9 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a bacterium that manufactures renewable biofuels from plants.

The researchers seek to make biofuels that would not compete with the food supply. The researchers will aim to engineer microbes that can make biofuels from a toxic waste product of papermaking called lignin. Millions of tons of lignin are generated from papermaking and lignocellulose-based biofuel industries.

The project also aims to produce biofuels that could fully replace petroleum-based fuels. While today's cars can burn fuel with 10-15 percent ethanol, specialized engines are required when the fuel blend is mostly or entirely alcohol-based. Renewable biofuels that are chemically similar to fossil fuels would be a major development.

The researchers will be studying a type of bacteria called Rhodococcus opacus, originally discovered growing on toxic compounds outside a chemical plant. These bacteria thrive on these toxic compounds, using them as a source of food for the production of biofuels.

As a major lignocellulosic biomass, crop residues are considered as feedstock for biofuel production. However, large-scale application of this biofuel process has been facing obstacles. To meet the growing demands for food, feed, and energy as the global population continues to grow, certain kinds of insects have been mentioned as a source of protein and fat.

Hui Wang of Huazhong Agricultural University in China tested a two-stage biorefinery process. The first –stage includes corn stover degradation by yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor L.), followed by a second stage that uses black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens L.) to consume the residues produced during the first stage.

These two insect-based biorefinery yielded 8.50 g of insect biomass with a waste dry mass reduction rate of 51.32%. It resulted in 1.95 g of crude grease from larval biomass that produced 1.76 g biodiesel, 6.55 g protein, and 111.59 g biofertilizer. The conversion rate of free fatty acids of crude grease into biodiesel reached 90%. The components of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin contained in corn stover were hydrolyzed effectively.

These findings demonstrate that successive co-conversion of corn stover by insects possessing different feeding habits could be an option for efficient use of lignocellulosic resources, and presents a solution to crop residues management, energy supply, and animal feed demand.

A new research claims that the innovative gene editing technique could improve algae and produce large quantities of renewable fuels. Developed by scientists at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, CRISPR-Cpf1 could lead to cheap ways of producing fuels, medicine, and products to be used in several industries.

Using CRISPR, scientists can add new genes to algae or modify existing ones. Previously, CRISPR was not completely applicable to algae. However, the researchers overcame this obstacle by codelivery of CRISPR-Cpf1 ribonucleoproteins with single-stranded DNA repair template, resulting in precise and targeted DNA replacement in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

The technique could be used to increase crop yields, improve disease resistance or enable plants to survive in harsher climates.

Indian scientists have now developed a technique to break down glycerol, a biodiesel manufacturing byproduct, into commercially useful products using bacterial strains.

Biodiesel production is generally expensive due to cost of disposal of crude glycerol. Its economics can be improved by downstream processing of glycerol which is a highly functional molecule. Value added chemicals possible from glycerol are 1,2- and 1,3 – propanediols, ethylene glycol, which have wide industrial applications.

The team of scientists from the Chemical Engineering and Process Development Division and the National Collection of Industrial Microorganisms Center, National Chemical Laboratory have identified two bacterial strains which can use crude glycerol as carbon source to produce value-added chemicals.

Researchers used a mixed bacterial culture to ferment crude bioglycerol under aerobic conditions. The bacterial strains used were Enterobacter aerogenes NCIM 2695 and Klebsialla pneumoniae NCIM 5215. These strains, when used together, can lead to 100% transformation of crude glycerol.