DuPont and New Tianlong Industry Co. Ltd. have announced an agreement to begin the development of China's largest cellulosic ethanol manufacturing plant, located in Siping City, Jilin Province in China.

The agreement allows NTL to license DuPont's cellulosic ethanol technology and use DuPont Accellerase enzymes, to produce renewable biofuel from the leftover biomass on Jilin Province's highly productive corn farms. NTL will be able to produce cellulosic renewable fuel for the rapidly growing Chinese liquid biofuel market, which is projected to exceed 1.7 billion gallons per year by 2020.

The announcement is particularly important in light of China's aggressive goals for renewable energy, cutting its reliance on foreign oil and increasing employment opportunities for its citizens.

EgyptAir plans to launch its first plane run on biofuel by next year, said Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal during a graduation project ceremony for students of the Engineering Institute of Aviation and Technology.

The Institute, in collaboration with the National Research Centre, has successfully produced biofuel samples matching the ASTM1655 norm. The samples have been tested and approved by the Misr Petroleum Research Institute, claiming that Egypt can produce biodiesel at a rate of 30 tons per day, under the supervision of the Green Fuel authority.

The biodiesel samples were tested last Tuesday on E200 jet engine model, recording the readings identical with the standard readings, with an improvement in the temperature of the exhaust fumes and fuel consumption.

In New Jersey, Liquid Light and Coca Cola have signed a technology development agreement to accelerate the development of mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) from carbon dioxide. The technology enables more efficient use of plant material to make MEG, a major component for The Coca-Cola's PET bottle.

A bioethanol production facility could make MEG from the CO₂ byproduct that results from converting plant material into ethanol. The technology has the potential to reduce both the environmental footprint and the cost of producing MEG. Additional details of the agreement are not being disclosed at this time.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to increase the ethanol production of yeast.

They spiked the yeasts' growth medium with potassium and an acidity-reducing compound helping them tolerate higher concentrations of the ethanol. With those "supplements," commonly underperforming yeast made more ethanol than did industrial strains genetically evolved for ethanol tolerance. The supplements also enabled lab yeast to tolerate higher doses of high-energy alcohols such as butanol.

The researchers also have promising initial results showing production increases from samples of mixed raw materials actually used in industrial fermentations and are looking to combine chemical supplementation and genetic modification.

The technical and economic effectiveness of the supplementation strategy will depend on its performance at large scale and in an industrial setting. With certain yeasts already high yields, the addition of these supplements could bring even more dramatic increases in the production of ethanol and perhaps second-generation biofuels such as butanol.

Intraspecific variations in biomass composition can influence a plant's suitability for ethanol production. This may be particularly important in species such as Brassica napus, which has many different crop types for different purposes. Researchers led by Keith W. Waldron of the Norwich Research Park in UK tested straw derived from 17 B. napus cultivars, of varying crop types to establish if differences in biomass composition are relevant to cellulosic ethanol production.

Straw from the different cultivars produced varying yields after processing. The amount of fermentation inhibitors released also varied between genotypes. Cultivars with glucan-rich straw did not produce higher saccharification or ethanol yields after processing. The abundance of pectins and arabinogalactans was also shown to have the greatest influence on saccharification efficiency between straw genotypes.

Variations in the abundance of pectins influence the processing efficiency for bioethanol production. This information provides targets for plant breeding in the development of improved cellulase cocktails.