Amyris is now partnering with Brazilian airline GOL to begin the first international commercial flight with the recently approved biojet fuel, farnesane.

GOL has committed to fly its Boeing 737 fleet with up to a 10 percent blend of the renewable fuel on its U.S. to Brazil routes starting this month. Amyris' efforts to bring farnesane-based biojet fuel to commercial airlines are supported by Boeing, the Inter-American Development Bank and other partners.

"We at Amyris are thrilled that GOL will be using our renewable jet fuel blend for their flight route from the United States to Brazil, the first of what we expect to be many routes with the world's leading airlines," said John Melo, president and CEO of Amyris.

"We are working closely with the Brazilian Biojet Fuel Platform to achieve the 1 percent blend milestone in early 2016, beginning with more than 200 sustainable flights during the World Cup in Brazil." said Pedro Scorza, director of technical operations with GOL.

Amyris says farnesane can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent on a lifecycle basis compared to traditional fuels.

The Petrixo Oil & Gas has selected the green fuels technology of UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, to produce biojet fuel and renewable diesel in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

Petrixo, a Dubai-based company, will use the UOP technology to process around 500,000 metric tons per year of renewable feedstocks into biojet fuel and renewable diesel, trademarked as Honeywell Green Jet Fuel and Honeywell Green Diesel, respectively. The technology is flexible and is capable of processing a variety of renewable feedstocks including oils from algae and halophytes.

Petrixo will invest $800 million to build a new facility designed to produce 1 million tons per year of biojet and renewable diesel products. Honeywell says this will be the first commercial-scale production facility outside in North America.

According to Eid Al Olayyan, CEO of Petrixo Oil & Gas, "Petrixo believes that new energy solutions are immensely important for scalable, environmental and renewable solutions. UOP's green fuels technologies are proven refining solutions that produce high-quality products compatible with petroleum-based fuels."

Honeywell Green Jet Fuel, which is blended up to 50 percent with conventional jet fuel, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 65 to 85 percent compared with petroleum-based fuels.

HybridCars.com and Baum and Associates recently compiled data of car sales and found that clean diesel car sales in the United States have increased by 25 percent during the first six months of 2014.

The 2014 clean diesel total sales includes six months of consecutive sale increases, including double digit increases in March, April and May. June 2014 was the 43rd month of increase in clean diesel sales in the past four years.

"Sustained and mostly double-digit increases in sales each month over a four year period prove that U.S. consumers are embracing the benefits of clean diesel technology and its proven, high fuel efficiency, great driving performance, and long-term value," said Allen Schaeffer, the Executive Director of the Diesel Technology Forum.

Lactobacillus species are the predominant contaminants during fermentation that decrease the profitability of biofuel production. Current antibiotic treatments against these contaminants have led to emergence of drug-resistant bacterial strains. Researchers from the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture in Peoria, Il, led by Piyum A. Khatibi published the result of their studies on a new, non-antibiotic, eco-friendly strategy against bacterial contamination.

Two genes, LysA and LysA2, from bacteriophage were individually expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These genes produce enzymes that are capable of breaking down common Lactobacillus species that contaminate fermentation. Reductions in Lactobacillus population in the infected fermentations with yeast expressing LysA or LysA2 were observed in just under 72 hours. Lactic acid and acetic acid levels were also reduced in all infected fermentations suggesting less contamination in fermentations with transgenic S. cerevisiae compared to those with untransformed yeast.

These results demonstrate the feasibility of using yeast expressing bacteriophage endolysins to reduce L. fermentum contamination during fuel ethanol fermentations.

Cellulose, the most abundant biomass on earth, is commonly degraded by cellulases from microorganisms. Trichoderma reesei has been explored for cellulase production. However, it has low beta-glucosidase activity, which is vital in cellulose hydrolysis. Guangxi University researchers in China led by Jia-Xun Feng isolated new fungal strains from forests in China hoping to discover a strain which can be used to improve commercial cellulase. The study was published in Biotechnology for Biofuels.

Out of 305 fungal strains from China, 31 strains were found to have decent cellulase activity; 18 of these were Trichoderma while 13 were Penicillium species. The best-performing isolate was the Trichoderma koningiopsis FCD3-1, which had similar cellulase activity to Trichoderma reesei Rut-C30, but exhibited high beta-glucosidase activity. It retained 90% of its activity after 360 hours at pH 4.0 and 30°C, which are optimal conditions for producing ethanol from cellulose. 

T. koningiopsis FCD3-1 was the most efficient producer of cellulase, and also produced a high level of beta-glucosidase, indicating its potential application in bioethanol production.

Glycerol-3-phosphate, a glycerol, is formed through a pathway initiated by glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH). Recently, this GPDH was found in the microalgae Phaeodactylum tricornutum, making it as a potential ideal material for biodiesel and bioactive compounds. Now, researchers led by Hong-Ye Li from the College of Life Science, Jinan University in China look into its potential use for commercial production of bioproducts.

GPDH gene was overexpressed in transgenic P. tricornutum. This resulted in an increase in glycerol concentration in the transgenics compared with the wild type. This suggests that overexpression of GPDH promoted the production of glycerol-3-phosphate. There was also an observed 60% increase in neutral lipid content.

GPDH had a significant impact on numerous metabolic processes in diatom cells, including the biosynthesis of glycerol and neutral lipids. These results suggest that metabolic engineering of these microalgae will benefit biofuel production.