The Florida-based biofuel developer Benchmark Renewable Energy (BRE) is planning to develop a large-scale bioethanol operation in Jamaica. Once completed, the plant will have a production capacity of 10 million gallons per year of ethanol, with an additional 3 megawatts of electricity produced for the local grid.

In addition to ethanol and electricity, BRE aims to produce 500,000 gallons per year of aviation jet fuel as well as desalinated water. Juan Briceno, CFO at BRE, said Jamaica was chosen as the plant's location due to its potential for large-scale sugarcane production.

The BRE facility has the backing of several Jamaican and US government agencies, including the Jamaican Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce and Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica. BRE hopes to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Brazil's House of Representatives recently approved a measure to increase the mandatory percentage of biodiesel required in diesel fuel by 1 percent a year, from 7 percent today to 10 percent in three years. The bill was negotiated with the Ministry of Mines and Energy, President Dilma Rousseff is expected to sign the legislation into law.

The measure leaves the door open to reach 15 percent biodiesel once positive engine test results are obtained, provided such a hike is approved by National Energy Policy Council. The proposal also allows NEPC to authorize the use of higher blends on a voluntary basis in public transportation, mining equipment, power generation, tractors and other agricultural equipment.

In Tunisia, an agreement to develop the country's first cane-based ethanol production program has been signed. The contract on the implementation of the project of cane cultivation to extract and export bioethanol was signed by the Ministry of Development and International Cooperation and the Manager of the Tunisian-Italian joint company (ICL-TUNISIA), promoter of the project, Lucia Galbati.

A total of 12,500 hectares of cane will be grown on saline land currently not suitable for agriculture and will be used for the program. Nearly 30 million cubic meters of waste water from sewage treatment plants of ONAS (National Sanitation Office) and oases drainage will also be used to irrigate the cane.

Scientists from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have shown that an enzyme can be tweaked to reduce lignin in plants. Their technique could help lower the cost of producing biofuels and other bio-products.

Lignin is an important polymer to a plant's health and structure, but also is present in cell walls and traps sugars inside. This is a major challenge for microbes to ferment the sugar into useful chemicals and fuels, prompting for a costly pre-treatment step before fermentation.

They focused on an enzyme, HCT, which plays a key role in synthesizing lignin in plants. HCT binds with a particular molecule as part of the lignin-production process. The scientists studied the enzyme and found out that HCT binds with other molecules with similar structures as the original molecule.

Researchers then introduced another molecule to the enzyme that occupies the binding site usually occupied by the lignin-producing molecule. This swap inhibits the enzyme's ability to support lignin production.

Initial tests show that this approach decreases lignin content by 30% while upping sugar production. The technique also promises to be much more "tunable" than the current way of reducing plant lignin, in which lignin-producing genes are silenced. The current way decreases lignin everywhere in the plant and throughout its lifespan, resulting in a weak plant and a lower sugar yield.

Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) are copper-containing enzymes that oxidatively break down recalcitrant polysaccharides such as cellulose and chitin. Since their discovery, LPMOs have become integral factors in the industrial utilization of biomass, especially in the generation of cellulosic bioethanol. An international research team, including scientists at the University of York, performed structural determination of an LPMO-oligosaccharide complex, giving detailed insights into the mechanism of action of these enzymes.

Analysis revealed the mechanism by which LPMOs interact with saccharide substrates. The team also uncovered electronic and structural features of the enzyme active site, showing how LPMOs orchestrate the reaction of oxygen with polysaccharide chains.

The research is part of an ongoing study of a recently discovered family of enzymes produced by fungi and bacteria capable of breaking down cellulose-based materials. Understanding the chemistry behind these processes will help scientists recreate and improve them for industrial production of biofuels.

Microbial production of fuels has gained a lot of attention lately. Various industries, especially the food sector, often have waste streams rich in carbohydrates which could serve as alternative feedstock for such bioprocesses. The dairy industry is a good example, where large amounts of cheese whey or various processed forms thereof, are generated.

Jianming Liu of the Technical University of Denmark generated a Lactococcus lactis strain which produces ethanol as its sole product from the lactose contained in residual whey permeate (RWP), by introducing lactose catabolism into a L. lactis strain CS4435, where the carbon flow has been directed towards ethanol instead of lactate.

To achieve growth and ethanol production on RWP, the team added corn steep liquor hydrolysate (CSLH) as the nitrogen source. The outcome was an efficient ethanol production. The combination of a low-cost medium from industrial waste streams and an efficient cell factory, would make the developed process industrially interesting.

The results demonstrate that it is possible to achieve sustainable bioconversion of waste products from the dairy industry (RWP) and corn milling industry (CSLH) to ethanol. The process shows great potential for commercial use.