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It’s touted as a superior renewable fuel but challenges have stymied the industrial-scale production of biobutanol. Now, however, Dupont and BP have teamed to develop and commercialize the fuel. This comes as scientists announce advancements in the design of process technologies and the engineering of microbes aimed at improving the economics of mass-producing biobutanol.

Starting in the 1960s, the growth of the petroleum industry and the cheaper cost of producing butanol from petroleum products rather than renewable feedstocks made the biobased butanol plant obsolete. The last significant vestige of the industry—a facility in South Africa—ceased its operations in the early 1980s. But rising oil prices and concerns surrounding climate change and national security have rejuvenated interest, research and development into biobutanol. Although the primary use for the alcohol is as an industrial solvent, it offers several advantages over ethanol as a transportation fuel. Since the molecule contains four carbons compared with the two of...

Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies. The result burns. And when Henry Ford...

Another alcohol, butanol, is a much better renewable fuel, says the president of BP Biofuels. Alternative fuels such as ethanol could help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and decrease oil imports, but so far these biofuels only make up a small fraction of fuel use. One of the biggest challenges to ramping up ethanol use is distributing it. That's because ethanol can't be transported in the same pipelines used to distribute gasoline. What's more, ethanol delivers far less energy than gasoline does on a gallon-for-gallon basis. Philip New, president of BP Biofuels, a recently created company within the giant British oil producer,...

GBL has developed a proprietary library of thermophiles and thermostable enzymes for a variety of applications Green Biologics (GBL), an Oxfordshire (UK) biotechnology company, has received £560,000 (US$1.1 million) in funding to support the development of its fuel biobutanol product—Butafuel—from cellulosic biomass. The Department of Trade and Industry-led Technology Program is providing £250,000 (US$494,000), and shareholder investors and business angels are providing the rest. Using its library of thermophiles and thermostable enzymes, GBL has isolated a cocktail of thermophilic microorganisms for the rapid enzymatic hydrolysis and release of fermentable sugars from biomass. The company plans to integrate this patented hydrolysis...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- DuPont Co. shares gained as much as 5% Wednesday as Wall Street weighed long-term prospects of the chemical giant's partnership with BP to make biobutanol, an alternative to corn-based ethanol in the red-hot fuel additive market. DuPont's stock finished up $1.70 at $41.94, joining a broad, triple-digit rally by the Dow industrials after investors initially gave the biobutanol news a lukewarm reception in the prior session. BP's shares added $1.31, or 2%, to $67.01. DuPont said in a conference call Tuesday that butanol, which can be derived from sugar beets, will be marketed in the U.K....