Given the biomass of crocodiles in many subtropical and tropical wetlands and their capacity for ingesting large numbers of fruits we consider it likely that crocodilians function as significant seed dispersal agents in many freshwater ecosystems.
or more of biomass annually enough to produce biofuels that could displace 30 percent or more of our current petroleum production.
pathway of lignin a major component of plant secondary cell walls that limits the conversion of biomass to energy.
As a result the direct conversion of cellulose to glucose from un-pretreated plant biomass increased fourfold from 18%in the control plants to 78%in the cse mutant plants.
A reduced amount of lignin or an adapted lignin structure can contribute to a more efficient conversion of biomass to energy.
so that they can perform photosynthesis. From this they were able to determine how much biomass the ecosystem in question accumulates during or after an extreme weather event.
And all wood-and biomass-burning stoves were replaced with cleaner modern stoves that use electricity or natural gas for energy.
This delay in the modelled Indian ocean warming is likely due to the presence of atmospheric aerosols generated through transport emissions biomass burning and industrial smog together with natural emissions of sea salt
a biomass for water purificationin addition to tomato peels Mr Ramakrishna also explored the viability of using the peels of apples for water purification as apple peels are easily available as biowaste from food processing industries
and other wetland big boys that produce a lot of plant biomass and carbon Mitsch says. Once carbon ends up in wetland soil it can also remain there for hundreds to thousands of years because of waterlogged conditions that inhibit microbial decomposition.
because a lot of plant biomass goes in and is converted to energy for the ants says Frank Aylward a bacteriology graduate student and researcher with the Great lakes Bioenergy Research center.
Aylward is the lead author of a study identifying new fungal enzymes that could help break down cellulosic--or non-food--biomass for processing to fuel.
We really tried as thoroughly as possible to characterize the biomass degrading enzymes produced Aylward says.
and match them with others that we already know about to achieve even better biomass degradation.
and purify biomass-degrading enzymes synthetically. New enzymes could be added to known combinations and tested for their ability to break down biofuel feedstocks.
They hope that a better understanding of these complex systems will help them share their biomass-degrading secrets with bioenergy researchers.
#Black locust tree shows promise for biomass potentialresearchers from the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of Illinois evaluating the biomass potential of woody crops are taking a closer look at the black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) which showed a higher yield
It's typically been tough to break down the biomass in woody plants to make it useful for alcohol production.
Robinia pseudoacacia is showing great potential as a biomass crop for Midwestern energy production out-yielding the next closest species by nearly threefold Kling said.
The findings suggest that calls for an increased reliance on forest biomass be reevaluated and that forest carbon analyses are incomplete
Woody biomass which includes trees grown on plantations managed natural forests and logging waste makes up about 75 percent of global biofuel production.
and dead biomass as well as the belowground organic soil horizon mineral soil horizon and roots Friedland said. Co-authors included Dartmouth's Thomas Buchholz a former postdoctoral student and Claire Hornig a recent undergraduate student and researchers from the University of Vermont Lund University in Sweden and the Vermont Department
and biomass harvesting on elemental cycling processes in high-elevation forests in the Northeastern United states. He considers many elements including carbon trace elements such as lead and major elements such as nitrogen and calcium.
which humans use land and biomass. HANPP stands for Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production and provides information about the impact of human activity upon the biosphere.
HANPP reveals the percentage of the annual plant-based biomass production that is coopted by humans through land use activities such as agriculture
While global consumption has increased dramatically the amount of biomass harvested and used per capita has dropped significantly.
Furthermore efficiency of conversion processes from biomass to products such as food or fibre has grown. However as the authors of the study point out there are major drawbacks:
and soft wood) with ultrasound consistently enhances the chemical reactions necessary to convert the biomass into high-value fuels and chemicals.
In one example of ultrasound's positive impact on biofuel production the Iowa State researchers found that they could significantly increase the efficiency of removing lignin from biomass in solution.
Commonly enzymes or chemicals are used to remove it from biomass and allow the freed sugars to be dissolved for further processing into biofuel.
In the raw form in which the biomass arrives at the laboratory it is regarded as a problematic and therefore low-value fuel.
The heat treatment has broken down the fibrous structure of the biomass. According to Skreiberg this has two benefits.
Pellets of torrefied biomass can withstand getting wet just like coal and are very stable under storage.
Also known as elephant grass miscanthus is one of a new generation of renewable energy crops that can be converted into renewable energy by being burned in biomass power stations.
Through a combination of the forest biomass removal itself and the resulting climate change which feeds back on the ecosystem productivity the researchers calculate that biomass on the ground could decline by up to 65 per cent for the period 2041-2060brazil faces a huge
Jody Endres University of Illinois professor of energy and environmental law and chair of the Council on Sustainable Biomass production (CSBP) says standards are needed
Even if the biomass goes to the biorefinery with the right lignin-to-sugar content and the right amount of water if you had to add nitrogen to produce it
A biomass farmer doesn't know where to begin to apply it to their farming practices.
For the past three years the Council for Sustainable Biomass production has been developing a standard that the European commission will recognize
Endres said that there are still a lot of questions about how to implement standards for biomass. It's important to match the goal of regulation with
or climate mitigation benefits or that we're having increased energy security people may still be suspicious of biomass fuels
#Recipe for low-cost, biomass-derived catalyst for hydrogen productionin a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Energy
The team tested a wide variety of sources of biomass--leaves stems flowers seeds and legumes--with particular interest in those with high protein content
These findings thus open up new prospects for combining inexpensive biomass and transition metals#to produce catalysts for electro-catalytic reactions.
That means the plants contain significantly more biomass for fuel production he said. If you look at a slide of the cells under a microscope anyone can understand it.
This is especially true for the cellulase enzymes used to release fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels.
Increasing the sugar yields from cellulosic biomass to help bring down biofuel production costs is essential for the widespread commercial adoption of these fuels.
The enzymatic breakdown of cellulosic biomass into fermentable sugars has been the Achilles heel of biofuels a key economic bottleneck says chemical engineer Harvey Blanch one of the leaders of this research.
Synthesized from the sugars in the cellulosic biomass of grasses other non-food crops and agricultural waste advanced biofuels represent a sustainable nonpolluting source of transportation fuel that would also generate domestic jobs and revenue.
Unlike the simple starch-based glucose sugars in corn and other grains the sugars in cellulosic biomass are complex polysaccharides that must be extricated from a tough polymer called lignin
The new PALM-based technique should allow enzyme cock tails to be matched optimally to the structural organizations of particular biomass substrates such as grass
JPL researcher Sassan Saatchi is using UAVSAR to study the structure biomass and diversity of tropical cloud forests in the Peruvian Andes
Zhang's method can be performed using any source of biomass. The discovery is featured a editor's choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
This amounts to a significant additional benefit to hydrogen production and it reduces the overall cost of producing hydrogen from biomass.
Obstacles to commercial production of hydrogen gas from biomass previously included the high cost of the processes used and the relatively low quantity of the end product.
or individuals claiming that new biomass varieties will all be invasive species Endres said. And to the extent that the industry has a solid regulation that governs it it creates certainty within the industry
--and a key barrier to deconstructing biomass into fuels. For bioenergy researchers the size of the peach genome makes it ideal to serve as a plant model for studying genes found in related genomes such as poplar one of the DOE JGI's Plant Flagship Genomes
and develop methods for improving plant biomass yield for biofuels. One gene we're interested in is the so-called evergreen locus in peaches
In theory it could be manipulated in poplar to increase the accumulation of biomass. The publication comes three years after the International Peach Genome Consortium publicly released the draft assembly of the annotated peach genome on the DOE JGI Plant portal Phytozome. net and on other websites.
This is the conclusion of a study led by Universitat Autã noma de Barcelona (UAB) scientists in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) published recently in Biomass and Bioenergy.
Researchers at the UAB's Institute of Environmental science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) have analysed the potential of different species of microalgae for producing biodiesel comparing their growth production of biomass
and biodiesel are the only biofuels to have been produced in commercial quantities in the U s. to date the study committee found much greater potential in biofuels made from lignocellulosic biomass
The report finds that sufficient lignocellulosic biomass could be produced by 2050 to meet the goal of an 80 percent reduction in petroleum use
Tropical forests are less likely to lose biomass--plants and plant material--in response to greenhouse gas emissions over the twenty-first century than may previously have been thought suggests a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience.
#Biomass analysis tool is faster, more precisea screening tool from the U s. Department of energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) eases and greatly quickens one of the thorniest tasks in the biofuels industry:
NREL's new High-Throughput Analytical Pyrolysis tool (HTAP) can thoroughly analyze hundreds of biomass samples a day
That is potentially game changing for tree nurseries and the biomass industry. When it comes to making fuels out of trees crops grasses
or easy for enzymes to turn the biomass into sugars? Differences in cell walls are enormous
and choosing the right ones can make the difference between a profit and a loss for tree growers or between a fruitful or fruitless feedstock line for biomass companies.
Tool Can Pinpoint Phenotypesto find out the chemical composition of the cell walls companies have to sample large quantities of biomass
HTAP integrates a molecular beam mass spectrometer with the pyrolysis unit to quickly determine chemical signatures (phenotypes) on small amounts of biomass samples that can be used for among other things identifying the genes controlling the chemical makeup.
They discerned dozens of changes in transgenic biomass samples each slight genetic tweak corresponding with a slight difference in the amount of lignin in the sample.
Glass fiber disks are used to hold the biomass samples in the cups which are sent then back to NREL.
Any biomass feedstock type being used for serious biofuels production--chances are we've tested it.
A typical BECCS system converts woody biomass grass and other vegetation into electricity chemical products or fuels such as ethanol.
But according to the GCEP report major technical and economic hurdles must be overcome such as the relative inefficiency of biomass fuels and the high cost of carbon capture and storage (CCS.
and to recycle the revenues to subsidize captured emissions from biomass Ricci said. A carbon tax would put a price on CO2 emissions
if the biochar is made from waste biomass sustainably harvested crop residues or crops grown on abandoned land that has reverted not to forest.
But the tests used up to this point to measure those pools such as microbial biomass and particulate organic matter were labor intensive and expensive.
The legume-rye and rye cover crops produced approximately 25 percent more dry matter biomass than the mustard crops.
Simmons and his JBEI colleague Seema Singh director of JBEI's Biomass Pretreatment group led the JBEI/INL study in
which four biomass feedstocks representing the general classes of plants well-suited to serving as fuel crops were mixed
or pellets then pre-treated with 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (C2mim OAC) the ionic liquid used at JBEI as a benchmark for biomass processing.
and densification on the efficiency at which the complex polysaccharides in cellulosic biomass could be converted into fermentable sugars for fuel production.
Produced from the microbial fermentation of sugars in lignocellulosic biomass advanced biofuels are clean green and renewable
The sugars in lignocellulosic biomass however are complex polysaccharides that are embedded deeply within a very recalcitrant material called lignin.
and elsewhere have been studying biomass pretreatments with ionic liquids--environmentally benign organic salts often used as green chemistry substitutes for volatile organic solvents.
Researchers at INL have been investigating ways to increase the energy densities of biomass feedstocks and make delivery to refineries much more economical.
Populus a fast-growing perennial tree holds potential as a bioenergy crop due to its ability to produce large amounts of biomass on nonagricultural land.
The researchers found an uptick in growth in higher elevations of the region over the 13-year period with an almost eight-percent increase in live-tree biomass a measure of tree growth.
Individual species within the rain forest however differed--western redcedar biomass increased by four percent while shore pine declined by almost five percent.
Dr Angela Karp at Rothamsted Research who leads the BBSRC-funded BSBEC-Biomass project said#oewe are excited very about these results
#This work forms part of the BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre (BSBEC) where it is linked with other programmes aimed at improving the conversion of biomass to fuels.
The researchers measured the amount of biomass currently covering the study areas using the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO)--an aircraft loaded with state-of-the-art imaging systems (funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
which biomass maps were generated. The researchers selected the village of Justicia as a model for calculating how reserves of fuelwood could be reduced under different consumption scenarios.
They also showed that households using fuelwood would need to be reduced by 15 per cent a year for eight years until only 20 per cent of total households are using it before biomass stabilises to a sustainable level.
& Technology showed photovoltaics (PV) to be much more efficient than biomass at turning sunlight into energy to fuel a car.
Even the most efficient biomass-based pathway#requires 29 times more land than the PV-based alternative in the same locations the authors write.
In the current issue of Nature a team of researchers led by Michigan State university shows that marginal lands represent a huge untapped resource to grow mixed species cellulosic biomass plants grown specifically for fuel production
We estimate that using marginal lands for growing cellulosic biomass crops could provide up to 215 gallons of ethanol per acre with substantial greenhouse gas mitigation.
However this is the first study to provide an estimate for the greenhouse gas benefits as well as an assessment of the total potential for these lands to produce significant amounts of biomass he added.
and model biomass production that could grow enough feedstock to support a local biorefinery with a capacity of at least 24 million gallons per year.
This study shows that at least in some areas it is possible to remove a large part of the tree biomass from a watershed with a very minimal effect on the stream ecosystem he said.
Harvested biomass and nitrogen nitrous oxide emissions and nitrate leaching in the mid-soil profile and through tile drainage lines were measured all.
Prairie and miscanthus levels were lower due to harvest of the plant biomass (and nitrogen) each winter with no fertilizer nitrogen additions to replace it as occurred in corn
and greatly reduce nitrogen losses that have important environmental effects while providing a large biomass harvest.
In short an ideal source of biomass. The life of tobacco plants is short. They grow for around three to four months followed by flowering and then die.
They use their knowledge to get crops to yield a far greater amount of biomass.
#Tree seeds offer potential for sustainable biofuelstree seeds rather than biomass or fuel crop plants could represent an abundant source of renewable energy according to research published in the International Journal of Automotive technology and Management.
biomass resource for the production of automotive fuels in India. The use of tree seed oils as a source could have several additional benefits over vegetable seed oils including lower viscosity and greater volatility both
which accelerate plant biomass conversion into sugars and further into products such as bioethanol. The project's results include lignin-tolerant enzymes and enzyme cocktails for processing spruce straw corn cob and wheat bran.
Plant biomass was chosen as the raw material for the project since it contains lignocellulosic biomass which is an abundant raw material.
The commercialisation process of the second-generation bioethanol industry which uses lignocellulosic biomass instead of starch has reached critical momentum:
there are a total of 15 plants being constructed in Europe The americas and Asia. Lignocellulosic biomass use will substantially expand the market for industrial enzymes.
The total industrial enzyme market is currently worth approximately 2. 7 million euros per annum. The raw materials studied in the project were spruce straw corn cob
and wheat bran used as animal Feed in Finland the proportion of forest biomass and conifer biomass in particular is significant.
Lignocellulosic biomass consists of cellulose hemicellulose and lignin. Agricultural harvest waste contains large amounts of lignocellulosic biomass
which can be converted industrially into fermentable sugars with the help of enzymes. Microbes can then be used to produce various chemicals such as bioethanol from the sugars.
Lignocellulosic biomass contains substantial amounts of lignin which interferes with enzyme activity. The DISCO project produced new knowledge on the inactivating property of lignin
which helped scientists develop enzymes that tolerate lignin better. New information on enzymes and activities that break down hemicellulose vital for the efficient exploitation of plant biomass was obtained also during the project.
British scientists participating in the project determined the structural characteristics of various raw materials. This information can be used to select appropriate enzyme cocktails for raw materials
when upgrading plant biomass. The Dutch company Dyadic is currently commercialising the enzymes developed in the project.
and biomass of emerging bioenergy feedstocks such as miscanthus and switchgrass and that can be applied to improve food security and major cereal crops.
whether corn and perennial grassland fields in southern Wisconsin could provide both biomass for bioenergy production and bountiful bird habitat.
These grassland fields can also produce ample biomass for renewable fuels. Monica Turner UW-Madison professor of zoology and study lead author Peter Blank a postdoctoral researcher in her lab hope the findings help drive decisions that benefit both birds
and estimated the biomass yields possible and counted the total numbers of birds and bird species observed in them.
According to Blank and Turner the study is one of the first to examine grassland fields already producing biomass for biofuels
and other types of vegetation the new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
new findings indicate grassland fields may represent an acceptable tradeoff between creating biomass for bioenergy and providing habitat for grassland birds.
By locating biomass-producing fields near existing grasslands both birds and the biofuels industry can win.
They also add that the biomass yields calculated in the study may represent the low end of
since it was hitherto not possible to calculate the loss of the biomass at the forest edges and the higher emission of carbon dioxide.
According to this the percentage loss of stored biomass rises in inverse proportion to the size of the remaining rest of the forest.
or agriculture in future since the loss of biomass in these areas does not have as much of an effect.
Biomass increased at many tropical sites across the network. It is incredibly rewarding to work with a team of forest scientists from 78 research institutions around the world including four Smithsonian units Anderson-Teixeira said.
#Trees that can increase biomass productionthanks to biotechnology researchers at UPM have increased the production of woody species. This result is of great interest to the energy market.
biomass production of a forest plantation without altering its growth composition or the wood anatomy. These results have an important market value for the bioenergy sector
and Viviparous 1) that increases the development of sylleptic branching of woody species. Thus researchers have found a way of increasing biomass production of a poplar plantation.
The biotechnological procedure used by these researchers can guarantee the biomass sustainable production yields of woody species without affecting food demand.
Last summer they also measured the amount of grass both in terms of the density of stalks as well as above-and belowground biomass of samples.
Biomass was also higher in healthy marshes than recovering ones and much higher than in dying ones.
and termites) and about 60%comes from human activities like cattle breeding rice agriculture fossil fuel exploitation landfills and biomass burning.
Nitrous oxide (N2o) Nitrous oxide is emitted into the atmosphere from both natural (about 60%)and anthropogenic sources (approximately 40%)including oceans soil biomass burning fertilizer use and various industrial processes.
In particular the GEDI data will provide us with global-scale insights into how much carbon is being stored in the forest biomass.
biomass in forests. Its immediate predecessors are Goddard's Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESAT) and airborne Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor known as LVIS
From this information scientists will be able to estimate how much biomass the trees contain and in turn how much carbon they are storing.
and agricultural biomass data to create a robust model that compares different scenarios for 2050 including scenarios based on maintaining current trends.
analysis showsa new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass--the total material in leaves stems roots fruits grains
and modeling suggest that about 54 gigatons of carbon is converted into terrestrial plant biomass each year the researchers report.
This value has remained stable for the past several decades leading to the conclusion that it represents a planetary boundary--an upper limit on global biomass production the researchers wrote.
For example in Illinois a hybrid grass Miscanthus x giganteus without fertilizer or irrigation produced 10 to 16 tons of aboveground biomass per acre more than double the productivity of native prairie vegetation or corn.
And genetically modified no-till corn is more than five times as productive--in terms of total biomass generated per acre--as restored prairie in Wisconsin.
In Iceland for example an introduced species the nootka lupine produces four times as much biomass as the native boreal dwarf birch species it displaces.
And in India bamboo plantations produce about 40 percent more biomass than dry deciduous tropical forests.
which plant canopies convert solar radiation to biomass to estimate the theoretical limit of net primary production (NPP) on a global scale This newly calculated limit was roughly two orders of magnitude higher than the productivity of most current managed
For the U s. Department of energy which is developing biomass crops for biofuels production this knowledge could determine which genotypes--genetic makeup of an organism--of biomass crop may thrive better than others in certain environments.
Simmons and Seema Singh who directs JBEI's biomass pretreatment program are the corresponding authors of a paper describing this research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS.
The paper is titled Efficient biomass pretreatment using ionic liquids derived from lignin and hemicellulose. The lead author is Aaron Socha.
The cellulosic sugars stored in the biomass of grasses and other non-food crops and in agricultural waste can be used to make advanced biofuels that could substantially reduce the use of the fossil fuels responsible for the release of nearly 9 billion metric tons of excess carbon into the atmosphere each year.
More than a billion tons of biomass are produced annually in the United states alone and fuels from this biomass could be clean green
and renewable substitutes for gasoline diesel and jet fuel on a gallon-for-gallon basis. Unlike ethanol drop in transportation fuels derived from biomass have the potential to be dropped directly into today's engines
and infrastructures at high levels--greater than 50-percent--without negatively impacting performance. However if biofuels including cellulosic ethanol are to be a commercial success they must be cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
This means economic technologies must be developed for extracting fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass and synthesizing them into fuels and other valuable chemical products.
A major challenge has been that unlike the simple sugars in corn grain the complex polysaccharides in biomass are embedded deeply within a tough woody material called lignin.
Researchers at JBEI have been cost-effectively deconstructing biomass into fuel sugars by pre-treating the biomass with ionic liquids--salts that are composed entirely of paired ions
The ionic liquids that have emerged from this JBEI effort as a benchmark for biomass processing are based imidazolium molten salts
Imidazolium-based ionic liquids effectively and efficiently dissolve biomass and represent a remarkable platform for biomass pretreatment
The JBEI researchers tested the effectiveness of their bionic liquids as a pre-treatment for biomass deconstruction on switchgrass one of the leading potential crops for making liquid transportation fuels.
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