Fermentation revolution?

Trash becomes treasure as bio-waste yields valuable acetone and isopropanol

07-Feb-2024 - In a major stride towards sustainable industrial fermentation, a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands, has unveiled pioneering advancements in the purification of isopropanol and acetone from the fermentation of waste gases. The study, published in ...

Syensqo invests in Bioeutectics, a start-up producing green solvents

The investment will contribute to bring more sustainable products and processes to market

29-Jan-2024 - Syensqo Ventures, the group’s venture capital fund, participated in the $2.1 million financing round for Bioeutectics, alongside Fen Ventures ,Atento Capital and SOSV (IndieBio). Founded in 2019, Bioeutectics provides natural and high-performance solvents that make industrial products and ...

How to make it easier to turn plant waste into biofuels

Innovative process to rapidly dissolve plant fibers

16-Jan-2020 - Researchers have developed a new process that could make it much cheaper to produce biofuels such as ethanol from plant waste and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Their approach, featuring an ammonia-salt based solvent that rapidly turns plant fibers into sugars needed to make ethanol, works well ...

Gaining control over soft-molecule synthesis

16-Jan-2019 - By gaining control over shape, size and composition during synthetic molecule assembly, researchers can begin to probe how these factors influence the function of soft materials. Finding these answers could help advance virology, drug delivery development and the creation of new materials. "We ...

Large-scale and sustainable 3D printing with the most ubiquitous natural material

08-Jun-2018 - Cellulose is one of the most abundant and broadly distributed organic compound and industrial by-product on Earth. Yet, despite decades of extensive research, the bottom-up use of cellulose to fabricate 3D objects is still plagued with problems that restrict its practical applications: ...

Creating complex molecules in just a few steps

12-Mar-2018 - Researchers have found a way to convert single bonds between carbon and hydrogen atoms in a chemical molecule into carbon-carbon bonds. This so-called C-H activation is considered a promising strategy for producing complex molecules from simple starting materials in just a few steps. The main ...

Promising biobased alternatives to polar aprotic solvents

07-Dec-2017 - A report from Wageningen Food & Biobased Research commissioned by RIVM (the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) has revealed a number of promising biobased alternatives to the controversial polar aprotic solvents NMP, DMAc and DMF. Wageningen Food & Biobased Research ...

Next generation solvent contributes to next generation biofuel production from biomass

05-Dec-2017 - The first-generation biofuel, industrialized, ethanol, is produced from foodstuffs like maize, and thus poses great concern about a possible future shortage of food. It is therefore necessary to produce ethanol from non-food biomass like weeds, waste paper, paper cup, etc. (second-generation ...

Bio-inspired catalysts that work in water open door to greener chemical processes

09-May-2017 - Université Laval researchers have developed catalysts that, like enzymes present in living cells, are able to function efficiently in water. This discovery shows that it may be possible to substantially reduce the use of toxic and non-recyclable organic solvents in a host of chemical reactions, ...

Was the secret spice in primal gene soup a thickener?

12-Oct-2016 - The original recipe for gene soup may have been simple -- rain, a jumble of common molecules, warm sunshine, and nighttime cooling. Then add a pinch of thickener. The last ingredient may have helped gene-like strands to copy themselves in puddles for the first time ever, billions of years ago ...