Researchers with the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) have employed a promising technique for improving the ability of cellulase enzymes to operate at advantageously high temperatures.

JBEI researchers have developed an enzyme-free ionic liquid pretreatment of cellulosic biomass that makes it easier to recover fermentable sugars for biofuels and to recycle the ionic liquid.

Using an ultrahigh-precision microscopy technique, Berkeley Lab
researchers have uncovered a way to improve the collective catalytic activity of enzyme cocktails on cellulosic biomass, boosting the yields of sugars for the production of advanced biofuels.

The Department of Energy has renewed funding for the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) for another five years. JBEI is a multi-institutional partnership for advanced biofuels research led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Plants are being engineered with low xylan content and a higher proportion of cellulosic sugars for the production of advanced biofuels.

Using the tools of synthetic biology, JBEI researchers are engineering healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for the production of clean, green and renewable advanced biofuels.

DNA sequences and statistical models have been unveiled that greatly increase the reliability and precision by which microbes can be engineered.

Artificial photosynthesis and other new technologies based on
metalloenzyme catalysis will benefit from a technique for simultaneously collecting both diffraction and spectroscopy data demonstrated by Berkeley Lab and SLAC researchers at the world’s most powerful X-ray laser.

A collaboration by researchers with the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has shown that blending different feedstocks and milling the mixture into flour or pellets has significant potential for helping to make biofuels a cost-competitive transportation fuel technology.

Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU) is the West Coast’s only state-of-the-art facility providing industry-scale test beds for laboratory discoveries in advanced biofuels research. ABPDU’s facilities are designed to speed the commercialization of advanced biofuels by hitting the scalability “sweet spot” between bench science and commercial technology.