The world’s slowly bidding farewell to fossil fuels, in a bid to use cleaner and greener fuels, that don’t punch those devastating holes in our environment. Now, the Department of Biology & Biochemistry study has a new-found interest in algae growing in Roman Baths that can be used to produce biodiesel by extracting oil from algae cells. Growing algae as such could help boost the wide-scale production of biofuels, which could soon turn into the next best way to power up our lives in future.

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No-one probably thought of mixing up a bit of water, sunlight and carbon dioxide to make fuel before, until now. Joule Unlimited has come up with concept that has received Patent No. 7,794,969 recently. The firm developed an engineered form of cynobacteria, blue - green algae basically, growing in water that secretes biodiesel fuel, all with the help of waste carbon dioxide and water. According to Joule, this can be done in glass bioreactors, to produce biodiesel directly. Using two enzymes with cyanobacteria, the process creates an organism that can create hydrocarbons or chemicals. The system for now is being tested to create diesel and ethanol.

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Drinking and driving certainly isn’t encouraged, though a bit of alcohol in your car’s fuel tank seems just ideal. Well, at least that’s what the guys at Edinburgh Napier University's Biofuel Research Center think. Researchers have come up with butanol biofuel from whiskey by-products. And if you just love your scotch on the rocks and worry that too much whiskey will be wasted for cars, you really need to think again! The researches haven’t actually been pouring bottles of whiskey into fuel tanks. What they’ve been doing instead, is using by-products of whiskey, including pot ale, a fluid coming from distillery equipment, left over grains, and is made in a process that the World Wars used to make explosives.

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Though biofuels are an acceptable alternative to conventional fossil fuels, their production is not commercialized on a large scale due to various problems associated with them such as disposal of the waste generated. Joule Biotechnologies has invented a new concept in making biofuels which provides all the benefits of biofuels without their problems. This method uses “solar walls” which capture photons from the light and provide them to the proprietary micro organisms. These micro organisms are specially modified by the company so that they use the energy available from photosynthesis to make fuels rather than growing themselves. This method uses a technique called ‘helioculture’ which integrates the photons with available CO2 and water. And that’s not all, this technique can even use impure water and it does not generate any waste.

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The kitchen is where most household wastes are produced. These need to be disposed smartly and in a proper way. Designers Victor Massip and Laurent Lebot of Faltazi have designed a conceptual system where water is recycled and waste is broken down by worms inside the kitchen itself.

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Virginia Gardine has taking poo to the next level, literally! She is the woman behind the innovative design of LooWatt, a toilet that converts excreta to energy. To begin with, LooWatt is made of 90% horse dung and features a biodegradable lining that stores excrement in a sealed, odor-free container. Once full, the container has to be emptied in an outdoor biodigestor, which in exchange provides a free source of biofuel for cooking. This low-cost mechanical eco commode encourages people to trade in their waste for biofuel and who would have thought excreta could do that! This design may be useful in many developing countries where installation of sewage systems is impossible, and improper waste disposal spreads many devastating waterborne diseases.

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Africa is a place with lots of sun and also lots of need for some clean and good water. So adding one and one together, a company launched the SOLAQUA which is a useful device. It is going to be used as a water disinfection unit in the rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. This device will obtain infra-red and ultra-violet rays from the sun and will utilize them to eliminate pathogens of contaminated water.

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Singaporean researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have devised a way to convert carbon dioxide into clean-burning biofuel methanol, using a safe, non-toxic process. This breakthrough scientific discovery was printed in the chemistry journal, Angewandte Chemie. Scientists have been able to make carbon dioxide react with a stable organocatalyst called N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) under mild conditions in dry air. A dash of silica and a touch of hydrogen are added in, where the entire mixture is subjected to hydrolysis to produce the methanol. More addition to the good news is that NHC is available in abundance. So have humans finally found an answer to Global Warming?

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Sony Japan has been busy producing eco-friendly products and the latest eye-catching one is a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) battery. This was displayed at the International Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Expo in Tokyo last month. The battery is used for charging small electronic devices like mobile phones or digital music players and cameras with two USB ports for charging. The International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Dangerous Goods Panel (DGP) has also voted to allow passengers to carry and use micro fuel cells and methanol fuel cartridges on board flights to power small electronic devices. This was considered, as methanol is a toxic and flammable gas.

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In India, a petroleum firm is all geared up to serve purified water at the company's gas stations. A green twist to this simple venture is that the water sold will actually be a byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells. Based in Mumbai, Bharat Petroleum has come up with this innovative plan to make 'green' purified water available to almost every corner of the country. It is estimated that for every 1,000 MW of energy, about 1 million metric tons of clean water will flow out. Now that's some thirst-quenching information as studies state that about 1,600 Indians die every day as a result of water-borne diseases.

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Rotterdam has now finished hosting the world's first international championship for fuel cell powered racers from August 22 - 23. This new zero-emission race was open for all fuel cell single seaters. The competition had just one rule zero emissions, presently Formula One cars gain speed to over 200 miles per hour, whereas Formula Zero cars at the moment, reach just over 30 miles per hour. Each team's entry was powered by a commercial fuel cell that produces electricity from hydrogen.

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The rage in biofuels is set to get heated up even more, a University of Northern Colorado researcher has received the go ahead to study the tropical copaiba tree’s (which is also known as the diesel tree) oil producing seeds in order to understand if theses genes can be put into other plants or trees. The idea isn’t a new one since we all know that ethanol is grown and now used on a small scale as an alternative fuel. The difference with this idea is to get more trees or even grass to produce oleoresin, the use of oleoresin as a substitute for diesel isn’t new. I wonder if diesel is such an environmentally friendly solution. After all it is the reason cities smog levels are on the rise.

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After frying cutlets and fries oil from McDonald's in Philippines is used by the Makati Police Department in Manila to run their cars. Currently under evaluation but if the six month study is a a success, then 60 percent diesel and 40 percent McDonald’s cooking oil could become the standard fuel used by the Makati Police force. According to the Manila Times, the PNP-Bio Diesel Program will save the police department $22 each time the fill-up as compared to current gas-prices. That equivalent to more than $11,000 a year when spread across 10 police cars.

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Brazil sugarcane workers are soon to feel the corporate axe, Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) said 80% of the 500,000 jobs would be gone within three years and admitted that moving to a tractor-based system would cause pain and upheaval for its migrant workforce. Behind the move to phase out sugar cane cutters are tales of exploitation that have damaged the image of Brazilian biofuels in big importing countries such as Sweden and potentially in Britain, where the government has mandated that 2.5% of all petrol come from biofuels. The condition of sugar workers was rarely noticed when the commodity was exported for sugar but the position has changed now that Brazil is the world's second-largest exporter of sugar-based ethanol to use as a biofuel in petrol. Sugar cane cutters who have been working Brazil's land since 1525, when Portuguese colonialists first experimented with growing the crop, are to make way for mechanization. Manual labor is also blamed for poor environmental practices such as crop wastage and the burning of stubble.

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Environmentalists today want giant corporations to look for alternative energy resources in trash. Until now, looking for bio fuel meant that precious food crops could become scarce since corporations would want to make the most from it. The best alternative suggested is in converting garbage into bio-fuel, taking care that agricultural waste is only used. Startups like US based Mascoma and Coskata and in Brazil by Brenco and KiOR have already set up refineries that refine waste products like corn stover and sugarcane bagassedo. Coskata's first biorefineries will use currently available feedstock — wood chips, sugarcane waste and municipal trash. The company estimates that municipal waste could be used to produce 8-10 billion gallons of fuel annually. Industrial waste gases off of steel mills could provide another 10 billion gallons, those gases are exactly what Coskata's microbes could eat. They're burning bug food. Coskata is actively approaching steel producers to turn those gases into fuel.

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