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AbstractBio-syngas from gasification of sugarcane bagasse is one of the most promising sources for renewable energy. As an agriculture-based biomass, sugarcane bagasse has a high content of moisture (46-52%), fibrous (43-52%) and low bulk density (80-120kg/m3). This quality of bagasse will tend to initiate agglomeration and cause de-fluidization. It will disturb the gasification process and finally will decrease yield and quality of syn-gas. Its chracteristics in low quality can be improved by pretreatment, i.e., torrefaction process, addressed by slow heating of biomass on wet or dry conditions on atmosphere pressure for 1hour before it is used as feedstock gasification.This preliminary work features an experimental investigation of torrefaction process of Indonesian sugarcane cane bagasse. Temperature of torrefaction varies from 150, 175, 200, 225, 250 and 300°C. For bagasse gasification process, the optimum temperature of dry torrefaction is 150°C. At this temperature, yield of syngas will higher than other torrefaction temperature. Temperature of dry torrefaction will give energy saving opportunities than that's of wet torrefaction (180°C, 1 hr).Analysis ultimate and proximate also indicate that sugarcane bagasse with temperature torrefaction 150°C give better result than other torrefaction's temperature in high content of hydrogen and low content of carbon.

Bioenergy is considered a sustainable substitute to fossil-fuel resources and the development of a prudent combination of renewable and innovative conversion technologies are essential for the valorization and effective conversion of biowaste to value-added commodities. Here, a negative pressure-induced carbonization process was proposed for the valorization of lignin-enriched biowaste precursor to bio-oil and environmental materials (biochar) at various temperatures. The high heating values (HHV) of the as-prepared biochars from the lignin enriched precursor under negative pressure (low-medium vacuum) were within 25.9-31.5 MJ/kg, which matched satisfactorily to the commercial charcoal. Whereas, the bio-oils produced from the lignin enriched precursor under vacuum conditions was a blend of complex aromatic and straight-chain hydro-carbons, including aldehyde, ketone, phenol, and furans, exhibiting ability as potential heating-oil with HHV within 21.2-28.2 MJ/kg. Moreover, the biochars produced under vacuum environments at higher temperature showed greater stability (22.5-35.9%) than those produced under N2 atmosphere.

Atmospheric methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas, and its mole fraction has more than doubled since the preindustrial era. Fossil fuel extraction and use are among the largest anthropogenic sources of CH4 emissions, but the precise magnitude of these contributions is a subject of debate. Carbon-14 in CH4 (14CH4) can be used to distinguish between fossil (14C-free) CH4 emissions and contemporaneous biogenic sources; however, poorly constrained direct 14CH4 emissions from nuclear reactors have complicated this approach since the middle of the 20th century. Moreover, the partitioning of total fossil CH4 emissions (presently 172 to 195 teragrams CH4 per year) between anthropogenic and natural geological sources (such as seeps and mud volcanoes) is under debate; emission inventories suggest that the latter account for about 40 to 60 teragrams CH4 per year. Geological emissions were less than 15.4 teragrams CH4 per year at the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,600 years ago, but that period is an imperfect analogue for present-day emissions owing to the large terrestrial ice sheet cover, lower sea level and extensive permafrost. Here we use preindustrial-era ice core 14CH4 measurements to show that natural geological CH4 emissions to the atmosphere were about 1.6 teragrams CH4 per year, with a maximum of 5.4 teragrams CH4 per year (95 per cent confidence limit)—an order of magnitude lower than the currently used estimates. This result indicates that anthropogenic fossil CH4 emissions are underestimated by about 38 to 58 teragrams CH4 per year, or about 25 to 40 per cent of recent estimates. Our record highlights the human impact on the atmosphere and climate, provides a firm target for inventories of the global CH4 budget, and will help to inform strategies for targeted emission reductions.

Code and data for the paper "Carbon neutrality should not be the end goal: Lessons for institutional climate action from U.S. higher education" File descriptions: 'HEI_analysis_OneEarth.Rmd' is the code with improved annotation and colorblind-friendly figures. All other data files are provided as excel and csv for convenience. 'working_master_data' contains data from the Second Nature reporting platform on emissions by category for each institution analyzed in the paper (measured in metric tons). All adjustments necessary to fill in the data gaps in this file are documented at the beginning of 'HEI_analysis'. 'offsets' contains data on the type(s) of offsets purchased by each school in their carbon neutral year (measured in metric tons). This data was assembled from a variety of sources which are documented at the beginning of 'HEI_analysis'. 'carbon_neutral_years' contains yearly counts of higher education neutrality goals that were reported to Second Nature as of November 2020.

This Renewable Energy Data Book for 2010 provides facts and figures on energy in general, renewable electricity in the United States, global renewable energy development, wind power, solar energy, geothermal power, biopower, hydropower, advanced water power, hydrogen, renewable fuels, and clean energy investments.

The increasing demand for lignocellulosic biomass for the production of biofuels provides value to vegetative plant tissue and leads to a paradigm shift for optimizing plant architecture in bioenergy crops. Plant height (PHT) is among the most important biomass yield components and is the focus of this review, with emphasis on the energy grasses maize (Zea mays) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). We discuss the scientific advances in the identification of PHT quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and the understanding of pathways and genes controlling PHT, especially gibberellins and brassinosteroids. We consider pleiotropic effects of QTLs or genes affecting PHT on other agronomically important traits and, finally, we discuss strategies for applying this knowledge to the improvement of dual-purpose or dedicated bioenergy crops.

Production of fuels and chemicals through microbial fermentation of plant material is a desirable alternative to petrochemical-based production. Fermentative production of biorenewable fuels and chemicals requires the engineering of biocatalysts that can quickly and efficiently convert sugars to target products at a cost that is competitive with existing petrochemical-based processes. It is also important that biocatalysts be robust to extreme fermentation conditions, biomass-derived inhibitors, and their target products. Traditional metabolic engineering has made great advances in this area, but synthetic biology has contributed and will continue to contribute to this field, particularly with next-generation biofuels. This work reviews the use of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology in biocatalyst engineering for biorenewable fuels and chemicals production, such as ethanol, butanol, acetate, lactate, succinate, alanine, and xylitol. We also examine the existing challenges in this area and discuss strategies for improving biocatalyst tolerance to chemical inhibitors.

This work aimed to characterize charcoal, palm oil charcoal, eucalyptus bark charcoal, and basic oxygen furnace dust (BOFD) to produce self-reducing briquettes. It also intended to investigate the briquettes reduction kinetics, as the activation energy, and the controller mechanism. This approach using these biomass charcoal and steelmaking dust residue has not been reported in the literature. The BOFD was characterized by XRD, SEM-EDS, and ICP-OES. It was determined the content of ash, volatile materials, and fixed carbon in the charcoals. The briquettes were made with a stoichiometric percentage of carbon, 25%, and 50% excess of carbon. The reduction was conducted on thermobalance in the temperature range of 700−1100 °C. Isothermals were applied in each 50 °C with 25 min long to apply the kinetic method Forced Stepwise isothermal analysis (FSIA). The results showed that the BOFD is composed of 52.97 wt% total iron as magnetite, wustite and metallic iron. The kinetics analysis showed that the reduction of the self-reducing briquettes took place in two steps: the chemical reaction as controller mechanism at 700−800 °C with apparent activation energy between 62–138.6 kJ mol−1, and diffusion as controller mechanism with activation energies in the range of 333.4 kJ mol−1 and 450 kJ mol−1 at 850−950 °C, showing comparatively with charcoal that the palm oil charcoal and eucalyptus charcoal could be applied in self-briquettes reduction.