It's not all li-ion battery tech that the federal government is givng support to these days; biofuels are getting some tax dollars as well. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that six biofuel projects at universities around the U.S. will be getting up to $4.4 million in funding. The good news is that the money is for work in non-food cellulosic ethanol research. Full details are available after the jump, but here are some snippets:

• University of Toledo: For "development of cost-effective biocatalysts capable of increasing product yield in the biological conversion of lignocellulosic biomass."
• Steven's Institute of Technology: "To evaluate and demonstrate a novel microchannel reactor to reform pyrolysis oil to synthesis gas (syngas)."
• Montana State University: "To evaluate the oil content of algae cultures available to the universities and identify populations that naturally have higher rates of oil production."
• University of Georgia: "To develop novel approaches to supply nutrients to oil-producing algal systems resulting in cost-effective algae-biofuel production systems.
• University of Maine: "To determine the optimal yield and productivity of high potential bacteria at moderate to high temperatures.
• Georgia Tech Research Corporation: "To evaluate and model the reaction kinetics in two experimental gasifiers using forest residues under different processing conditions."

[Source: DOE]

Bio-powered flight is not the exclusive dream of San Francisco startup Solazyme. There have bee recent bio-flight advancements from Virgin Airlines, which flew from London to Amsterdam using biofuel in February, and the BioJet I. But Solazyme announced it has reached a small milestone that could make greener flying easier for everyone: it has created jet fuel from algae.

This new bio-jet fuel source is not up for mass production quite yet. The first test batch was just 5 to 10 gallons, but the company said that it "had passed eleven tests necessary for use in aviation" at the Southwest Research Institute (a list of those tests is available from Solazyme). Should Solazyme's jet fuel become popular with airlines - and it might, if the company's estimate that the algae fuel would be price competitive with $40- to $80-per-barrel oil - then "potential output will only be limited by the availability of feedstock."

Earlier this year, Solazyme drove an algae biodiesel-fueled car at Sundance

[Source: SFGate, Solazyme]

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a "novel technology" that uses "commercially advantageous" strains of algae to make biofuels. While work on algae and biofuels is taking place around the world, UW might be on to something here, at least if we trust the investment firm Allied Minds. Allied Minds announced yesterday that it will create a new company, AXI, LLC, with the school to commercialize these strains and make biofuel with them.

The AXI technology is not limited to the strains the UW is working on. According the the UW press release (available after the jump and in PDF), biology professor Rose Ann Cattolico, who developed the technology, said the methodology can "help any algal production system improve its output of inexpensive, oil-rich algae as the raw material for the generation of biofuel."

[Source: Allied Minds, Inc.]

Inventure Chemical and Seambiotic have announced a joint venture to create a pilot commercial plant which will use algae to produce an array of chemicals and biofuels. The plant uses CO₂ as feedstock for the algae. Inventure Chemicals comes into the partnership with knowledge about second-generation biofuel manufacturing, as it has facilities in operation in Seattle, and Seambiotic brings its newly developed strains of microalgae.

These microalgae were developed a process that they call "algae CO₂ sequestering" in which the strains were fed with exhaust fumes from their power generator's fumes, giving important yields in algae rich in carbohydrates and fatty acids. The carbs can be used to produce ethanol while the fatty acids can be made into biodiesel. This allows Seambiotic to state that their process not only produces biofuels but also can help coal-fired power generators to meet CO₂ reduction mandates. This method could potentially use the self-generated biofuel to make these generators work, closing the loop.

[Source: Seambiotic]