Biofuels articles from across Nature Portfolio

The study develops a framework to analyse instability in biogas systems processing organic waste. It identifies key instability factors, examines their interactions, and proposes a three-stage evolution model, offering insights into maintaining stable biogas production.

Upcycling plastic waste into valuable resources without solvents, precious metals, or additional H₂ under mild conditions has remained challenging. Here, the authors report a catalyst based on Al₂O₃ beads and zeolite ZSM-5 for the conversion of polyethylene into gasoline-range C₄ − C₁₂ hydrocarbons with a selectivity of 98% and yields of > 71% within 1.5 h at 260 °C.

A pangenome reference for the phenotypically diverse crop sorghum aims to help accelerate future efforts to breed crops that are better adapted to changing environments.

Turning industrial lignin waste into useful chemicals is vital for sustainable biorefineries, but processing creates stubborn carbon bonds. A disordered mesoporous zeolite can break these bonds efficiently, releasing many more aromatic products while remaining stable.

Species recovery, cancer-preventing vaccines and progress in developing renewable-energy sources are just some of the positive developments that have happened this year so far.

Converting lignin into chemicals faces scalability limitations, whereas using lignin in its polymeric form in materials enables macro-scale utilization of lignin. This material-centric approach can help to manage high lignin volumes, address scalability challenges and stabilize prices in biorefinery ecosystems.

Ayush Agarwal describes how liquid quench sampling can be used for monitoring biogas sampling to improve the quality of the gas.

Mass air travel connects countries and allows building of research or academic communities, but more sustainable fuels need to be produced to address carbon emissions.

Large scale cellulosic biofuel production involves complex interactions between biomass supply, biorefineries and the networks that connect them. New fine-scale spatially explicit modelling seeks to better understand how these components could best integrate with carbon capture to minimize greenhouse gas emissions and optimize biofuel supply chains.