A prototype glucose battery inspired by the body’s metabolism

“Using non-toxic components... this system offers a promising pathway toward safer and more affordable residential energy storage”

21-Oct-2025 - Researchers reporting in ACS Energy Letters have devised a battery powered by vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and glucose. Inspired by how human bodies break down glucose for energy using enzymes, the team incorporated riboflavin into a prototype flow cell battery. The riboflavin mediator helped shuttle ...

Distinguish sugars with eye-catching and stretchy rainbow film

02-Dec-2022 - Rainbows and sugar may conjure up images of a certain leprechaun-branded breakfast cereal. But now, researchers in ACS Nano report a kaleidoscope-like film for telling different sweeteners apart that displayed multiple colors when stretched by hand. When evenly stretched with a simple apparatus, ...

Team develops bioprocess for converting plant materials into valuable chemicals

19-Aug-2021 - A team of scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a bioprocess using engineered yeast that completely and efficiently converted plant matter consisting of acetate and xylose into high-value bioproducts. Lignocellulose, the woody material that gives plant cells their ...

Industry-ready process makes plastics chemical from plant sugars

07-May-2019 - Developing renewable, plant-based alternatives for petroleum-derived chemicals is a major piece of the effort to transition away from a fossil-fuel based economy toward a more sustainable and environmentally friendly bio-based economy. But integration of novel and unproven technology into ...

ExxonMobil, Renewable Energy Group and Clariant to advance cellulosic biofuel research

24-Jan-2019 - ExxonMobil and Renewable Energy Group (REG) said that they have signed a joint research agreement with Clariant to evaluate the potential use of cellulosic sugars from sources such as agricultural waste and residues to produce biofuel, which has the potential to play a role in reducing greenhouse ...

Bio-renewable process could help 'green' plastic

23-Jan-2018 - When John Wesley Hyatt patented the first industrial plastic in 1869, his intention was to create an alternative to the elephant tusk ivory used to make piano keys. But this early plastic also sparked a revolution in the way people thought about manufacturing: What if we weren't limited to the ...

Flying with fuel from sugarcane

A new promising biofuel feedstock

13-Sep-2017 - A Boeing 747 burns one gallon of jet fuel each second. A recent analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois estimate that this aircraft could fly for 10 hours on bio-jet fuel produced on 54 acres of specially engineered sugarcane. Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and ...

A sweeter way to make green products

12-Sep-2017 - The shampoo you washed your hair with this morning. The balloons for the party. Refrigerators and sunglasses, medicine and mosquito repellent, guitar strings and fishing lures. These -- and thousands of other products we use every day -- contain chemicals made from petroleum. But researchers at ...

Cotton candy made of graphene

Ingredients: Sucrose and lasers

11-Jul-2017 - Nanotechnologists from Rice University and China's Tianjin University have used 3-D laser printing to fabricate centimeter-sized objects of atomically thin graphene. The research could yield industrially useful quantities of bulk graphene and is described in a new study. "This study is a first of ...

Using 3-D laser printing to print graphene foam

22-Jun-2017 - Nanotechnologists from Rice University and China's Tianjin University have used 3-D laser printing to fabricate centimeter-sized objects of atomically thin graphene. The research could yield industrially useful quantities of bulk graphene and is described in a new study. "This study is a first of ...