The Biotechnology Center for Fuels and Chemicals (BCFC) leads a national effort, in cooperation with industry, to develop innovative, market-driven biotechnologies for producing fuels and chemicals from renewable resources. The BCFC researchers focus on using bioprocesses to convert renewable biomass feedstocks into valuable products.

A detailed account of the activity and accomplishments made by fleets covered by the EPAct State and Alternative Fuel Provider Program.

It is clear that high-resolution synchrotrons X-ray powder diffraction is a very powerful and convenient tool for material characterization and structure determination. Most investigations to date have been carried out under ambient conditions and have focused on structure solution and refinement. The application of high-resolution techniques to increasingly complex structures will certainly represent an important part of future studies, and it has been seen how ab initio solution of structures with perhaps 100 atoms in the asymmetric unit is within the realms of possibility. However, the ease with which temperature-dependence measurements can be made combined with improvements in the technology of position-sensitive detectors will undoubtedly stimulate precise in situ structural studies of phase transitions and related phenomena. One challenge in this area will be to develop high-resolution techniques for ultra-high pressure investigations in diamond anvil cells. This will require highly focused beams and very precise collimation in front of the cell down to dimensions of 50 {micro}m or less. Anomalous scattering offers many interesting possibilities as well. As a means of enhancing scattering contrast it has applications not only to the determination of cation distribution in mixed systems such as the superconducting oxides discussed in Section 9.5.3, but also to …