The development of a market for currently non-merchantable forest material, such as harvest residues of tops and limbs of trees or small diameter trees, has been suggested as a possible win-win solution that could: (i) provide a financial incentive to help motivate treatments to reduce wildfire risk or restore forest...
Steam distillation has been the common method of extraction of essential oils from plants for more than a century. The use of microwave energy has been suggested as an alternative distillation method that would: reduce water usage, dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and the carbon footprint. A byproduct of this...
Degradation of lignin to simpler compounds is desirable for removing residual lignin during paper manufacture and accessing biomass carbohydrates for biofuel production, among other purposes. Lignin transformation using enzymes found in white rot fungi, some of nature's most efficient lignin-degrading organisms, offers a more environmentally benign, selective, and possibly less...