New Energy-Efficient Process Turns Sugar into Gasoline
Using microscopic metal particles, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that plant-based sugar can be converted to gasoline to be used in current engines. The substance is cleaner-burning than petroleum-based gasoline and more stable than ethanol.
While a method to turn sugar to gas already exists, it requires extremely high temperatures which made the process less energy efficient. The new process converts the sugars to fuel in mere minutes by running a mixture of water and sugar over particles of the precious metals platinum and rhenium. The metal atoms break the chemical bonds in sugar and release oxygen, which leaves a mixture including carbon and hydrogen that can be used to make plastics or gasoline. Even the gas byproducts of the process can be used as a replacement for natural gas.
The scientists have only tested the process in laboratory setting, and before wide-scale use, the process faces the same problem as other biofuels: where to acquire the sugar. The process uses the simple sugar compound sorbitol, which is available but difficult to separate from biomass. “We would just intercept the sugar and go to gasoline,” said James Dumesic, the chemical engineer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who led the study. “But there’s still a lot of work to do on how to go from cellulose to sugar.”
The metals used in the process are cost-prohibitive, but the researchers are unsure how much of the metal would be required for mass production. In the meantime they are studying how the metals react with the sugar in hopes to find cheaper metals that produce similar reactions.
Photo Credit: knaakle on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
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This was a great post, but I couldn’t help but think of Homer Simpson saying, “In America, first you get the sugar … then you get the power … then you get the women”.
How Awesome!! I feel like we are on the verge of something incredible! I love this green movement! Thank GOD for Scientist!
This is not new the brazilians have been doing it for at least 10 years now. In fact they perfectly sustain themselves off sugar cane that they are not inflicted in any way by what happens between opec.
Would be nice if this comes to fruition. America needs to get of oil in a big way.
The oil company’s will shop this by making it agiant the law. Just like hemp. They will say that suger cuases heart disease, becuase of obesity. Then suger will be the hottest illegal drug. The cops will pull people over and prick your finger to see if you suger level is high. “DUI” Driving under the influence of Suger.
Scientist don’t believe in god.They believe in science. which in that case god created science for scientist to believe in. HAHA!
I for one am not very thrilled at the prospect of gasoline synthesis. Alternate sources of gasoline should only be a short-term solution to a much larger problem: dirty energy inefficiency. The reason why the world has locked itself into a petroleum infrastructure was the deceptively low cost of oil. The world fell for it, and now we now have to deal with toxic air pollution in the cities (undebatable), global warming (debatable, but a scientific consensus), and not to mention sacrificing much of our freedom to OPEC. Rather than focusing on making our own gasoline and driving the price down once again, the focus needs to be on how to harness the vast stores of alternative, clean energy waiting to be tapped, such as solar, wind, algae, etc. But the solution does not stop there. The world needs to avoid cranking the ignition so often, and consider walking if it’s reasonable, ride a bicycle, or swallow their pride and take the bus or metro. A new source of gasoline is the last thing the world needs. The time to transition was yesterday, so why should we create an incentive to wait longer?
Sweet.
can you do a followup on the progress of turning sugar to gas?
Rum and driving are back together
again! filthyrichmond.com