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.
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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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Wow, Scientists are just absolutely AMAZING! Three cheers!
Jiff
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
Every week i hear about a new breakthrough. Something new that will revolutionize the industry, yet nothing changes. This has been going on for years.
Wow… soon, we’ll have battery and sugar hybrid car! Yes!
I have to comment back on two of the posts that I see.
#1 - the Brazilians have not been doing this for 10 years, the Brazilians produce ethanol, a very energy inefficient process.
#2 A lot of the pollution problems associated with oil based products are because of impurities (such as sulfur) in the oil and by extension the gasoline. It is the reaction with these impurities that cause the majority of the pollution problems, not the burning of the gasoline itself - a sugar based gasoline is does not have these same issues because sulfur is not a natural component to the sugars.
Finally, I have to say that the green energies listed aren’t as green as people pretend that they are. Think for example of the land clearage that is required to erect solar cells and turbines. The success of these power sources is very climate dependent, you can develop them all you want, but what benefit do they have if there is not strong enough winds or sufficient sun light.
There are other technologies out there that aren’t petroleum substitutes, and not climate based, such as hydrogen fuel cells, however there are reasons that fuel cells are not universal - there are technical difficulties that have not been able to be overcome and it is unclear if they will ever be overcome. As a person that works in the field of alternative energy, I agree that more money should be spent on it including gasoline substitutes, you cannot expect the entire infrastructure to change overnight and an initial step of reducing or eliminating the dependence on oil by a synthetic gasoline is a great first step!
‘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.”
Two things jump out immediately: First, how much water does it take to make this fuel? Second, how much precious metal does it take? In other words, how much is it going to cost, both financially and in terms of a resource even more precious (water) to actually put this into production.
This is an interesting laboratory breakthrough, but I doubt it is remotely near to a productive solution.
Using metals that are “cost-prohibitive” they were able to use sugar that has no ready supply to make fuel. Doesn’t sound like much of a breakthrough that will provide much relief for a long time. Just like all the other pie in the sky notions for replacing the BILLIONS of BTU’s of energy we use with biodreams.
Great idea. Now more Brazilian rain forest can be bulldozed to make way for more sugar cane fields.
Okay. Finding sugar is easy - tell the Hawaiians to quit farming golf courses and put the cane back in.
To Jeff:
How much Hawaiian sugar would this process take to replace our fuel? We can’t even make a small dent in it using several states worth of corn.
I’m going out to pour some sugar in my tank right now!!