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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New??
Making fuel from sugar isn’t new at all.
Brazil has been doing it since the 70’s. It has been producing ethanol that is made from sugar canes to fuel their cars.
Cheaper than producing gas, and they produce both. So they can make money from their exports, and use ethanol at home and or both. Either way they have taken the opportunity when they were faced with the problem, 30 years ago, which is what intelligent people would have done.
Currently its too late for ethanol, or water, or sugar based fuels, they will not save the gas crisis. We need something entirely new. Something on the lines of magnetism or the using gravitational force etc.
Peace
Oh, love that, DONOTWANT. Nothing terribly wrong with your message, but really, what is scientific consensus?
Until I start hearing leading physicists talk about the “Law of Global Warming through Human Interaction”, or something similar, I’m a’gonna stay a bit dubious of the whole warming-through-humans thing. Not that warming isn’t happening, but we’re about to hit cooling big time in the next few years, if the whole, Earth has it’s own cycles, and we’re being ignorantly naive with a dollop of hubris when we say we have much if any impact on it.
I’m more interested in the “designer hydrocarbons” (i.e. gasoline secreted from genetically modified bacteria)…seems easier to me. Whichever works is fine though, a no-sulfur, no-septane gasoline is probably better for the environment than building batteries, which puts out a ton of pollution. Besides, I don’t think I could live without the sound of Packard V-12s…
“Hey, Sugar!” might mean something less sweet…
I happen to love sugar in all forms; I hope that the commercialization of this venture doesn’t make my favorite food too expensive.
This sounds like a lot of work just to be able to drive. Simpler to grow something edible instead and just walk to harvest.