Posted on 04/08/2008 6:43:55 PM PDT by saganite
Researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees.
Reporting in the April 7, 2008 issue of Chemistry & Sustainability, Energy & Materials (ChemSusChem), chemical engineer and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awardee George Huber of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) and his graduate students Torren Carlson and Tushar Vispute announced the first direct conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline components.
In the same issue, James Dumesic and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison announce an integrated process for creating chemical components of jet fuel using a green gasoline approach. While Dumesic's group had previously demonstrated the production of jet-fuel components using separate steps, their current work shows that the steps can be integrated and run sequentially, without complex separation and purification processes between reactors.
While it may be five to 10 years before green gasoline arrives at the pump or finds its way into a fighter jet, these breakthroughs have bypassed significant hurdles to bringing green gasoline biofuels to market.
"It is likely that the future consumer will not even know that they are putting biofuels into their car," said Huber. "Biofuels in the future will most likely be similar in chemical composition to gasoline and diesel fuel used today. The challenge for chemical engineers is to efficiently produce liquid fuels from biomass while fitting into the existing infrastructure today."
For their new approach, the UMass researchers rapidly heated cellulose in the presence of solid catalysts, materials that speed up reactions without sacrificing themselves in the process. They then rapidly cooled the products to create a liquid that contains many of the compounds found in gasoline.
The entire process was completed in under two minutes using relatively moderate amounts of heat. The compounds that formed in that single step, like naphthalene and toluene, make up one fourth of the suite of chemicals found in gasoline. The liquid can be further treated to form the remaining fuel components or can be used "as is" for a high octane gasoline blend.
"Green gasoline is an attractive alternative to bioethanol since it can be used in existing engines and does not incur the 30 percent gas mileage penalty of ethanol-based flex fuel," said John Regalbuto, who directs the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program at NSF and supported this research.
"In theory it requires much less energy to make than ethanol, giving it a smaller carbon footprint and making it cheaper to produce," Regalbuto said. "Making it from cellulose sources such as switchgrass or poplar trees grown as energy crops, or forest or agricultural residues such as wood chips or corn stover, solves the lifecycle greenhouse gas problem that has recently surfaced with corn ethanol and soy biodiesel."
Beyond academic laboratories, both small businesses and Fortune 500 petroleum refiners are pursuing green gasoline. Companies are designing ways to hybridize their existing refineries to enable petroleum products including fuels, textiles, and plastics to be made from either crude oil or biomass and the military community has shown strong interest in making jet fuel and diesel from the same sources.
"Huber's new process for the direct conversion of cellulose to gasoline aromatics is at the leading edge of the new ‘Green Gasoline' alternate energy paradigm that NSF, along with other federal agencies, is helping to promote," states Regalbuto.
Not only is the method a compact way to treat a great deal of biomass in a short time, Regalbuto emphasized that the process, in principle, does not require any external energy. "In fact, from the extra heat that will be released, you can generate electricity in addition to the biofuel," he said. "There will not be just a small carbon footprint for the process; by recovering heat and generating electricity, there won't be any footprint."
The latest pathways to produce green gasoline, green diesel and green jet fuel are found in a report sponsored by NSF, the Department of Energy and the American Chemical Society entitled "Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels: Next Generation Hydrocarbon Biorefineries" released April 1. In the report, Huber and a host of leaders from academia, industry and government present a plan for making green gasoline a practical solution for the impending fuel crisis.
"We are currently working on understanding the chemistry of this process and designing new catalysts and reactors for this single step technique. This fundamental chemical understanding will allow us to design more efficient processes that will accelerate the commercialization of green gasoline," Huber said.
Only on St. Patrick's Day?
and it will only require the land of about 6 western states to grow the trees needed for our current demand.
GOOD GOD how I hate when lemmings mention the totally meaningless "carbon footprint". 5 or 10 years from now their are going to be a very huge numbers of embarrassed IDIOTS, when they realize how they fell so fast for a complete and utter fraud.
When renewable fuel costs less than gasoline and doesn't require federal subsidies, that'll be a breakthrough.
This is truly a landmark breakthrough! Now we can start using up all of those nasty Poplar Trees and Switchgrasses etc. along with our food supplies to keep us from using oil! Soon we could have those desirable effects that we have all been longing for like famine and deforestation! I'm truly impressed.
Question: Perhaps I am missing something, but, Why not just use the oil supplies available to us? I hear we have enough to last 100 to 200 years.
Oh, never mind. I thought about it for a while and realized that there might be some evil oil companies that might make some money by supplying us with that nasty oil.
Yup, I guess the famine option would be a much better result to live with.
Green rules.
.
Want to bet the “environmentalists” will raise holy hell if a single tree is cut down to make “green” gasoline?
What’s the acreage needed to produce today’s fuel demand?
Smithsonian magazine estimated something like 1.6 billion acres for fuel alone, compared to the current 900 million acres (I’m paraphrasing mightily, don’t remember exact numbers) used for human food agriculture.
Then, there’s the millions of acres of photovoltaic panels needed! Can’t grow biomass in the shadow of the panels.
Given the current green trend of putting survivable plants on rooftops to simulate natural water retention, city rooftops won’t be good for solar farms (but will be very good at recovering a more natural runoff surface for rain).
On a previous thread, about stealing grease from restaurants, we established the price of “biocrude” at $50- 70 per OPEC barrel.
Any way you slice it we are facing some changes! How odd that our primitive, less advanced ancestors picked the most efficient and cost effective means of energy production and distribution, way back in the late 1800’s!
We can only hope.
Yes, we have lots of oil just off the coast of Florida, and the exploration, production and refining could provide the jobs the liberals down here are whining about not having. Hey, the Chinese are drilling 45 miles south of Key West and nitwits like Senator Bill Nelson (D) are adamant that they don’t want US oil companies to drill closer than 200 miles to shore. Go figure.
Stupid people continue to make agricultural acreage a competitive resource for the production of food and energy.
“Yup, I guess the famine option would be a much better result to live with.”
Greens oppose anything that makes us energy independent or feeds people.
Stems, I think, from the Paul Ehrlichs outlook that lots of us must die if the world is to survive.
Against engineered crops, against drilled oil, against DDT, against individual choice in medicine, for “choice” for abortion, against big agriculture (which works) and for small farms with no pesticides (when it works it works but leads to regional famines now and then).
....which is why the corn producers will put pressure on Congress to clamp down on this technology ASAP, so that it never sees the light of day...
So, just how much will my Switchgrass sandwiches rise in price? :)
“GOOD GOD how I hate when lemmings mention the totally meaningless “carbon footprint”. 5 or 10 years from now their are going to be a very huge numbers of embarrassed IDIOTS, when they realize how they fell so fast for a complete and utter fraud.”
Excellent comment!
With this process you could use the corn kernel for food, and the rest of the plant for fuel.
saw grass is great - it grows to 10 ft high with little fertilizer and you get two mowings a year.
Gut reaction: Cow stomach holds key to turning corn into biofuel
newsroom.msu.edu | 04/08/2008 | Michigan State University
Posted on Tuesday, April 08, 2008 03:56:21 PM by Red Badger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1998607/posts
anything but freakin’ CORN!!!!!!!!!
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