Sawdust turned into petrochemical

[dragon]

Which then can be turned into gasoline with one additional step.

Sawdust has often been used to soak up spills on a garage floor, but a team of European scientists may have found another way to connect sawdust and automobiles – by using a chemical process to convert the cellulose in sawdust into a gasoline precursor.

“At the molecular level, cellulose contains strong carbon chains,” said study author Bert Sels, a chemist at KU Leuven in Belgium. “We sought to conserve these chains, but drop the oxygen bonded to them, which is undesirable in high-grade gasoline. Our researcher Beau Op de Beeck developed a new method to derive these hydrocarbon chains from cellulose.”

To create the long-chain hydrocarbons they wanted, the study team built a novel chemical reactor and devised a process which they are currently attempting to patent.

“We feed sawdust collected from a sawmill into the reactor and add a catalyst – a substance that sets off and speeds the chemical reaction,” said team member Bert Lagrain, another chemist at KU Leuven. “With the right temperature and pressure, it takes about half a day to convert the cellulose in the wood shavings into saturated hydrocarbon chains, or alkanes.”

“Essentially, the method allows us to make a ‘petrochemical’ product using biomass – thus bridging the worlds of bio-economics and petro chemistry,” he added.

The end product of this new process is a chemical that can be converted into gasoline after just one additional step, the researchers said.

“Our product offers an intermediate solution for as long as our automobiles run on liquid gasoline,” Sels explained. “It can be used as a green additive – a replacement for a portion of traditionally-refined gasoline.”

He added that their hydrocarbon product can also be used for a number of other applications.

“The green hydrocarbon can also be used in the production of ethylene, propylene and benzene – the building blocks for plastic, rubber, insulation foam, nylon, coatings and so forth,” Sels said.

“From an economic standpoint, cellulose has much potential,” he continued. “Cellulose is available everywhere; it is essentially plant waste, meaning it does not compete with food crops in the way that first generation energy crops – crops grown for bioethanol, for example – do.”

“It also produces chains of 5 to 6 hydrocarbon atoms – ‘light nafta’ in the technical jargon. We are currently facing shortages in this because it is becoming quite difficult and more expensive to distil these specific hydrocarbon chains from crude oil or shale gas. In time, hydrocarbon derived from cellulose may provide an alternative,” Sels concluded.

The researchers have reported their findings in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Last January, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin announced they were able to successfully create a biofuel from genetically-modified yeast cells and table sugar.

Using a cell-based technique, the Texas researchers were able to generate what they called, “a renewable version of sweet crude,” according to their report in the journal Nature Communications.

“We took a starting yeast strain of Yarrowia lipolytica, and we’ve been able to convert it into a factory for oil directly from sugar,” said study author Hal Alper, a chemical engineering professor at the university. “This work opens up a new platform for a renewable energy and chemical source.”

Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/11 ... ssRYWYK.99

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[madd0ct0r]

no-net energy gain, but a useful energy storage medium compared to sawdust.
Not much of that available in the waste stream so a low energy way of breaking down conifers might be needed.

[dragon]

While there's no net gain I was thinking how this might help in the future when natural oil supplies start to dwindle.