Research Groups Craft 'Green Gasoline' from Sugar and Carbohydrates

Using processes familiar to the petroleum industry, 2 separate research groups craft 'green gasoline' from sugar and carbohydrates

Following independent paths of investigation, two research teams are announcing this month that they have successfully converted sugar-potentially derived from agricultural waste and non-food plants-into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and a range of other valuable chemicals.

Chemical engineer Randy Cortright and his colleagues at Virent Energy Systems of Madison, Wisc., aNational Science Foundation (NSF)小型企业创新研究获奖者和由NSF支持的化学工程师詹姆斯·杜姆西奇（James Dumesic）领导的麦迪逊分校的研究人员现在宣布，可以像石油一样将糖和碳水化合物像石油一样加工成燃料，药品和化学和化学和化学物质和化学物质和化学物质和化学物质和化学物质的全部产品行业。

NSF的催化和生物催化计划主任，也是生物量转化的机构间工作组主席John Regalbuto说：“ NSF和其他联邦资助机构正在主张下一代碳氢化合物生物燃料的新范式。”“即使除了清洁煤炭和核能外，太阳能和风变得高度发育，汽车成为电动或插电式混合动力，我们仍然需要高能量密度的汽油，柴油和喷气燃料来实现飞机，火车，卡车，和船只。这些团队开发的过程是可以使这些燃料可持续生产的途径的绝妙典范。”

这一过程在2006年初发现，并在爱荷华州立大学于2008年9月9日赞助的《生物经济会议》上宣布，是上周发布的专利申请的主题。

That announcement was followed this month by the publication of a separate discovery of the same process in the Dumesic laboratory. Dumesic and his colleagues announce their findings in the Sept. 18, 2008 online ScienceExpress, to be followed in print in the Oct. 18, 2008, issue of Science.

The key to the breakthrough is a process developed by both Dumesic and Cortright called aqueous phase reforming. In passing a watery slurry of plant-derived sugar and carbohydrates over a series of catalysts-materials that speed up reactions without sacrificing themselves in the process-carbon-rich organic molecules split apart into component elements that recombine to form many of the chemicals that are extracted from non-renewable petroleum.

根据Dumesic的说法，该方法的一个关键特征是在糖或淀粉启动材料和碳氢化合物最终产品之间，化学物质作为由功能化合物组成的有机液体经过中间阶段。欧洲杯足球竞彩

"The intermediate compounds retain 95 percent of the energy of the biomass but only about 40 percent of the mass, and can be upgraded into different types of transportation fuels, such as gasoline, jet and diesel fuels," said Dumesic. "Importantly, the formation of this functional intermediate oil does not require the need for an external source of hydrogen," he added, since hydrogen comes from the slurry itself.

As part of a suite of second generation biofuel alternatives, green gasoline approaches like aqueous phase reforming are generating interest across the academic and industrial communities because they yield a product that is compatible with existing infrastructure, closer than many other alternatives in their net energy yield, and most importantly, can be crafted from plants grown in marginal soils, like switchgrass, or from agricultural waste.

While several years of further development will be needed to refine the process and scale it for production, the promise of gasoline and other petrochemicals from renewable plants has led to broad industrial interest.

Virent的流程称为Biooforming，允许该公司解决NSF SBIR计划，商业化和更广泛的NSF目标，美国竞争力的关键目标之一。最近与全球最大的能源公司之一的联盟旨在将这些替代燃料推向市场，而来自世界各地的主要汽车和农业公司的投资正在扩大该公司的影响力。

Virent首席技术官Cortright说：“ NSF的早期支持为我们的技术和随后的工业成功奠定了基础。”“我们的科学家现在拥有多年的生物型过程专业知识，并正在迅速将技术转移到商业规模。我们正在迅速努力将可再生，绿色汽油和其他烃生物燃料放入世界各地的燃油箱中。”

NSF计划官员罗斯·韦森（Rose Wesson）负责监督Virent的赠款：“ Virent开发的技术非常有前途，并且在过去的六年中已经进行了完善。两项研究使用的水相重构过程是一种创新的方法，它可能产生一种可能产生的方法重要的，对美国和全球能源需求的积极影响。”