“Green Gasoline”: Like Gasoline, But Made from Cellulose : TreeHugger
Though they may share many of the same compounds and properties, “green gasoline,” the creation of UMass chemical engineer George Huber, differs from regular gasoline in one important respect: it can be produced from biomass sources. And, unlike the various forms of ethanol that have been bandied around, green gasoline can take advantage of the existing gas infrastructure and be pumped into cars as is.

To produce this biofuel variant, Huber and his students heated plant cellulose in the presence of solid catalysts and then rapidly cooled the products – leaving behind a liquid that already contained many of the compounds typically found in gasoline, such as naphthalene and toluene. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes to accomplish and needs only moderate heat; the final liquid can be further refined or immediately used as an alternative to a high octane gas blend.

I guess the big questions are: what is the cost of the catalysts and are they a reusable or expendable agent? This sounds wonderful, but if it’s this simple why is it gonna take them 5 years at a minimum to get it to the pumps? I realize that scaling up is gonna make a difference and building the infrastructure will take a while but still sounds like there are things about this process or the resultant fuel that they don’t bring up.

That said I hope this works out and results in a viable fuel making process using biomass. 😎

One Response to ““Green Gasoline”: Like Gasoline, But Made from Cellulose : TreeHugger”

1. Steve says:

   April 10, 2008 at 9:44 pm

   Well, catalysts by their very nature promote reactions, but are not consumed by the reactions. Catalytic converters in cars don’t lose any catalysts, they can, however, over time become coated with residue that prevents or hinders the reaction to the point that they have to be replaced. Not so much anymore, though, compared to days past–I believe the main problem they used to have was that the matrix–the material that held the catalyst–would break down or clog up. I guess they have cured that problem, or greatly reduced it. Reactants, however, are part of the process (are consumed by the process, in other words) and would probably need to be replenished. From what I saw in the article, this looks like a laboratory process now, and it must be scaled/’adapted into a commercial process. Kinda like aluminum–the could make it in the laboratory by chemical separation, but until the Bayer process was developed, it was more expensive to produce than gold. Now it is somewhat cheaper, if you have a large supply of electricity to throw at it.

   I think that if they can commercialize the process, this could be a Good Thing. There is a bunch of cellulose out there, much of it going to waste. The big IF is whether or not it can be commercialized economically I guess time will tell. And I don’t really think the oil companies will sit on this–they may buy it up and start using it themselves, and in a way that would be logical–they have the refineries to do something with the raw product, after all. And the chemists. And remember, even if the result of this process is “virtually identical” to gasoline, it will have to be tested out the yinyang before they let it out in the wild…