Money Doesn't Grow on Trees, But Gasoline Might

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 cover article of the April 7, 2008 issue of Chemistry & Sustainability, George Huber of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) and his graduate students announced the first direct conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline components.
In the same issue, University of Wisconsin-Madison students announce a process for creating chemical components of jet fuel using a green gasoline approach.
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.
Huber says it's likely that the future consumer will not even know that he is putting biofuels into his car. "Biofuels in the future will most likely be similar in chemical composition to gasoline and diesel fuel used today - and the challenge for chemical engineers is to efficiently produce liquid fuels from biomass while fitting into the existing infrastructure today," he said.
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.
In theory it requires much less energy to make than ethanol, giving it a smaller carbon footprint and making it cheaper to produce. Making it from cellulose sources such as switchgrass or poplar trees grown as energy crops, or forest residues such as wood chips or corn solves the lifecycle greenhouse gas problem that has recently surfaced with corn ethanol and soy biodiesel.
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.

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