Scientists Attempt to Replace Crude Oil With Sugars

amigoro writes with a link to the Press Esc blog, discussing a possible replacement for crude oil in plastics, fuels, and other industrial uses. The post outlines findings to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Science. Essentially, researchers at the Institute for Interfacial Catalysis are attempting to process the sugars in plant matter into an oil-like compound, a daunting challenge. "Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature's most abundant sugar. 'But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging,' Zhang said. 'In addition to low yield until now, we always generate many different byproducts,' including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals. Zhang, lead author and former post doc Haibo Zhao, and colleagues John Holladay and Heather Brown, all from PNNL, were able to coax HMF yields upward of 70 percent from glucose and nearly 90 percent from fructose while leaving only traces of acid impurities."

Comments

How about this:

[JamesRose]

Stop burning Stuff!

How do they not get this yet, you burn stuff you produce CO2. I don't care what you burn, CO2 is given off. Practically every country exept for America accepts global warming as a problem, CO2 emissions will not get better when you keep burning stuff for energy, How are these people not getting this! For god's sake, these are scientists, they've seen the evidence and know that CO2 is a problem so stop trying to find new inventive ways to produce it.

Personally, the main thing that pissed me off, was when America started burning crops (biofeul i think), the same crops that would feed mexicans, and as a result the price of the main food source there rose to huge amounts, now people starve, america wants to keep burning stuff instead of using hydro-electric, wave power, or tidal- all of which are viable. That is WRONG! /Rant over

Re:suger based polymers...

[multipartmixed]

Wow, um, pardon my rudeness. But. What the hell is wrong with your genes???