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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."
Plants that grow plastic... http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/459126.stm
Erm, fuel was included alongside plastics.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Uh, begging your pardon, but that's simply not true. CO2 is only produce by burning things that contain carbon. Burning hydrogen, for example, produces water.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
instead of using hydro-electric, wave power, or tidal- all of which are viable.
They're all viable, but together they can't produce enough to supplant fossil fuels, solar, and nuclear energy. If I had my notebook with me I could give you a good number, but, roughly, the technologies you mention can create up to 10% of the power we need.
While many countries (e.g. China, India) may agree that CO2 is a bad thing for us to produce in massive quantities, they're also not interested in stopping, because they don't have a better alternative (they don't view the agrarian society as acceptable).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Flamebait? I think the mods are the ones smoking the stuff, sheesh. Someone revoke that moderators privileges, total abuse there.
;)
Poster was actually completely on topic...though obviously too stoned to remember to provide any reasonable details. Maybe they'll fill in the blanks when they come down
Links:
http://www.hempplastic.com/
http://www.treehugger.com/
http://www.hempmuseum.org/
Just for starters.
No Comment.
They're not unwanted. They're the valuable part. the precursors for plastic are much more expensive then gasoline.
Save your breath, the government will never give up the war on drugs!
Hemp is a great solution, Making 3800 gal per acre in bio-diesel from the seed, lbs of hemp flour from the remains of the seeds after pressing the oil (And hemp flour can be used in place of wheat flour)Fibers from the stalks, etc. The yield from a single acre is amazing. One acre will yield the same amount of paper as 10 acres of trees, it is easier to harvest and may be easier to process.
It is too sad that the government and many in the general population of the US are so afraid of it.
Oh and it has one of the highest Co2 fixation numbers I have seen, processing Co2 to O2. Processing in the order of 5x the Co2 of trees and up to 7x the Co2 of grass (The kind in your yard)
We could reduce the planets Co2 levels, reduce de-forestation, reduce dependence on foreign oil, convert many of the non-biodegradables (plastics) to bio-degradable hemp products, and reduce the federal budget by over 8 Billion Dollars if only the government would stop the war on drugs.
Oh well.
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
Maybe you haven't worked with celluloid or Bakelite before?
It works as a plastic, but it's very brittle and no where near as strong as most commercial plastics derived from hydrocarbons.
You're certainly not going to get ABS to PEG from sugars right now (but maybe PEG, commonly found in water bottles is a good candidate to start with)