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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."
What about the guys who wanted to convert dead people to fuel?
This guy's the limit!
Does that much crude go into plastics? I figured that the majority of oil was going to fuels. Would it be better for these guys to work with the current projects that are turning sugars into fuel rather than plastics?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
NatureWorks have been producing plastics from corn for quite a few years now.
Their food containers look just like traditional ones and i've got a few pairs of Teko Ingeo socks that are really comfortable.
It's certainly an interesting field
...as inputs for ALL our industries!
If we could wrap our heads around the idea of conservation, I think we'd be a lot better off.
Unfortunately, since we've defined consumption as economic success, preaching conservation ends up sounding like austerity.
hemp.
what were we talking about again?
Plants that grow plastic... http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/459126.stm
He used something like this as a premise for the movie ``Sabrina'' with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. At first I thought I was just going to have to suspend my disbelief because plastic from sugar seemed stupid. Now the only problem I had with the movie has been erased. The part where a gorgeous young woman goes for a dumpy looking nerdy old guy---now that I can buy.
If we could wrap our heads around the idea of conservation, I think we'd be a lot better off.
Conservation is good, but doesn't solve the problem. If 4/5th of the world weren't needing to be brought up to our standards, and the population was static or decreasing, and oil wasn't going to run out, and our oil purchases weren't funding the guys who kill our troops, and we didn't have greenhouse effects to worry about, conservation would be all we need.
Conservation makes all those problems a little bit better. But we need to solve them completely. And until we can get them solved we should absolutely conserve as much as we can to decrease the time until implementation of a real solution.
Actually, I think the best plan is to save oil for very remote vehicle operation and plastics, such that we can cut our production down to the point where domestic sources are more than enough, so using sugar for plastics is probably the last thing that needs addressing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Umm... Correct me please...
:)
Suger based polymers... This is a statement that I've been told is in the screws and plates used to hold my son's head together. (He had a major surgery and my daughter just had the same this past wednesday.) Anyways, when I hear "Suger based polymers", I assumed pastic from sugar. Isn't "polymer" a fancy way of saying plastic? The side benifit for my children are that the screws/plates are then reabsorbed by the skull as it grows/heals.
So this Sugar/Plastic would A) reserve fuels and B) biodegrade better?
Dibs on a name, I call it Slastar or Slastic... (c) 2007, me.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Obviously we should be conserving energy.
Obviously we should be creating less CO2.
And obviously there isn't going to be one single solution to this mess.
It seems to me it's a lot better to be using and burning something renewable and localizable that actual absorbs CO2 before harvesting rather than something nonrenewable and poisonous that has to be shipped halfway around the world. This research could very well help. Just like conservation helps. Just like solar and wind and wave and other power sources will help.
Personally I'm sick of people ranting that some alternative source of energy (or plastic) or conservation or whatever isn't worthwhile because it's not going to solve every problem all by itself. Be serious! It's going to take work on a lot of different fronts to fix this mess. There will not be one magic solution.
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
--
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)
Burning something that was grown to be burned is the very essence of "carbon-neutral", not the credit-buying al gore approach.
The plant takes in CO2 when it grows and gives it out when it's burned.
I can understand making plastic from sugar based polymers, because it may yield some new and interesting properties, as well as be able to break down over time. Imagine if all the plastic in landfills was able to breakdown in 20 years. That seems like a good thing.
Using sugars to make fuel, however, just seems like perpetuating an already out of control problem. Internal combustion is a very inefficient way to convert matter into energy. And like previous posters stated, it still creates CO2. I am pretty sure sugar based fuel will never be a big thing, as corn oil based biodiesel is already here. As far as alternative fuels go, this is not exactly what I'm hoping to see the future bring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
First sentence makes mention of using hemp plastics derived from the oil within the seeds. Hemp seems like a heartier plant than corn...it is a weed. If I recall correctly Henry Fords model T had a dashboard constructed using hemp plastics, but the Model T wikipedia entry makes no mention of it. Also hemp would reduce the demand on lumber for paper and can even be pressed into beams that do not rot as easily as traditional lumber.
But I think we all know this will not happen...as hemp is too easily produced and would therefore destroy the industrial community.
Hey smart boy, what do you think people's metabolisms do with the fuel? I'll tell you, they burn it (in a controlled fashion) and release (gasp) CO2!
The advantage of biofuel techniques is we are releasing CO2 that has been recently removed from the atmosphere versus large sums of it that has been stored away for millions of years (oil). That is a profound difference because its sustainable, rather than using up limited resources at an unsustainable rate and changing our environment.
Other than that, I agree with your general statement that biofuel is overrated and alternative fuels are underutilized and that we can do better.
...I'm going to try it out by putting some sugar in my gas tank. If it works well I'll increase the amount. With a little luck I'll be able to save lots of money on gas. :-)
the energy involved in converting dead people into fossil fuel likely outweighs the energy you'd get out of it.
Maybe the energy wouldn't be worth it, but there is lots of glycerol in people which is an expensive ingredient because products containing real glycerol are hard to find. There is considerable market demand for it, and its shoddy alternatives have developed a very bad reputation. Stuff usually has propylene glycol instead which is cheaper but doesn't taste as good, or ethylene glycol which is cheaper still but causes kidney failure so they might as well put "glycerine" on the label and take your money while you're still alive. If you have a large supply of human beings dying with statistical regularity, you can saponify their bodies in sodium hydroxide over heat and become a major producer of cheap glycerol which can be used for stuff like glue, shampoo, lotions, shaving cream, soap, mouthwashes, toothpaste, cough syrups, and food products. Alternatively you can make it from biodiesel.
We all know that any and all technologies that can be used to reduce our consumption of oil eventually vanishes, or the people sell out to big oil. This will be no different.
Reminds me of a car prank I heard from Car Talk on NPR. If you want to easily ruin someone's day, yet do no real harm, get a bag of sugar half-full, sprinkle some on the ground beside their car's gas tank, leave the bag sitting in plain view on the ground beside it. BUT -- don't put any sugar in the tank! That'd be property damage.
:)
Instead, just let them worry about it, get it checked out at the local garage (paying for an inspection), all to find there's no damage whatsoever.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
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)
Using dead people for oil production would just drive up the price of Soylent Green.