Carbohydrate-Based Synthesis To Replace Petroleum Derived Hydrocarbons?

someWebGeek writes "From PhysOrg's 'Taking biofuel from forest to highway,' University of British Columbia biofuel expert Jack Saddler says, 'we will become less dependent on fossil fuels and will become more dependent on fuels made from the sugars and chemicals found in plants.' Nothing too new there; the idea of biofuels eventually taking over from petroleum distillates has been around for ages. However, Saddler contends further that 'Similar to an oil refinery that processes crude oil to make thousands of supplementary products like plastics, dyes, paints, etc., the biorefinery would use leftover agricultural and forest material to make many of the same products, but from a sustainable and renewable resource.' I remember my organic chem instructor back in '81 telling us that eventually the textbooks would have to be rewritten. There would be no presumption of fractional distillation of thousands of basic compounds from petroleum, and the teaching emphasis would shift to synthesis from simple hydrocarbons. He noted that we'd all miss 'the good, ole days' when synthetic fibers, plastics, etc. were cheap... or even an economically viable option. I can live without rayon, but, dang, I'm gonna miss polyvinyl chloride!"

Comments

Rayon isn't synthetic

[Seraphim1982]

Out of all the examples you could pick you picked rayon? Rayon is produced using cellulose (wood), sodium hydroxide, carbon disulfide and sulfuric acid. It isn't a synthetic fiber, and there isn't any petroleum involved in the process. Rayon is just cellulose that has been dissolved and regenerated as a fiber.

Re:Factor in one more thing though?

[TheInternetGuy]

If you have to burn 10 barrels equivalent of crude oil to make 1 barrel equivalent of food grade veg oil

I have read and heard this so many time here on Slashdot now, and I am gonna call you on it.
If it takes a ratio of 10:1, crude to produce vegetable oil. Then how come a cheap vegetable oil can be found for a 3-4 bucks a gallon?
While the cost of 10 gallon of crude costs 30-40 dollars?
Are the producers just giving us all that crude for free out of the goodness of their hearts?
Seriously people use your brains, think for your selves.

Re:Another couple of factors

[TheInternetGuy]

Right now, I've read we're burning about 400 years worth of laid-down plant carbohydrate per year, in the form of fossil fuels. That's right. To obtain the equivalent amount of energy from non-fossil biofuels as we're currently getting from fossil fuels, we'd have to increase the amount of plant material being grown on Earth by a factor of 400 times

No that is not what it means at all, in any way shape or form.
What it means is that we are using fossil fuel at an rate of 400 times of which new fossil fuel is produced by natural processes. Only a small percentage of biomass will ever become trapped in the correct anaerobic environment and then fossilized over millions of years. So there is lots of biomass available for use as fuel.

Re:Wood wasn't enough to fuel the Middle Ages

[bertok]

Trees are about as effective in doing photosynthesis as any other plant.

That's not true, there's significant differences in efficiency between various species of plants. Most grasses for example are much more efficient than trees, which is why grassland can support huge herds of large animals, but a forest can't.

See: Photosynthetic Efficiency, where it has a table of some typical efficiencies:

Plants, typical : 0.1%
Typical crop plants: 1-2%
Sugarcane: 7-8% peak

This is because more than one kind of photosynthesis has evolved, with somewhat different chemical processes. Look up C3 carbon fixation and C4 carbon fixation for the differences.

There is a significant research effort going on looking into ways of taking the genes for the more efficient types of photosynthesis and merging that into less efficient plants. This could be used to make fruit trees grow much faster, or to create algae that can be used to produce alcohol or oil at efficiencies approaching those of solar electric power.