Green Gasoline Could Power Future Cars and Jets

Researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of "green gasoline," a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees.

Chemical engineer and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awardee George Huber of University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) and his graduate students Torren Carlson and Tushar Vispute have recently announced the first direct conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline components.

At the same time, James Dumesic and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced an integrated process for creating chemical components of jet fuel using a green gasoline approach. While Dumesic's group had previously demonstrated the production of jet-fuel components using separate steps, their current work shows that the steps can be integrated and run sequentially, without complex separation and purification processes between reactors.

While it may be 5 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 to market.

For more: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52115