Cellulose found in plant stalks could make better jet fuels
10 August 2010 | Alternative Energy | No Comments
Companies from all around the world are developing new ways to produce cheap and mor efficient butanol from renewable sources. One of the first methods to make biofuels from plants started from the sugars in the starch of corn and sugarcane. Gevo, a company in Colorado, has engineered yeast that can convert the cellulose found in pland plant stalks or wood into butanol. Butanol molecular structure allows to convert it into other chemical products that refineries make today using petroleum fuels.
Compared to ethanol, the butanol has 30 percent more energy than conventional biofuels. Moreover, ethanol can be further modified to produce jet fuel. Scientists explained that ethanol can be used in gasoline in limited amounts but there is no limit for butanol. “Cellulose is the biggest source of sugars on the planet…The difficulty is, it’s harder to get at that cellulose and get at those sugars than it is to get the sugars from corn kernels.”, said Mike Cleary, director of the National Bioenergy Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Butanol burns much more efficiently than ethanol, so it could deliver more power. Another important advantage of butanol is that of its easier transportation. It can be easier carried in pipelines because it doesn’t absorb water like ethanol does. “We wanted to fundamentally change the way biofuels were made and the sort of biofuels we could make…We wanted to develop a drop-in biofuel–something that you could use directly without having to change the gasoline supply and the gasoline infrastructure.”, said Peter Meinhold, director of research at Gevo company.
Tags: butanol, butanol fuel, corn biofuel, etahnol, gevo biofuel, gevo jet fuel, jet biofuel, plant fuel