Spoonful of sugar makes biofuel greener - Technology


12 November 2005
Zeeya Merali
Magazine issue 2525
Take a vat of vegetable oil and add a scorched sugar lump - the mixture could speed up the production and use of biodiesel in vehicles
TAKE a vat of vegetable oil and add a scorched sugar lump. It might not catch on as the latest cocktail, but the mixture could speed up the widespread production and use of biodiesel in vehicles.

Converting vegetable oils to fuel requires a catalyst. Most existing catalysts are derived from petrochemicals, but using them defeats the environmentally friendly object of biofuels. Liquid sulphuric acid is an alternative, but it is expensive and wasteful because it is hard to remove after the conversion. Now a team led by Masakazu Toda at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan has developed a cheap, renewable catalyst from glucose.

The Tokyo chemists heated glucose and sucrose in a chamber without oxygen to remove some of the oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Then the charred remains were treated with sulphuric acid, which sticks to the sugars in place of the hydrogen and oxygen. This creates a ...

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