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Scientists Attempt to Replace Crude Oil With Sugars
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:05 AM
from the just-don't-do-that-in-a-recipe dept.
from the just-don't-do-that-in-a-recipe dept.
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."
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A better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It could never work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That happens even with existing fossil fuel too... it's just that we happen to get existing fossil fuel energy for "free" because the earth has been soaking it up from the sun and accumulating it for a few hundred million years before we even started to tap it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
this is getting a big crass.
glycerine (Score:3, Interesting)
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 chea
Re:glycerine (Score:5, Funny)
He was basically trying to liquify a multivitamin, which has all kinds of crap in it. Generally you use a mixture of concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids to liquify something. The pills wouldn't dissolve when he tried digestion on an open burner, because the temperature at 1 atmosphere won't get high enough. They make steel digestion bombs for this kind of situation. They're like soup cans with stainless steel armor one inch thick around a ceramic liner inside. If the temperature exceeds 50 atmospheres a little safety valve on top pops to relieve the pressure. So he decided to buy 5 of these things, to let the pressure and temperature rise without losing any contents of the five sample tablets as he dissolved them under concentrated acids.
This turned out to be a cardinal error. The tablets had a binder made of sodium benzoate. If you heat benzoate at high temperature and pressure under concentrated sulfuric and nitric acid, it turns into trinitrobenzoate which dissolves in water all right but is also a class A explosive. So they put the five vitamin tablets in the acids, sealed the bombs, and put them in the oven at 105 C which they actually had set up in a conference room where people would write up experiments. I was across the hall with a clear line of sight to the oven when the first bomb exploded inside. It sounded like someone took 5000 dinner plates and smashed them on the floor all at once, and the oven turned into a pile of kitty litter and silicate and asbestos and the conference room filled up with brown nitrogen dioxide. Then two more exploded and fired off in different directions. One penetrated the HR office next door (they moved upstairs the next week) and one buried itself in the wall of the conference room while people were still running outside. (The other two were duds.)
I almost got killed by a multivitamin that day. You know, you live your life, day in and day out, and you don't realize how fragile life is until one day you almost get killed by an exploding vitamin tablet. In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe.
Not being a native English speaker, of course my boss gets on the phone with 911 and tells them that his bombs exploded.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Exxon Green? (is people)
Re:A better idea (Score:4, Funny)
"Would you like to Biggie-size that? Remember, by doing so you'll be reducing our dependence on foreign oil!"
Parent
That big of a deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Erm, fuel was included alongside plastics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Comparison to existing products (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:2)
I get the idea that this new process is simply designed to be a more efficient chemical route, or a route to other kinds of plastics.
Honestly not sure (Score:2)
"The process to create Ingeo makes use of the carbon naturally stored in plants by photosynthesis. Plant starches are broken down into sugars. The carbon and other elements in these natural sugars are then used to make a biopolymer through a process of simple fermentation and separation. The resulting resin, called NatureWorks(TM) PLA, can then be spun or extruded into Ingeo for use in textiles."
Re: (Score:2)
The food containers compost and apparently the socks do too.
I've not experienced any biodegrading of my socks thankfully.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you are referring to these guys [natureworksllc.com].
Oh Goody, let's use food stocks... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Too small (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard it said on multiple occasions that in order to replace any significant portion of our gasoline imports with ethanol, it would take up an overwhelming portion of our country's agricultural production. Even if we took the 50% of our crops that we normally export and diverted them into replacing fossil fuels, it wouldn't supply anywhere near enough.
The problem here, in my opinion, lies more on the demand side of the equation than the supply side. Take, for example, g
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody is suggesting that we use food stocks as the basis of *all* of our industries, but it does make sense for replacements for things that depend on the hydrocarbons we currently get from petroleum sources.
And what about the terrible state of U.S. agriculture? Wouldn't a functioning mark
here's a thought (Score:5, Funny)
what were we talking about again?
Re:here's a thought (Score:5, Informative)
Poster was actually completely on topic...though obviously too stoned to remember to provide any reasonable details. Maybe they'll fill in the blanks when they come down
Links:
http://www.hempplastic.com/ [hempplastic.com]
http://www.treehugger.com/ [treehugger.com]
http://www.hempmuseum.org/ [hempmuseum.org]
Just for starters.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Oh for crying out loud!
Hemp doesn't contain anywhere even CLOSE to the amount of THC that Marijuana has. They may be both varieties of cannabis (and the plants do look virtually identical), but you can't get high by smoking hemp... probably no higher than you could get by smoking grass cut from your front lawn!
Plants that grow plastic... (Score:4, Informative)
Billy Wilder's a genuis (Score:2, Funny)
suger based polymers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
How did you manage to live as long as you have with such an astonishing ability to be so breathtakingly in-your-face offensive?
I've had so many reasons to hate political correctness in the past; you must be one more. The constant drumbeat of PC in current society is the only thing I can imagine that would have kept this trait from being beaten out of you in elementary school.
I could be wrong, of course; it's entirely possible that you haven't left e
So thats why our new insect overlords (Score:2)
i wish them good luck (Score:2, Funny)
Plastic ok... but fuel? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 su
Hemp Plastics (Score:2, Insightful)
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 no
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hemp is a great solution, Making 3800 gal per acre in bio-diesel from the seed, lbs of hemp flour from the remains of the seeds after pressing the oil (And hemp flour can be used in place of wheat flour)Fibers from the stalks, etc. The yield from a single acre is amazing. One acre will yield the same amount of paper as 10 acres of trees, it is easier to harvest and may be easier to process.
It is too sad that the government and many in the
Polypeptides (Score:2)
Why stop at plastics from sugars? We could use genetics to convert biomass into polypeptides to improve our energy (and chemical) efficiency, independence in superior materials. And since organisms make polypeptides from sunlight, water and CO2, switching from oil plastic to photosynthetic polypeptides could solve most
Great idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Sugar in the tank (prank) (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Sweet crude (Score:2, Funny)
Thank you, thank you... Don't forget to tip the waiters...
This will dissappear.. (Score:3, Interesting)
really?? (Score:2)
2. ???
3. Profi- err... CO2!
Re:How about this: (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
This has at least been changing lately with season long story lines and hopefully a lengthening of the atten
Re:How about this: (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
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Purning corn doesn't "produce" CO2. There is just as much as there was before the corn was grown. There is just as much as if the corn was eaten. The only way to get less CO2 from corn would be to sink it whole into a carbon sink somewhere such as the bottom of the ocean or shoot it into space.
Only part of the story (Score:3, Informative)
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'
Carbon Neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
The plant takes in CO2 when it grows and gives it out when it's burned.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
How do they not get this yet, you burn stuff you produce CO2. I don't care what you burn, CO2 is given off. Practically every country exept for America accepts global warming as a problem, CO2 emissions will not get better when you keep burning stuff for energy, How are these people not getting this! For god's sake, these are scientists, they've seen the evidence and know that CO2 is a problem so stop trying to find new inventive ways to produce it.
Apparently you're not getting it. Sure burning plant-carbon fuel releases CO2 into the atmosphere. But where did the Carbon in the plant come from? That's right, from the atmosphere! Specifically from the CO2 in the atmosphere! So burning bio-fuels like ethanol won't actually increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it just cycles it through a system that provides us with useful energy.
america wants to keep burning stuff instead of using hydro-electric, wave power, or tidal- all of which are viable. That is WRONG! /Rant over
It's all a matter of efficiency. Hydro, wave and tidal energy can only produce and transmit electricity, you c
Re:How about this: (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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)