Convert sugar to diesel
Baku, November 16 (AZERTAC). Renewable energy brings in some of the most cutting-edge engineering research from fields as diverse as materials science and biotechnology. But sometimes looking backward can provide just as much of a spark as moving forward.
New engineering research and development at the University of California at Berkeley has turned to an old chemical engineering process from the early days of the 20th century as a possible source for cleaner diesel fuel.
Acclaimed chemist Chaim Weizmann, also later the first president of the newly-formed Israel, developed a process at the dawn of World War I to produce the critical chemical component acetone using the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum to break down sugars in common plant feedstocks. The process was known as ABE fermentation because it also produced butanol and ethanol, chemicals in lesser demand at the time.
Acetone was a crucial component of cordite, which the British military used in place of gunpowder, and the country at that point was still struggling to secure its supplies of petroleum, the primary source of acetone in many other parts of the world.
The development of oil resources in Iran, then Persia, as well as strengthening links with some of the world's oil giants helped ease these supply issues, cutting the cost to produce acetone from petroleum and essentially ending the need for alternate feedstocks and ABE fermentation. By 1965, the last of the ABE fermentation plants in the U.S. closed down.
But with demand for renewable fuels, particularly those with a lower carbon impact than fossil fuels, the researchers at the Energy Biosciences Institute decided to see if they could revive the process. While it was previously used primarily for producing acetone and butanol, ABE fermentation is actually remarkably efficient at converting sugars in feedstock, far more so than many biofuels process currently in operation.
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