Fly the Poplar Skies: Research teams developing processes for carbon-negative renewable jet fuel, higher poplar yields

Biofuels Digest
March 01, 2010

In Wisconsin and Maryland, a pair of teams are working independently on processes that, when paired, may lead to the direct conversion of poplar trees into jet fuel as well as other high-density biofuels. One project is just getting underway in Maryland — a project to radically improve the nitrogen efficiency of poplar by discovering, defining and enhancing the switching mechanisms in the poplar genome nitrogen cycle thereby improving the plant’s already considerable reputation for fast growth.

A second project in Wisconsin is now reporting results in Science magazine, the direct conversion (in two steps) of cellulose to jet fuel via an old fuel pathway — GVLs — that have now been made radically more efficient at Jim Dumesic’s lab at the University of Wisconsin.

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