New efficient, environmentally friendly process turns biomass into jet fuel

EnergyEfficiencyNews.com
February 26, 2010

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a highly efficient, environmentally friendly process for converting biomass into jet fuel.

Conventional techniques for converting biomass into fuel reply on plant-based sugars. However, these have the tendency to degrade into less useful levulinic and formic acids.

“Instead of trying to fight the degradation, we started with levulinic acid and formic acid and tried to see what we could do using that as a platform,” says lead researcher James Dumesic.

The new process, described in the prestigious journal Science this week, uses metal catalysts to react the two acids to form gamma-valerolactone, or GVL, which can in turn be transformed into jet fuel using inexpensive equipment and catalysts.

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