Turning Biomass into Crude Oil

OilPrice.com
Written by Brian Westenhaus

University of Michigan professors are heating and squishing algae in a pressure-cooker that fast-forwards the crude oil making process from millennia to just minutes. It doesn’t have to be algae it could be any wet biomass.

Phillip Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the U-M Department of Chemical Engineering is principal investigator on the $2-million National Science Foundation grant that supports the project. The grant is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This method is the raw and brutal way to take biomass to oil products. Savage says, “We’re trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we don’t want to wait millions of years. The hard part is taking the tar that comes out of the pressure cooker and turning it into something you could put in your car, changing the properties so it can flow more easily, and doing it in a way that’s affordable.”

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