Your car may soon run on sawdust. Researchers have successfully converted sawdust into building blocks for petrol. Scientists at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium used a new chemical process to convert the cellulose in sawdust into hydrocarbon chains.
These hydrocarbons can be used as an additive in gasoline, or as a component in plastics, researchers said.
Cellulose is the main substance in plant matter and is present in all non-edible plant parts of wood, straw, grass, cotton and old paper. “At the molecular level, cellulose contains strong carbon chains. We sought to conserve these chains, but drop the oxygen bonded to them, which is undesirable in high-grade gasoline,” said Professor Bert Sels.
“With the right temperature and pressure, it takes about half a day to convert the cellulose in the wood shavings into saturated hydrocarbon chains, or alkanes,” Lagrain said.
“Essentially, the method allows us to make a ‘petrochemical’ product using biomass – thus bridging the worlds of bio-economics and petro chemistry,” he added.
The result is an intermediary product that requires one last simple step to become fully-distilled gasoline, said Sels.
