New Type of Bio-Fuel Invented

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Wisconsin Engineers Develop New Process
to Manufacture Fuel from Vegetable Sugar

The University of Wisconsin announced that one of their research teams have developed a process for turning biomass sugar or fructose, into 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), a fuel ideally suited to use in cars etc.

Through chemically altering sugars in a series of steps involving hydrochoric acid and copper catalysts, salt and using butanol as a solvent, the team of researchers created a method for manufacturing a sustainable, carbon-neutral fuel.

Dimethylfuran has 40% higher energy content than ethanol and additionally sorts out other ethanol shortcomings, such as:

• DMF is not soluble in water and therefore cannot become contaminated by absorbing water from the atmosphere.
• DMF is stable in storage.
  
• DMF is stable in the evaporation stage of its production. It consumes only a third of the energy required to evaporate a solution of ethanol produced by fermentation for bio-fuel applications.

Sounds like another little bit of good news for a sustainable energy - carbon neutral future.



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