Mark Mascal, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Davis and his Chemists team have developed a cheap way to convert Bio wastes into gasoline-like fuels.
“Traditional diesel fuel is made up of long, straight chains of carbon atoms, while the molecules that make up gasoline are shorter and branched. That means gasoline and diesel evaporate at different temperatures and pressures, reflected in the different design of diesel and gasoline engines”.
A plant-based gasoline replacement would open up a much bigger market for renewable fuels. Because the process does not rely on fermentation, the cellulose does not have to be converted to sugars first. The feedstock for this new process is levulinic acid, which can be produced by chemical processing of Bio wastes or even municipal green waste. Professor Mascal, explained in detail in his recently published paper in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
This can be explored further by our researchers to the possible initiatives to be made to suit Indian waste disposal requirement. As the Municipal wastes are being dumped into the yard and left for degradation, there is a huge potential to adopt latest innovation to explore new avenues of opportunities to generate alternate fuels.
