Engineers develop new eco-friendly process to produce jet fuel

Washington, Feb 26 (ANI): A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has developed a highly efficient, environmentally friendly process that selectively converts gamma-valerolactone, a biomass derivative, into the chemical equivalent of jet fuel.

The team of researchers included James Dumesic, Steenbock Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UW-Madison, postdoctoral researchers Jesse Bond and David Martin Alonso, and graduate students Dong Wang and Ryan West.

The simple process preserves about 95 percent of the energy from the original biomass, requires little hydrogen input, and captures carbon dioxide (CO2) under high pressure for future beneficial use.

Much of the Dumesic group's previous research of using cellulosic biomass for biofuels has focused on processes that convert abundant plant-based sugars into transportation fuels.

However, in previously studied conversion methods, sugar molecules frequently degrade to form levulinic acid and formic acid - two products the previous methods couldn't readily transform into high-energy liquid fuels.

The team's new method exploits sugar's tendency to degrade.

"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," said Dumesic.

In the presence of metal catalysts, the two acids react to form gamma-valerolactone, or GVL, which now is manufactured in small quantities as an herbal food and perfume additive.

Using laboratory-scale equipment and stable, inexpensive catalysts, Dumesic's group converts aqueous solutions of GVL into jet fuel.

"We can pull off these two catalytic stages, as well as the requisite separation steps, in series, with basic equipment. With very minimal processing, we can produce a pure stream of jet-fuel-range alkenes and a fairly pure stream of carbon dioxide," explained Bond.

"The hydrocarbons produced from GVL in this new process are chemically equivalent to those used in the present infrastructure," said Alonso.

"The product we make is ready for the jet fuel application and can be added to existing hydrocarbon blends, as needed, to meet specs," he added.

Now that they have demonstrated the process for converting GVL to transportation fuel, Dumesic and his students are developing more efficient methods for making GVL from biomass sources such as wood, corn stover, switchgrass and others.

"Once the GVL is made effectively, I think this is an excellent way to convert it to jet fuel," he said. (ANI)