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Hydrogen-carbon method could raise biomass-to-biofuel production efficiency
14th March 2007
A new, more efficient but still theoretical method for manufacturing biofuels could generate enough fuel to supply the entire U.S. transport sector while sharply reducing the amount of raw biomass required to make them, according to a paper from chemical engineers at Purdue University in Indiana publicised this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
By recycling the CO2 wasted in current biofuel manufacturing methods, the amount of plant and plant-derived material required to make biofuels could be reduced markedly, says the paper. In conventional methods of converting biomass to fuel, about two-thirds of the material is lost as CO2 released into the atmosphere; in this scheme, it would be forced to react with hydrogen, which suppresses the formation of CO2.
A recent US Department of Energy study suggested that using conventional methods, it would take 1.366 billion tons of biomass, about the total current annual U.S. supply, to make enough fuel to supply 30% of US transport fuel demand. The Purdue University team believes that with the higher efficiency of hydrogen-carbon biofuel production, the U.S. could use that same amount of biomaterial to supply the entire US transport system.
Using hydrogen for the process derived from a renewable source, such as wind, solar or nuclear energy, the system advocated would actually have a positive environmental effect besides extending fuel sources beyond non-renewables, but such processes for hydrogen production remain the challenge, for both better biofuels production and the future ‘hydrogen economy”.
(Planet Ark/Reuters, 14 March)
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