Energy & Resources
Fill ‘er up…with sugar?

Traditionally, putting sugar in a gas tank is an act of treachery reserved only for one’s enemies. Now, researchers are putting a new useful spin on a mean old trick by suggesting that renewable, clean-burning sugar derivatives might someday help replace liquid fossil fuels such as gasoline.

Ethanol has traditionally been the biofuel of choice, but it has its problems — one of which is that it is not very efficient compared to gasoline and other petroleum-based fuels. So researchers are trying to make ethanol more efficient, or to find new, better fuels.

And that’s just what James Dumesic, a chemical engineer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and colleagues have done. They discovered a new method for obtaining combustible, energy-rich dimethylfuran (DMF) from fructose, a simple sugar found in plants ranging from parsnips to peaches.

Compared to ethanol, DMF is a fuel more energy-dense by 40 percent, with a higher boiling point, and is not soluble in water, Dumesic and colleagues wrote in an article published June 21 in Nature.

Ari Hartmann
Geotimes contributing writer

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