Bio-fuels can be made from various source materials such as
waste from the wine making industry and woody biomass. A team at the Catalysis
Institute as Cardiff University is hoping to make bio-fuel production more
efficient and sustainable by recycling leftovers from the process.
Currently, bio-fuel production uses methanol, which is
combined with fats and oils. The process generates glycerol as a waste product,
but the material is too full of impurities for cost effective reuse. This is
where researchers spotted an opportunity to increase the yield, using a simple
catalysis to recycle glycerol into methanol that can be used to produce more
biodiesel.
They added water to glycerol as a source of hydrogen and
used Magnesium oxide and cerium oxide as catalysts. They experimented with
different temperatures catalysis periods and chemical combinations to test
their ideas.
They said the results they achieved point the way to a new
catalyst route from aqueous glycerol to methanol, with the potential to
increase yield by an estimated 10 percent.
Other researchers have experimented with converting glycerol
into methanol by adding hydrogen gas to the material. The advantages of this
new method include that it is simpler and involves only one chemical conversion
step, and it can be performed at room temperature at normal atmospheric
pressure.
The researchers highlight, that more development work need
to optimize the catalyst, particularly in relation to its stability.
“We set out to establish ways in which the waste product
glycerol could be used to form other useful compounds, but we were surprised
when we found that feeding glycerol and water over such simple catalyst gave
such valuable and interesting chemistry,” said co-author of study Professor
Stuart Taylor.
The Cardiff team says that its research could be part of the
solution to meet official fuel targets and make the transport network cleaner.
The European Union mandates all of its members state to source 10 percent of
its transport fuel mix from renewable source by 2020.
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