Bioscience engineers at KU Leuven already knew how to make gasoline in the laboratory from plant waste such as sawdust. Now the researchers have developed a roadmap, as it were, for industrial cellulose gasoline.
In 2014, at KU Leuven’s Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis, researchers succeeded in converting sawdust into building blocks for gasoline. A chemical process made it possible to convert the cellulose - the main component of plant fibres - in the sawdust into hydrocarbon chains. These hydrocarbons can be used as an additive in gasoline. The resulting cellulose gasoline is a second generation biofuel, explains Professor Bert Sels. ...
