I’ve never fully climbed aboard the biofuel bandwagon. There are just far too many hurdles to . If you rely on corn or sugarcane to produce ethanol fuel additives, food prices will skyrocket – we saw a glimpse of that back in 2007. The biggest problem, however, is ramping up production. A 2009 report estimated that biofuels made up just over 2 million tons of oil equivalent for transport in the European Union while conventional fossil fuels made up more than 310 million tons. The more environmentally sensible way of making biofuels is the so called ‘biomass-to-liquid’ approach, which involves using the left over bits of crop plants to make ‘green gasoline’. This type of biofuel made up about 2,000 tons of the 310 million tons of fuel used in the EU in 2009. As wonderful an idea as it is, biomass fuels are not currently a viable alternative.

I’m happy to be a skeptic, but less comfortable as a cynic. Thus, I decided to check in on to see what the biofuel gang was up to, and even from a skeptic’s viewpoint things are getting interesting. James Dumesic, an engineer at the University of Wisconsin, and his colleagues described a technique that can convert a chemical found in beer, coffee and chocolate directly into liquid hydrocarbons that could be used for fuel.

-valerolactone (GVL) is an aromatic organic liquid that has been proposed to be useful as a fuel additive that can be blended with gasoline. It is reported to be as efficient as ethanol as a fuel additive, but that’s not what we’re talking aboit today.

Dumesic’s paper, published in the most recent issue of Science, describes a method of converting GVL efficiently to a state that can be used directly as transportation fuels without blending. Dumesic’s group describes an improved method to create GVL from two acids which are formed when other acids are used to break down cellulose – plentiful in biomass – into sugars. In effect, what Dumesic has made the whole process more efficient. Rather than making a biofuel that can serve as a fuel additive – reducing the amount of gasoline used in your car – they have developed a process of making a biofuel that can replace the gasoline used in your car.

And that’s not all! The carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct of the process is released as a pure, pressurised steam that Dumesic claims “can potentially be captured and then treated or sequestered to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from the process”. Green and clean.

The problem? Well there are a few, but the biggest is still production. You aren’t going to see Dumesic’s biofuel at the pump any time soon. Virent, Dumesic’s spin-off company, was producing one liter of their previous generation biofuel a day in 2009. Even with the more efficient process, their output isn’t likely to get to significant levels any time soon. Still and all, it is baby steps isn’t it?

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