BIOFUEL BREAKTHROUGH

Will this improve efficiency enough to turn the EROEI positive?

High energy liquid fuel created from sugar
June 21, 2007 (UPI)

WHO
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor James Dumesic and graduate students Yuriy Roman-Leshkov, Christopher Barrett and Zhen Liu
the basic idea

WHAT
The scientists have derived a sugar from biomass and transformed it into DMF (2,5-dimethylfuran) a liquid fuel with 40% greater energy density than ethanol.

WHEN
Reported the week of June 21.

WHERE
Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Reported in the journal Nature

WHY
DMF:
- has a 40% higher energy density
- is storage-stable
- is not water soluble so is not diluted by atmospeheric humidity
- requires only 1/3 the energy of ethanol for fermentation.
- The research team also did important research on an intermediate step, turning sugar into hydroxymethylfurfural.
graduate student Roman-Leshkov with a test tube of the fuel created from fructose

QUOTES
Dumesic: "Currently, ethanol is the only renewable liquid fuel produced on a large scale.. But ethanol ... has relatively low energy density, evaporates readily, and can become contaminated by absorption of water from the atmosphere. It also requires an energy-intensive distillation process to separate the fuel from water."