Alexis Bell and his team at University of California at Berkeley have discovered a cheaper way to produce jet fuel, diesel and lubricant using tiny amounts of cheap, renewable catalysts mixed with large amounts of sugar-factory waste.
Normally, making biofuel from sugar cane is expensive because of the large quantity of enzymes needed, but Bell and his team used hot water and a small amount of catalysts (magnesium oxide and niobium pentoxide) instead of enzymes to break down the leftover cane into fuel after the sugar is extracted.
Although they haven’t scaled this up to see how it well works in mass production, the fuels they’ve produced so far release 80 percent fewer greenhouse gases than standard fossil fuels and ethanol-based biofuels. And using industrial waste products to make biofuel isn’t unheard of. A similar tactic can already produce biofuels from old newspapers, discarded watermelons, and the by-products of Scottish whisky production. Also, anything that encourages people to produce more sugar, watermelons and Scottish whisky is my kind of science. And my grocery list.