PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD | Table of Contents: |
Recently at Smarter Technology, we wrote about improvements in electrical infrastructure that could someday lead to widespread oil independence among vehicles. Adding to this movement away from oil are synthetic fuels, according to a team of researchers at Purdue University. The scientists are working to strengthen our knowledge about synthetic fuel through a better understanding of the combustion of oil and biomass.
Purdue
University doctoral students—from left, Indraneel Sircar, Brent Rankin, Rohan
Gejji and Anup Sane—built this reactor to improve the process of synthetic-fuel
manufacturing (source: Purdue University /Mark Simons).
"A major focus is to be able to produce a significant quantity of synthetic fuel for the U.S. air transportation system and to reduce our dependence on petroleum oil for transportation," wrote Jay Gore about the study in a Purdue University statement. Gore is currently the Reilly University Chair Professor of Combustion Engineering at Purdue.
Eventually, the team hopes to develop a system for producing large quantities of synthetic fuel from sources like agricultural waste, coal and other biomass sources. Scientists can also create fuels from these materials by steaming them into gaseous states and then converting them to liquids.
Another goal of the study is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while increasing the amount of liquid fuel. Conventional synthetic-fuel processing often has higher than ideal carbon dioxide emission rates.
A major breakthrough in the research will be a better understanding of how oil and biomass turn into gas when exposed to steam. This process, known as gasification, results in synthesis gas, which can be converted into liquid fuel.
"We want to show that our system is flexible for using coal and biomass," Gore said. "The aim is to create a sustainable synthetic fuel economy. What's daunting is the size of the problem—how much oil we need, how much energy we need."
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