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Danish researchers synthesize diesel and jet fuel from wood refuse

The new technology, developed by researchers from Aalborg University (AAU) and the Danish energy company Steeper Energy, can use gray water, household trash, wood, manure and straw as feedstock for synthesizing biofuels, writes EnergyWatch.

- What we have just done hasn't been done before, and it can have a big impact on the transport sector. We are not talking about supplying an insignificant fraction of the transport sector's fuel requirements – we are talking about double-digit percentages. This has the potential to become huge, said AAU Department of Energy Professor Lasse Rosendahl, who has developed the technology together with Ph.D. researcher Claus Uhrenholt Jensen.

These two have completed a commercial research project, which forms a part of the larger cooperation between AAU and Steeper Energy that has enabled converting organic materials to usable biofuels for heavy transport.

- Related News: Biofuels Could be the Most Cost-effective Climate Option for Shipowners

According to an AAU press release, the conversion process works by making "a organic crude oil via Hydrothermal Liquefaction, which is subsequently refined into a usable fuel. The process itself is analogous to the process oil companies use to refine and distill crude oil from, for instance, North Sea oil into gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and ship fuel."

Successfully refining the synthesized crude oil was for a time challenged by the high content of various salts and oxygen, which prevented them from using standard refining processes. Jensen was therefore compelled to develop new methods that enable the separation of salts from the crude via acidizing the aqueous solution with CO2. This is comparable to carbonation lowering the pH value of a cola. Acidization removes the salts and renders the oil refinable.

According to the statement, research endowments from the Obel Family Foundation funded the construction of a mini refinery at AAU's labs, where the crude oil is synthesized into sustainable diesel, jet fuel and ship fuel – al of which should be be fully compatible with existing motors and infrastructure.

- In terms of fuel yields, we can convert one ton of dried wood to 400 liters of fuel. That is an energy efficiency rate of over 70 percent. Moreover, our fuels are more or less CO2 neutral, as CO2 emission volumes correspond to what the tree absorbs in its lifetime. Estimates even show that we can potentially produce CO2-negative fuels, so CO2 is actually removed from the atmosphere to be used as our fuel. That would be a real breakthrough, said Jensen.

Accompaniment to electric vehicles According to the AAU researchers, this technology has so much potential, that heavy traffic in the near future would not necessarily need to be electrified. It follows, they reckon, that there will continue to be an increasing need for liquid, combustible fuels to supply airplanes, freight trucks and ships.

- In that sense, electric vehicles and biofuels can complement each other, for we cannot supply all the worlds motors with biofuels, and nor can we supply all the world's transportation with electricity. However, the two forms of energy both play a part in solving the problem, said Rosendahl.

- Related News: Green Idea Aims to Make People Eat Grass

Jensen, who is presently employed at Steeper Energy, hopes that their research efforts can be the beginning a new Danish commercial boom comparable to Vestas, where the entire world buy Danish-produced refineries for international installation.

- One can imagine a scenario in which regions such as Scandinavia or Canada, which have a lot of waste products from forestry, lumber milling and paper production can see the economic advantage of converting waste into biofuels, Rosendahl writes in the press statement.

Source: EnergyWatch

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