RICHLAND, Wash., June 18 (UPI) -- U.S. government scientists say they have taken a major step toward replacing crude oil as the basic source for plastics, fuels and other chemicals.
Researchers directly converted sugars found in plants into an alternative source for fuel and polyesters, with very few residual impurities.
"What we have done that no one else has been able to do is convert glucose directly in high yields to a primary building block for fuel and polyesters," said Z. Conrad Zhang, leader of the research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Institute for Interfacial Catalysis.
The "building block" is hydroxymethylfurfural, or HMF -- a chemical derived from carbohydrates such as glucose and fructose.
Glucose found in plant starch and cellulose is nature's most abundant sugar, said Zhang, "But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging.
"In addition to low yield until now, we always generate many different byproducts -- including levulinic acid -- making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals," he said.
Zhang, Haibo Zhao, John Holladay, Heather Brown and colleagues detail their research in the June 15 issue of the journal Science.
