Sugar May One Day Replace Oil
Glucose, a monosaccharide or simple sugar, is
the main source of energy for most living things. Because it is so ubiquitous,
scientists consider it to be a good alternative to oil, which is used to
produce plastics, fuels, and other products. While it is a difficult to convert
glucose into forms that are practical for use, chemists at the PNNL, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, Washington have developed a clean
and efficient way to convert natural sugars into plastics.
"The chemists detail in Science how they
used metal chlorides… to transform 70 percent of glucose and nearly 90 percent
of fructose into HMF, [which is a molecule that can easily be manipulated into
a variety of chemicals and plastics]."
The research done by Conrad Zhang, a leading
chemist in the project, and his colleagues could become the groundwork of a
method that converts biomass into, ultimately, plastics and fuels. The process
runs at about 100 degrees Celsius, making it a much more efficient procedure than
conventional oil refining practices, which operate at about 600 degrees
Celsius. While Zhang admits that full-scale commercialization of the process
may take years, it certainly seems promising, seeing how glucose is the most
abundant source of renewable energy in the world
