US Chemical Researchers Invent Bio-Petroleum for the Sustainable Materials

A team of the researchers from the United States National Science Foundation Center for the Sustainable Polymers, which is based at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has successfully developed a chemical technology of the combined fermentation and also the chemical refining that can possibly produce the liquids that are similar to the petroleum from the renewable energy plants.

These renewable liquids can also be used as more sustainable replacement for the existing fossil fuels that are currently being used for making the everyday products like bags and plastic containers, along with soaps, lubricants and parts of automobile.

This research has been very difficult for the scientists that has been using the plants as a source for the plastics because they had mostly been up of the sugars that are nothing like the molecules that have been obtained from the petroleum. The main sugar present in the plants is the glucose that is containing too much of the oxygen for most of the important applications.

The researchers has discovered an optimal technology for the purpose of making the sustainable liquids that has been similar to those, which are obtained from the petroleum by the combination of two normally independent technologies. The first is the glucose that is obtained from the plants had been fermented with the microbes for removing most of the oxygen and second is the metal oxide catalysts that strip the remaining oxygen and the combined molecules together for making a useful distribution of the olefins, which are the building blocks of the chemical sector or industry.