Engineers seek to develop a sustainable chemical economy

Funded through a $2m (£1.2m) grant from the National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation programme, the University of Wisconsin-Madison team will develop and evaluate a systems-level biorefinery strategy for using photosynthetic methods to produce chemical compounds.

‘The real issue is: how do we develop a sustainable chemical economy,’ said Brian Pfleger, a UW-Madison assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, and lead researcher on the grant.

Although the major products of crude-oil refineries are fuels such as gasoline and jet fuel, approximately 20 per cent of crude oil is refined, in several complicated, energy-intensive steps, into petrochemicals.

As an alternative to crude oil, researchers are studying ways to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable sources, including plant biomass and algae.

Current production processes are energy intensive and generate sugars or oils, which are intermediate products.

‘Then you would take those intermediates and do traditional processing, whether it’s biological or chemical,’ said Pfleger in a statement.