Chemical breakthrough turns sawdust into biofuel

A wider of range of plant material could be turned into biofuels thanks to a breakthrough that converts plant molecules called lignin into liquid hydrocarbons.

The reaction reliably and efficiently turns the lignin in waste products such as sawdust into the chemical precursors of ethanol and biodiesel.

Now Yuan Kou at Peking University in Beijing, China, and his team have come up with a lignin breakdown reaction that more reliably produces the alkanes and alcohols needed for biofuels.

Impressively, the researchers’ practical yields approached those theoretical ideals. They produced monomer yields of 45 wt% and dimer yields of 12 wt%