Metal catalysts are being used to prepare new biofuels
that would improve the environment as well as producing a fuel that could be
used in place of gasoline. The catalytic metals help assist in the fermentation
technique once used to make cordite, the explosive propellant that replaced
gunpowder in bullets and artillery shells. With the addition of the metal
catalyst, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the production of acetone,
butanol and ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass could be selectively upgraded
to the high volume production of gasoline, diesel or jet
fuel.
This connects claerly to the environment, as biofuels can prove to be a great extra source of...fuel. However, are biofuels really a solution? Although the article mentions how making biofuels is great, it doesn't address the fact that biofuels still need to be burneed to be used. Its a combustion reaction...which is not good for the environment! Here it is, the combustion of ethanol and methanol (yes we are too lazy to actually type it)
As we know, the burning is exothermic so change in Enthalpy is negative (this may seem obvious but bear with me). Thus, we get energy from this reaction. However...the Carbon dioxide biproduct is not favorable. So biofuels just give us more oil, they do not solve the environmental problems. So even though the scientists use catalytic metals to produce biofuels, I would not glorify their process too much not only to show we are not biased towards all transition metal catalytic processes, but also to show that making biofuels only postpones the environmental problem.
