Max-Planck scientist announces the development of a new process, to transform biomass, such as leaves, into valuable raw materials.
Imagine converting straw, wood, grass or leaves into coal overnight.
Such was the dream of Alchemisten of the Middle Ages, who also wanted to make inferior materials into gold.
Markus Antonietti, director at the [Potsdamer] Max-Planck-Institute for colloid and boundary surface research, has developed a procedure in which vegetable biomass, without complicated detours and intermediate steps, reworks completely into carbon and water. The procedure - "hydrothermal cabonization" - could supply the basis for a lasting and environmentally neutral energy industry.
This was reported in the current edition of the science magazine, Max Planck Research (2/2006).
How it works
The Kohlenmeiler, which Markus Antonietti designed, functions in principle like a dampfkochtopf. And the cook prescription for coal is astonishing simple. The pressure vessel is filled with arbitrary vegetable products, thus for instance with leaves, straw, grass, wood bit or Pinienzapfen. In addition still water and a prize catalyst come. Then the pot is closed and the whole under pressure and luftabschluss is heated up for twelve hours ot 180 degrees. After the mixture is cooled down, the pot is opened. It contains a black bruehe - distributed spherical coal particles in water purify.
All carbon, which was bound in the plant material, is present now in form of this particles, as small, porous brown coal balls. They can be fired directly, or (more effectively) in gas cells, in addition, be served for the production of gasoline, diesel oil or other chemicals. Since the hydrothermale Karbonisierung suddenly does not run off, interesting intermediate products can additionally be obtained during the process. Already after few minutes one finds a preliminary stage of oil in the pressure vessel; and during a later phase, pure humus forms.
All these transformations occur without any loss of carbon. The procedure therefore works at one hundred percent carbon efficiency. Additionally, the Karbonisierungsprozess functions exothermically, thus also providing energy in the process. This method is therefore said to be superior to all other methods of extracting energy from biomass, and could open the way to an absolutely environmentally-neutral energy industry.
What happens in Antoniettis equipment, the formation of brown coal, is patterned from what happens in nature. However, there it proceeds much more slowly -- measured in millions of years. Duplicating this process from nature required first to understand it at the core - on molecular level. The director of Max-Planck describes: "vegetable biomass consists in the long run of coal hydrates, of sugar components, which contain very much energy. We had to thus succeed in dividing these sugar molecules into carbon and water - during a chemical process, which does not only supply then carbon as source of energy, but also freeing the energy which is still in the sugar molecules."
This process requires a catalyst in order to proceed more rapidly than in nature, accelerating the fragmentation of the sugar molecules in carbon and water mani-fold. In this catalyst, which is added to contents of the dampfkochtopfs in small portions, the actual secret of the "miracle coal" is from potsdam. To hope is that this catalyst can also accelerate the emergence of lasting and environmentally-neutral energy industry.
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A detailed version of this text can be found in the feature of the newest publication of Max Planck Research. Under the title "energy" report we on environmental compatible and resource-conservation research for the future: over fusion power stations, artificial photosynthesis and the best energy-mix. The essay "to the age a new future give" lights up the demographic development to Germany, which does not offer a reason despite the frequently sketched scenario of an aging society for horror visions, but various chances - for instance for the even distribution of the work over the personal record. In addition you find haven-guess/advise the society researcher Jens Beckert, which examines the mechanisms of the market with the methods of the new restaurant sociology. Under the title a "you read sleeping in the Tomografen" a report over it how the brain in the night enterprise works. In the article "if genes wrongly at the place are" go it around the study of the causes of mental handicap, and the contribution "the world memory of the science" dedicates itself to the question, as one measures the quality of the research.
For the booklet are appropriate a BIO MAX ("microbes chess matt set" - researchers prepare after Tuberkulose vaccine) as well as a TECHMAX ("miracle lamp from the quantum country" - like the laser to the everyday life technology becomes).
Max Planck Research is published four times a year. Free subscriptions to the science magazine can be obtained at the the Max-Planck website: http://mpg.de