No more oil – renewable raw materials
are the future. This motto not only applies to biodiesel, but also to
isobutene, a basic product used in the chemical industry. In a pilot plant
researchers now want to obtain isobutene from sugar instead of oil for the
first time. And in order not to threaten food supplies, in the long term the
sugar should come from wood or straw and not from sugar beet.
Plastic, gasoline, rubber -- many items we use every day are based on oil. But this raw material is becoming increasingly scarcer. Step by step researchers are therefore investigating possibilities for using renewable raw materials to replace oil. One well-known example of this is biodiesel, which comes not from oil sources, but from fields of yellow-flowering rape. In future it is planned to produce another substance from plants, namely isobutene, a basic chemical used in the chemical industry to produce fuels, solvents, elastomers or even antiknock agents in fuel. Sugar, not oil, will be used to produce this isobutene. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP in Leuna are planning to set up a pilot plant.
Sugar used to produce isobutene
Valuable product of "digestion"
The basis of this was provided by staff at the company
Global Bioenergies: They introduced the unique metabolic conversion of sugar to
isobutene into a microorganism: If sugar is added to this microorganism, it
"digests" it -- and out comes gaseous isobutene. To develop and
construct this pilot plant, Global Energies will receive 5.7 million euros from
the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF. The company got the
CBP on board as a partner. "We have the expertise for both the
biotechnological and the chemical processes, and we meet all the requirements
for successfully getting the project off the ground" said a very pleased
Gerd Unkelbach, Director of CBP. "For example, we are able to handle
isobutene: when mixed with air explosive mixtures are formed."
Construction of the 600 m2 pilot plant will start in the
CBP technical center as of the fall of 2014 and it is planned that it will come
into operation a year later. The large-scale processes will take place like in
the laboratory: Sugar and the microorganism go into a fermenter which converts
the sugar to gaseous isobutene. The isobutene is separated, purified, liquefied
and filled into containers. Once the process has been transferred from the
laboratory to the pilot scale, the plant will produce up to 100 tons of
isobutene per year.
Science Daily