The petroleum industry will benefit from research on silicate digestion, claim researchers in the US.

Joseph Lambert and colleagues at Northwestern University have devised a 'practical, economic, and environmentally friendly method' to break up silicates. Petroleum is extracted from silicate formations in the earth's crust and silicates are important for producing starting materials for the silicon electronics industry. 

Lambert and his team used the sugar fructose and a weak organic base mixed with a chelating agent to break up silicate minerals. This avoids the need for corrosive chemicals like hydrogen fluoride which are currently used to remove petrol from silicates.

Lambert was surprised by the simplicity of the reaction. 'Silicates are the most widespread inorganic material in the lithosphere, and sugars constitute the major weight of organic materials on Earth. It is amazing that chemical reaction of the two most common inorganic and organic materials.was unknown to chemistry until recently.'

According to Vera Kolb at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, US, this is 'a truly important advancement in the process silicate removal from the environment.' However, Kolb said that further development is needed to control the silicate dissolution.

For Lambert there are many avenues left to explore. 'There is the intriguing possibility that the reaction of sugars with silicate minerals was important in the development of life in the prebiotic phase of our planet,' he said. 'Could silicates play a role in stabilising ribose and fructose during prebiotic synthesis, or rendering them non-volatile during interplanetary transport to Earth, for example, on meteorites?'  

Katie Gibb