Welcome to Issue 10 of Green Chemistry 

On the cover: This month's cover illustrates the work of James Dumesic and his team at the University of Wisconsin. You can read the accompanying paper in this issue.

 

Paper: Coupling of glycerol processing with Fischer-Tropsch synthesis for production of liquid fuels

In this month's issue, Dumesic shows that liquid alkane fuel can be produced from a by-product of biomass processing. Producing liquid alkanes from bio sources is attractive because the use of biomass produces less carbon dioxide, and so it impacts less on global warming. The researchers have devised a system that involves the integration of two processes. The first process is the production of synthesis gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, from glycerol. The second is a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, where the synthesis gas is converted to hydrocarbons. Both processes are catalytic, with the first being endothermic and the second exothermic, and the system operates at low temperature and moderate pressure. In integrating the two processes Dumesic's team found that they could feed the synthesis gas produced in the first process directly into the second without purification.