Just last month, Audi surprised the world with its groundbreaking development when they unveiled that they had successfully created synthetic diesel using just carbon dioxide and water. This is a big deal but what about those of us who drive or operate machinery that requires gasoline, not diesel?
Thankfully Audi has a solution for that too as the company has recently announced that they have successfully managed to create synthetic gasoline as well, and what’s amazing about this discovery is that it could potentially be sustainable as it is made using plants (or at least part of it). According to Audi’s project partner Global Bioenergies CEO Marc Delcourt, “To me this is a historic moment. It is the first time that we have produced real gasoline from plants.”
The program actually began back in 2014 where Global Bioenergies started up a program to product gaseous isobutane using renewable biomass sources such as corn-derived glucose. After this the material was put through a conditioning and purification process where it was collected into a liquid form and sent to Germany where it was then converted into pure, 100 octane gasoline.
Both Audi and Global Bioenergies are still working on developing the technology to the point where the renewable biomass will no longer be required and where they can just use water, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. Rick Brockrath, VP for chemical engineer at Global Bioenergies said, “We thinking we’re bringing green-ness to a field that desperately needs green-ness. It’s basically how we’re moving away from an oil-based economy towards something that has a renewable, sustainable future to it.”
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