In the face of an international movement away from traditional fossil fuels and toward a greener future, many researchers around the world are rushing to find the next big breakthrough in the production of renewable resources, particularly via more and more efficient means of converting biomass. The latest headline to come from efforts of scientists around the globe is a new discovery by a team of scientists based in the west Indian city of Pune at the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), which offers a quicker, eco-friendly technique for converting industrial biomass into biodiesel. The key to the scientists’ discovery is a new version of a zeolite catalyst – HPW/Meso-HZ-5 – which can be used to make the process of converting industrial biomass into an organic biofuel compound called furfural far more efficient. The current standard process of making furfural starts with biomass sourced from agricultural waste such as bagasse, […]