Ahmed Osman, a researcher at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), Northern Ireland, has developed a revolutionary new method for converting used aluminium foil into a catalyst for the production of biofuel. Osman led a team of engineers in developing a method for obtaining 100% pure single crystals of aluminium salts from waste foil.
Such crystals are used as the building blocks for preparing an alumina catalyst that is used in converting methanol to dimethyl ether that is more effective than the catalyst currently being used. As dimethyl ether is considered among the most promising biofuels developed so far, the implications of this breakthrough could be significant.
In addition, the new catalyst is around half the cost of the current catalyst, and as 20,000 metric tons of aluminium foil is thrown away each year in the UK alone, obtaining raw materials for this new catalyst is significantly easier, considering that the current catalyst can only be obtained from raw bauxite ore.
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Biofuel catalyst from aluminium foil
VATIS UPDATE Part
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