Biomass catalyst could impact fossil fuels.

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Alternatives to fossil fuels and natural gas as carbon sources are in demand. Biomass could play a more significant part in the future. Researchers have developed a new catalyst that converts cellulose--the most common form of biomass--directly into ethylene glycol, an important intermediate product for the chemical industry.

Biomass is used mainly in the form of starch, which is degraded to make sugars and then fermented to produce ethanol. It would be cheaper to employ cellulose, which is the major component of plant cell walls and thus the most plentiful organic compound on Earth. In contrast to starch from corn and grain, cellulose is not a food, so there would be no competition between its use as food or as a raw material and fuel. At the moment, cellulose mainly is processed by fermentation. However, splitting cellulose into its individual sugar components, which then can be fermented, is a slow and cost-intensive process. So, the direct conversion of cellulose into useful organic compounds is an attractive alternative.

Initial reactions using various noble-metal catalysts have been developed. Their disadvantage is that large amounts...