A UW-Madison engineering professor has developed a way of turning plant sugars into alternative fuels.

This week’s online version of the journal Science published UW-Madison chemical and biological engineering professor James Dumesic’s paper on his research.

Edward Kunkes, co-author and research assistant in the UW-Madison chemical engineering department, said that the lack of oil, the diminishing petroleum resources, and the political talk of green energy initiated interest in alternative fuels for researchers.

“We decided that we needed a more direct way to get gasoline,” Kunkes said.

Dumesic and his team initially used platinum based catalysts to convert sugars and alcohols into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, thus producing gasoline.

A breakthrough came when the research team analyzed the solution producing the gasoline. Dumesic said if the concentration of the solution was high enough not all the sugar would get converted into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and the sugar would then lose a majority of its oxygen atoms resulting in an organic liquid.

The research suggests that instead of converting the cellulose-contrived sugars into ethanol, it would be more efficient and beneficial to apply it to gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

“This is the same fuel we’re currently using [in society], just from a different source,” Dumesic said in a statement on Thursday.

The National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy made the research possible and the applications on a local, state and national level are yet to be seen.

“It’s quite difficult to say whether or not this technology will get implemented,” Kunkes said. “But the advantage is that right now the biofuels we produce with this technology can be used in current infrastructure, and can be used in the current modes of transportation.”