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Fine-tuning biofuel: National Chemistry Week helps us celebrate fructose
This week, in celebration of National Chemistry Week and its theme of the Sweet Side of Chemistry: Candy, NSF salutes sugar molecules that can be far more than just "sweet." Today we're all about fructose, or fruit sugar.
Fructose is found in tree fruits, honey and berries, though you may know it from its corn-based origins as the common ingredient high-fructose corn syrup.
NSF-funded researchers are also looking at plant sugars as a potential fuel source. While the idea of plant-based fuels as an alternative to fossil fuels has been around for a while, engineers are finding new ways of getting bigger bio-based yields more cheaply. Xianghong Qian, a chemical engineer at the University of Arkansas, is using dynamic simulations to study the fundamental ways these molecules interact to improve the process.
Credit: NSF
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