TAKE a vat of vegetable oil and add a scorched sugar lump. It might not catch on as the latest cocktail, but the mixture could speed up the widespread production and use of biodiesel in vehicles.
Converting vegetable oils to fuel requires a catalyst. Most existing catalysts are derived from petrochemicals, but using them defeats the environmentally friendly object of biofuels. Liquid sulphuric acid is an alternative, but it is expensive and wasteful because it is hard to remove after the conversion. Now a team led by Masakazu Toda at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan has developed a…
