University of Minnesota Researchers Identify Potential Materials to Boost Ethanol Production

With the help of one of the largest supercomputers in the world, researchers from the University of Minnesota have identified potential materials that could improve the production of ethanol and petroleum products. This discovery could lead to major upgrades in these industries.

Refineries use zeolites, which act as molecular sieves to collect chemical compounds as well as catalyze chemical reactions, to produce and upgrade fuel and chemical feedstock. With more than 200 known zeolites and thousands of variations, improving biofuel and petrochemical processes depends on finding which zeolites work best. Researchers from the University of Minnesota and Rice University have developed a complex computational screening process that can identify every zeolite's performance for specific applications.

"Using a supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory, we are able to use our computer simulations to compress decades of research in the lab into a total of about a day's worth of computing," said lead researcher Ilja Siepmann, a University of Minnesota chemistry professor and director of the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Nanoporous Materials Genome Center based in Minnesota.