Vegetable oil and alcohol are fed into parallel channels in the microreactor, whihc produces biodiesel almost immediately. This does away with the need for large plants and catalytic processes, which generally take more than 24 hours to produce biodiesel.
The microreactor is being developed by Oregon State University and the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute with a view to creating a commercial unit that will allow farmers to produce biodiesel onsite, reducing the associated transport costs built into fuel prices.
The microreactor was originally developed by chemical engineering professor Goran Jovanovic at Oregon State University.
"This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people," Jovanovic said.
"Most people think large-scale, central production of energy is cheaper, because we've been raised with that paradigm. But distributed energy production means you can use local resources – farmers can produce all the energy they need from what they grow on their own farms."
The development team has indicated that the card-sized devices could be stacked into banks to facilitate the production of commercial quantities of biodiesel.
