Furfural biogas energy efficiency assessed

Spanish scientists have released a new study analysing the energy efficiency of furfural biogas.

An organic compound produced through the atmospheric-plasma treatment of a variety of agricultural byproducts such as corncobs, oat, wheat bran and saw dust, furfural is considered a promising alternative fuel candidate.

For the biogas to be considered for use on a large-scale its energy characteristics need to be understood, something which the new research, published in the European Physical Journal D, is hoping to address.

Ana Lozano from the Institute of Fundamental Physics in Madrid, Spain and colleagues studied an electron beam entering a cell filled with furfural gas molecules to observe its scattering characteristics. This provided the scientists with the first accurate experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of the interaction between electron and gas particles.

From their analysis, Lozano and colleagues established a benchmark evaluation of the total low-energy electron scattering cross-sections from furfural and energy loss estimates for selected energies (7, 10 and 20 eV).