More research will be needed to perfect the process but fuel from plastic waste is now clearly on the horizon. But their use in such roles has been limited by their high cost, which is largely due to the time needed to produce the crystalline materials in exactly the right forms. This takes about 12 hours using conventional chemistry. Now, instead, researchers at the Manchester Centre for Microporous Materials have shown that zeolite crystals can be made by putting them in a giant microwave oven and microwaving them for about 15 minutes. This will cut the cost of making zeolites substantially and so should also cut the cost of lead-free petrol and some detergents.
Much research there focuses on developing the use of grain to produce industrial chemicals.
Starch is already widely extracted from grain, mainly from corn, traditionally, but wheat is now becoming an increasingly attractive alternative. Starch is widely used in the making of pharmaceuticals, paints, plastics and agrochemicals. But the most exciting prospects for the future lie in the use of starch as a carbohydrate energy source in fermentation processes in biotechnology. The concept of grain processing as a process analogous to petroleum processing is being developed at the Satake Centre in a similar way to the development of plastic waste distillation as a process parallel to the distillation of crude oil in the Centre for Microporous Materials. There are clear environmental advantages in replacing non-renewable resources with renewable grains as feedstocks for chemical processes.