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Wheat straw has been identified as a potential source of polyols by a team at Spain's University of Cordoba. Working in collaboration with Chile's Advanced Polymers Research Centre, researchers managed to transform it into polyols for polyurethanes.
Nearly 740 million metric tons of this agricultural waste is produced worldwide every year, researchers said, but there is no well-defined use for the cheap material. Although there are potential applications such as bioethanol production, it is usually discarded.
An alternative strategy would be to convert the biomass into liquid fuels without the usual gasification step. While thermochemical conversion mechanisms such as this have potential, the Cordoba group said that, to date, the ideal has been neglected because the process is complex and expensive, and therefore difficult to scale up.