Want wine with those biofuels? Why not, researchers ask

Searching for that perfect wine pairing? Try wine and biodiesel, research from the University of the Basque Country in Spain indicates. If acetals -- the chemical compounds found in many wines -- are blended with biodiesel, they improve its properties, the university said Monday in a release. Researchers with the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Environment of the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao are working on a project seeking to encourage the use of this fuel -- and produce it more easily and cheaply with acetals. The research's goal is to develop an industrial process to obtain supplements that will improve the biodiesel eventually pumped into vehicles, the university said. Researcher Ion Agirre experimented with alcohol that is the by-product of sugar-rich plants such as sugar cane, and also with glycerol, since both are alcohols of renewable origin, the university said. One of the research's conclusions is that glycerol-based acetals transmit better properties to the biodiesel than alcohols from sugar-rich plants such as ethanol or butanol, Agirre said.