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Synthetic Biology For Natural Fuel
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jul 03, 2007 06:05 PM
from the powering-up-smart-bugs dept.
from the powering-up-smart-bugs dept.
CoolBeans writes "Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky. The Department of Energy has promised $125 million to the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a team of six national labs and universities that will be run like a startup company. They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. The genes of crops that produce large amounts of cellulose will be tweaked to improve the yield per acre and to increase drought and pest resistance. Microbes that produce sugar from cellulose and ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency." The article mentions as an aside that earlier this year, "the energy giant BP gave $500 million to Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for similar alternative energy research. That gift will fund the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will operate separately from the JBEI." So UC Berkeley and LBL are both participating in two separate energy-biotech research programs.
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Hardware: Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices Worldwide 599 comments
hereisnowhy writes "The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American — an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel. Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol — whether from corn, beets, wheat, or other crops — requires more energy than can be derived from the product."
[+]
Echeria Coli Co-Opted To Make Gasoline 331 comments
Flask_Man writes "Technology Review has an article about a small biotech company in the Silicon Valley that has successfully produced renewable gasoline from genetically modified bacteria, including the nefarious E.Coli bacteria. A pilot plant is slated to be constructed in California in 2008, and it is claimed that hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules are capable of being produced. The modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires. From the article: 'To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.'" We discussed something similar to this earlier this year.
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Why Ethanol? (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus there's some incentive to clean up eutrophicated bodies of water this way because, hey, that's profit floating on the top!
Answers (Score:5, Insightful)
1) we have the infrastructure to use it immediately.
2) It's not corrosive or particularly toxic.
3) unlike algae it's grown by agricultiure so Archer Daniels Midland can get their cut of the pie.
the latter is probably the most defining reason.
But I think ethanol may be the wrong ticket. Obviously corn ethanol is a bad idea. But even cellulosic ethanol may be a bad idea.
two reasons:
1) Now matter how you produce it, evenif a miracle in effciency happened, at the end of the process any ethanol produced is going to be dissolved in water. Drying it out is going to eat the efficiency.
2) Cellulose and Ligno-cellulose is desinged by trees to be indigestible and energetically inaccessible. If it were easy to digest the bacteria and termites would have eaten the whole forest a long time ago. Trees would not be huge cellulose containers. That should be a clue.
Now it is true that man made enzymes can in some instances beat natural ones by an order of magnitude of more. But this is one place where nature has had a lot of different creatures all working on the same problem independently for quite some time.
One the other hand it's almost commerically viable now. So we only need maybe a factor of ten improvement to open up wide spread production. However then other scaling issues will raise their heads. Farmland will be used. in many case it will be existing farm waste, but in others, say poplar trees, it will be for non-edible products. And if we try to open up new farmlands to compensate then were back to having a water budget problem.
Algae making diesel would seem to bypass a lot of these problem. It can be grown off croplands, in many cases using sea water or brackish water. And it's easy to separate the oils from the water. the product has a higher energy value than Ethanol per volume and per weight. And it does not produce as much toxic waste in the production process (ethanol uses acid treatment and produces loads of crap to dispose of).
Re:Answers (Score:4, Informative)
We've got the infrastructure to distribute diesel fuel directly - and existing diesel engines can run on high quality commercial biodiesel with no modification at all; you can treat such biodiesel exactly like traditional diesel fuel.
I guess diesel fuel is a bit more toxic than ethanol, but it's nothing we haven't been dealing with for a very long time.
This is the main reason, and it's a big mistake to let them turn subsidized food into fuel inefficiently. The algae to biodiesel process takes *no* food land and produces much higher energy density fuel through a much more efficient process.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Answers (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the Prius' that are being modified as plug-in hybrids will last for 50-60 miles on one charge and then switch over to hybrid "mode" after that. So you can stay off petrol for your everyday commute, and switch to a still fuel efficient "hybrid mode" when you want to go skiing or hiking for the weekend.
There was some stat listed on Google's site that said if every car in the world was switched to a plug-in hybrid, the current grid could power 82% of those cars. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that statement, but at the very least we know that the cars won't switch to plug-in hybrid over night. I think the infrastructure of the utility companies could grow to support that need over time. No matter what "solution" we choose it will take time to be adopted by the general public. If the utilities start ramping up now (being more efficient etc..), we might be able to support a world of plug-ins just fine.
Last point. I'm not sure about your "energy efficiency won't work in SUV's" statement. I actually just got done test driving a Ford Escape (SUV) Hybrid edition this weekend. I had no problems with it's power output at all. I even took it up a 4-5% grade and it handled the climb with ease. (Averaged 40MPG for the trip too... not shabby for an SUV)
Re:Why Ethanol? (Score:4, Funny)
More information (Score:4, Informative)
Any money for biodiesel? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I don't have the background to really comment or hold an opinion one way or another, I just think it's a mistake to look too hard for "one solution" that we need to put all our money and hopes in. We need to be looking all over the place, and we need to realize that the final solution might not involve all the cars in the country running on the same fuel. There might be certain fuels that are preferable in certain regions or for certain types of vehicles, and although it might fundamentally alter the transportation network and your ability to drive one vehicle anywhere, that might not be a terrible outcome.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On what planet is an incompatible fuel with a slightly higher yeild "a much more realistic
Re:Any money for biodiesel? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the new BMW 123d hatchback/coupé just announced now offers a 200 ps (197 bhp) dual-turbo turbodiesel engine that gives the car true high performance, yet can get around 40 mpg in normal limited-access motorway driving in the 100-120 km/h (62-75 mph) range. With today's new emission controls, that same engine could probably meet even the stringent EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 emission standard for automobile engines; the new Euro 5 emission rules will be similar to this EPA standard.
Sometimes I wonder.... (Score:3, Insightful)
With Ethonal BP can make money with its current infrastructure, keep positive press about their company, and develop alternatives that will never truly be able to replace fossil fuels.
Re:Sometimes I wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
BP is taking advantage of the political benefits of ethanol as transportation fuel. Politicians are winning over votes of corn growers by inflating the price of their crop and making them feel useful in solving a national problem. BP is posit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sometimes I wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Creating life (Score:5, Insightful)
Hemp is already best suited for this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hemp is already best suited for this (Score:5, Funny)
Brazil, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky.
So...Brazil [wikipedia.org] isn't a developed country? 40% of the gas used by *cars* comes from Ethanol [wikipedia.org] (they actually import oil because of diesel and petrochemical needs.) They do it with cane sugar.
The reason we don't have cheap ethanol, and why corn prices are skyrocketing, is because corn is almost *the* worst way to make ethanol. Corn, however, is what the midwest does, and only what the midwest does. The earliest primaries are in...guess where...the midwest (well, not so much any more, thank god.) The government forks over billions to farmers and farm corporations because it buys votes. Corn is what livestock are fed, not grass. High fructose corn syrup, which is quite bad for you (compared to regular sugar) is in damn near everything because it's cheaper than sugar (which, incidentally, is price fixed. Sugar is *dirt* cheap on the world market, but to protect a fairly small contingent of sugar farmers in the US, the feds price-control it.)
By the way, Bush's favorite line is "reducing our foreign dependency on oil." Guess what? We already get our oil from a rather diverse group [doe.gov], and half of our oil comes from domestic sources.
Last fun fact. Think your Prius is helping with that pesky foreign oil "problem", or (laughs) that you're "fighting terrorism"? Think again. Transportation only accounts for less than one percent of US oil consumption. [doe.gov]
Genetic engineering (Score:5, Funny)
My brother in law is optimized for alcohol consumption. Perhaps they could just reverse his genetic code.
Excellent... (Score:3, Funny)
That's perfect, seeing as how I'm optimized for alcohol consumption
Damn! (Score:3, Funny)
Damn! And here I am built for consuming ethanol with speed and efficiency! And not even a microbe, either.
Re:not a good long term option. (Score:4, Informative)
Just like nearly every other system on the face of the Earth, it's just another way of using solar power.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Grants are already quite competitive but let's try some numbers.
Let's say that it take $1 million to achie
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, in practice it can be quite difficult to reward innovation