Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed Into Ethanol 226
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin—a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel. Researchers at Bio Architecture Lab, Inc., (BAL) and the University of Washington in Seattle have now taken the first step to exploit the natural advantages of seaweed. They have built a microbe capable of digesting it and converting it into ethanol or other chemicals. Synthetic biologist Yasuo Yoshikuni, a co-founder of BAL, and his colleagues took Escherichia coli, a gut bacterium most famous as a food contaminant, and made some genetic modifications that give it the ability to turn the sugars in an edible kelp called kombu into fuel."
mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
For the sake of argument, lets say it works and pretty soon the ocean is all fenced off like Nebraska and each family farmer (multinational corp) has their own little farm (ocean). All this does is push off the problems of over populating a little bit further all the while putting pressure new pressures on the environment. While kelp would capture CO from the atmosphere in equal parts to those exhausted when burnt, I'm sure we are not taking into account the other things it will be removing from the seas. What affect might that have? No one knows. While the Capitalist ethic of "Drive it hard and fix what breaks." is romantic, it is also dangerous and doesn't take into account the people they kill along the way. I think I'd prefer to have a substantive conversation on the population control instead of only looking for more resources to exploit. Eventually Malthus will catch up to us, why not stop running from him and face his challenge. Better now while only 7 billion people will have to suffer rather than 12 billion in 20 or 30 years.
Re:Ooh! The energy crisis solved *again!* (Score:2, Interesting)
No worries, I am sure that whining about things not solving the problem will solve the problem.
Re:Oh good. (Score:5, Interesting)
so thats the fuel problem solved then
Errrrrrrrrrr well i seem to recall an article right here on slashdot not more that a couple of weeks ago saying that what was it E39 or whatever they cal ethanol in the US was bieng done away with as it was not a good fuel ..
That article was about making biofuel from corn. The bottom line there is that growing the corn and fermenting it to create ethanol takes more energy than it produces.
This is about using a genetically engineered stomach organism to convert seaweed. Truly the parallels are astounding.
Re:Cellulosic ethanol comes up short (Score:5, Interesting)
Try whatever tabletop approach catches your fancy but in the real world lignin just doesn't scale up to anything approaching meaningful commercial volumes
From the summary:
Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin—a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel.
Re:Interesting idea, but what about the full impac (Score:5, Interesting)
Not long ago I watched a TV program that presented the work of Japanese scientist Izuru Senaha . He have found that seaweed grows optimally at 2% CO2 concentration (72 times the normal concentration in sea water). They use method (developed by Masanori Hiraoka) where the seaweeds are in constant motion to boost their growth.
He is making experiments by collecting CO2 from local power plants and using it to grow seaweed.
It would make a lot more sense to have farms for rapid growth than having to collect seaweed from the ocean.
This method alone could be great for collecting the carbon from the air and making it into solid form (thus reversing the greenhouse effect). But that would not be profitable on its own.
Re:What could go wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if it was a sea dwelling organism lab strains can not usually compete with wild ones they are bread to survive best under much more friendly conditions and so get out-competed and eaten promptly. This is a problem for some projects, there was one where they had to keep on re-adding the G.M. microbes to the area to make it work (soil leaching heavy metals to "reclaim" ground).
NB. The situation is even more extreme for "nano-machines" witch in nature would be defenseless and eaten too quickly to measure. The gray goo horror story with nano-machines which cover and eat nearly everything has already happened, bacteria got their first and once they coved everything they then adapted to try and kill each other off to get more space. Any larger organism merely temporally hods them back and the moment you die they come to re-claim you.
Re:Oh good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually it is mostly the fact that the yeast in alcohol is limited to producing 10% alcohol before the yeast starts to die. So unless this yeast can get past 10% it will likely take the same energy to get to finished product as corn ethanol.
Fyi it takes 15700 BTU of fuel per gallon of ethanol to grow and transport the corn required. Ethanol has 114000 BTU per gallon a 8* payoff. 90% of the remaining energy used in producing ethanol is electric and still has a payoff. If you stop with hydrous ethanol (can be burned as e85, cannot be mixed with gasoline) the payoff is 2-3*. While anhydrous ethanol is more like 1.6* source: http://www.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/21_2_NEW%20YORK_04-76_0029.pdf [anl.gov]